How Oleg Malkov Made $480K Selling Website Templates

Turning SEO Skills into Digital Products

Oleg Malkov spent years delivering SEO services before realizing the limits of client work. In 2014 he tried selling heavy machinery leads online, but an economic slump drained his savings and forced him into a modest bungalow in Thailand.

Short on cash, he pivoted to freelancing—tackling everything from SEO audits to business card designs. Over eight months, leftover project income and new gigs added up to $12,000. He calculated that with savings and minimal expenses he could dedicate six months to finding a scalable niche.

Discovering ThemeForest

A quick search led him to ThemeForest, where top authors made $100K+ selling templates. Confident from building sites, Oleg formed a small team: two designers, two front-end devs and rotating programmers. He launched his first HTML template, only to learn WordPress theming and page builders required a very different workflow.

Grinding Through Moderation

Each submission faced 5–20 errors on code quality, security and design standards. After 18 rejections and dozens of fixes, his first theme was finally approved. The first sale at $59 netted $29.50—proof the model could work. Within the first month, five more sales brought net revenue to $8,750.

Scaling and Snags

Early wins motivated Oleg to launch two more templates, but hiring mismatches and mounting living costs in Thailand slowed progress. By year’s end, only four products were live, and revenue plateaued. High interest loans, team churn and thin 50% margins made further growth untenable.

Building an Assembly Line

In late 2019, he sketched an assembly-line workflow, raised $35K from two backers, and formalized training, code reviews, and art direction. This system boosted quality and throughput. During the COVID-19 lockdown, seventeen new templates launched, pushing monthly revenue to $6,500 plus $7,500 in custom support work.

Exit and Return to SEO

By late 2020 competition and platform rules capped gains. He listed the automated template business on Empire Flippers, negotiated past a $210K valuation limit imposed by ThemeForest’s transfer rule, and sold it for $180K. After fees and bonuses he funded a Thailand apartment purchase. He then refocused full-time on SEO, co–founding MonsterPBN to provide premium PBN domain services.