Firstly, you can see Thesis in action. Go to http://diythemes.com/, then click the picture that says "Click here to see how you can design a Website with Thesis", and you'll get a video showing it in action. It basically adds a panel to your Wordpress Admin page that lets you control a lot of the design elements, namely number of columns, colors, fonts, etc.
Secondly, let me give the point of view of someone who uses Thesis.
I wanted to get my blog up and running. Obviously, I needed some kind of design, if even a basic one. I also wanted it to work as easily out-of-the-box as possible, since I wanted to concentrate on writing things and not mess around with learning Wordpress or Wordpress theme design (I have almost no experience there).
I saw (affiliate) links to Thesis on many sites that I admire, including descriptions of how good it is SEO-wise, and how much it's easy to use and customizable. For someone with no experience, it seemed like a good idea: I could install it, then use a nice web-based tool to customize the heck out of my design (which is what I did). If you watch the video, you can see that it lets you choose number of columns, size of columns, fonts, colors, and a lot more, all without going into any code. The few changes I did have to make in code were little snippets I found with very a simple Google Search, since Thesis is pretty popular.
If I have to get another Wordpress up, I'll definitely buy the package which gives you unlimited use of Thesis, since I already know it, and know that it will take me very little time to get a new blog working, and looking very nice with a very different design. All with likely an hour of work changing colors, fonts, etc. Obviously not a professional job, but definitely good enough to start with.
I'm very open to the possibility that Thesis doesn't help all that much. It's possible that with a few hours of work, I could learn enough about Wordpress and Wordpress theming to get to the same stage I'm at now with Thesis. But I don't know if that's true, and I don't know if I'll be missing important things (like SEO). So I was glad to pay to use Thesis (there's a lesson in what consumers are willing to pay for).
In any case, Thesis is a great case study in marketing!
Secondly, let me give the point of view of someone who uses Thesis.
I wanted to get my blog up and running. Obviously, I needed some kind of design, if even a basic one. I also wanted it to work as easily out-of-the-box as possible, since I wanted to concentrate on writing things and not mess around with learning Wordpress or Wordpress theme design (I have almost no experience there).
I saw (affiliate) links to Thesis on many sites that I admire, including descriptions of how good it is SEO-wise, and how much it's easy to use and customizable. For someone with no experience, it seemed like a good idea: I could install it, then use a nice web-based tool to customize the heck out of my design (which is what I did). If you watch the video, you can see that it lets you choose number of columns, size of columns, fonts, colors, and a lot more, all without going into any code. The few changes I did have to make in code were little snippets I found with very a simple Google Search, since Thesis is pretty popular.
If I have to get another Wordpress up, I'll definitely buy the package which gives you unlimited use of Thesis, since I already know it, and know that it will take me very little time to get a new blog working, and looking very nice with a very different design. All with likely an hour of work changing colors, fonts, etc. Obviously not a professional job, but definitely good enough to start with.
I'm very open to the possibility that Thesis doesn't help all that much. It's possible that with a few hours of work, I could learn enough about Wordpress and Wordpress theming to get to the same stage I'm at now with Thesis. But I don't know if that's true, and I don't know if I'll be missing important things (like SEO). So I was glad to pay to use Thesis (there's a lesson in what consumers are willing to pay for).
In any case, Thesis is a great case study in marketing!