Hi everyone,
As many of you know, over the past 12 months we have been rolling out Author Driven Pricing (ADP) across a range of different categories, so far this has included GraphicRiver and a handful of categories within ThemeForest.
Naturally, these changes are significant, and our team has been closely monitoring the impact on the market for any signs of destabilization.
At this stage, I can announce that following the implementation of ADP on our early categories, the marketplace remains healthy. To share with you some very general insights:
- Pricing across the ADP categories have remained very stable (with a small number of… let’s call them “optimistic exceptions”)
- Across popular items, prices have been far more likely to increase rather than decrease. Largely, more authors have chosen to experiment with increasing their prices rather than decreasing them.
- In the instances where prices have dropped, it’s been on dated items that haven’t been selling as strongly for some time.
- Customer behaviour has not changed as a result of the shift, again proving the point that customers have a lot more on their minds than just “price” when it comes to choosing an item for their project.
We’re now looking to move on to the next stage of our Author Driven Pricing project and introduce the feature to three new areas of Envato Market. These three areas are:
- All remaining ThemeForest categories (including WordPress).
- All categories on CodeCanyon.
- All categories on 3DOcean
How will that work?
In mid-to-late September, our engineers will flip the switch to enable Author Driven Pricing functionality on the marketplaces above. We’ll alert you via email once the change is officially made live and all authors will be free to determine whether they wish to change their prices, in accordance with the rules of ADP.
What about items in the review queue?
Unlike our last ADP rollout, all items in the review queue at the time ADP is applied will remain in the review queue.
The reviewers will be setting default pricing on the items as they are approved. Once approved, the author will receive an email informing them of the price, and prompting them to review it.
Information for Authors on How to Price Items
When the changes go live, authors will be able to enter item prices for all available license types for their item into the price text box on the upload page, or on the edit item page.
Price recommendations will be shown alongside the item price field as a guide only. When setting your item price, you should also should consider that author driven pricing categories feature a fixed buyer fee. You can find a list of the fixed buyer fees on our Help Center.
Once you’ve submitted your edits, the price change will take effect immediately. Item price changes will also immediately and automatically update item support prices based on current rates.
Read more about how to price your items in our help center.
For this release, we’ll be leaving all list prices as they are. Although we won’t change the list price during the release, in some cases the new structure may cause a decrease or increase in the item price. If your item price changes and you wish to return it to what it was pre-launch, you will be able to do so on the edit item page.
IMPORTANT Information About Pricing Discussions
There are strict laws governing pricing conduct. In particular, it’s strictly prohibited to have an agreement, arrangement or understanding between competing businesses (such as two authors) about what price point to sell at. How to price your work is a commercial decision you will need to make for yourself. Read more about this in our help center.
Why are we doing this?
At the heart of this change is our vision for an Envato Market that empowers authors to make their own decisions about their businesses. By allowing scope for authors to determine their own prices, we give more control to authors and allow for new types of products and business models.
Over the coming week, the community team will be around to answer any general questions you might have (using the daily batch reply approach we’ve taken in the past). Please help them out by keeping the discussion on track, checking first to see if your question has already been answered and avoiding any discussion on the specifics of how you’re pricing your item or what you think item prices should be.