Author Driven Pricing: ThemeForest, CodeCanyon and 3DOcean

Awesome stuff guys!

One thing I don’t understand yet:

I have an item at price XX$, but that price is fine by me. However with the fixed buyers fee I would get more money as with the current 20% buyers fee. If I would like to keep my item price but use the fixed buyers fee, then can I have it?
Maybe by changing the item price to XX+1$ and then changing it back to XX$? :smiley:

Anyways, awesome changes :slight_smile:

I am sorry if I missed anything (reading this post from my hospital bed) but ADP is applicable to existing items too right? Will i be able to change the price of my current items??

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@[quote=“wpdreams, post:14, topic:62756”]
I have an item at price XX$, but that price is fine by me. However with the fixed buyers fee I would get more money as with the current 20% buyers fee. If I would like to keep my item price but use the fixed buyers fee, then can I have it?
[/quote]

You sure can!

Hope you’re ok!

The change is applicable to all items in the category. Both those that are in the category now and those that will be uploaded in the future.

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Hi, why the buyers fee for themes is a fixed $12? This means that any Theme priced lower then $60 will earn us less money then before…

Right now for a theme priced at $59:
Buyers Fee: $11.8
Authors Free: $5.9
Income: $59 - Buyers Fee - Authors Fee = $41.3

After the changes:
Buyers Fee: $12
Authors Free: $5.875
Income: $59 - Buyers Fee - Authors Fee = $41.125

Right now for a theme priced at $49:
Buyers Fee: $9.8
Authors Free: $4.9
Income: $49 - Buyers Fee - Authors Fee = $34.3

After the changes:
Buyers Fee: $12
Authors Free: $4.625
Income: $49 - Buyers Fee - Authors Fee = $32.375

This is $2 on each sale!

Can we make marketing actions like for example 24h sale with lower price? Or start with the lower price at the beginning as a promotion?

P.S I like the change to author driven prices, but the numbers do not add up. Yet again this is another way to earn more money for Envato…

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We recently adjusted our Item Promotion Guidelines to be able accommodate discounting and the promotion of discounting. If this is something you’re keen to do, then you are welcome to do so.

That’s exactly what i wanted to say, but you were faster.
Envato earns more, but the authors earns less. AGAIN :))

This means that any Theme priced lower then $60 will earn us less money then before…

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What is the current permitted price-changing frequency? (or is there such a policy?)

I hope this will promote a good market, not just a mere descendind price auction between authors.

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Perhaps you should simply consider not too participate in a race to bottom and price items at what they’re actually worth. If you do so, the fixed fee does not hurt anyone.

Hey folks. I’m about to log off for the day. Feel free to keep the chat going and I’ll batch reply to any further questions when i get in tomorrow :slight_smile:

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It’s not about the race to bottom.
Let’s say that you have a WordPress theme with a price lower than 60$.
After this move you will earn less money even if you don’t change the price.
Simple…

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I am not sure what you mean? Look at the popular list of TF Do you see many items priced at $60 or higher? There are maybe 5 such items… This is not about a race to the bottom but about a simple theme priced at $60 to break it even with the new policy.

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So now people from countries like India (because a dollar there is absolutely not the same as a dollar in USA for example) will price their themes toward the minimum possible but Envato has insured themselves to earn $12 per theme. And we the authors?

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This happened to all the categories that went under ADP before eg- HTML, PSD etc. Those who wanted their cut to be same had to increase their prices by a dollar or two to compensate for the fixed buyer fee. Of course Envato is thinking for themselves too here just in case an author decides to sell their theme for peanuts.

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ADP makes one thing clear. Envato is incurring losses, sales have been dropping and it will continue to drop. To avoid their losses, Envato switched to a fixed price. “Let the authors bear the brunt of the sales dropping. We will sustain our business by charging a fixed fee from authors. There will be many who would be willing trade off a few dollars per sale just to be able to sell their items even at a reduced price.”

Envato’s strategy is brilliant. For them. Not for the authors. The theme business is going to go down for real this time. 2 more years. that’s it. The established shops will be able to sustain themselves, though not for long. But new authors don’t stand a chance. Buyers just dont want to spend more than $45 for any kind of theme anymore. The market is extremely saturated.

“World doesn’t need a copy of the same thing.” ~ Eric Schmidt

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Thats somehow true but I don’t agree about the $45 mark. We can see at the popular list and 90% of the themes there are priced at $59 and doing pretty damn well!

They are popular items by established authors that’s why. If you see the number of sales of the recently published themes (in the last few months) you will see that number of sales are much less for items priced above $45 irrespective of the category.

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I do not think this is true either. From my experience people do not care about the price. I have raised the price on my items from $19 to $25 - sales stayed exactly the same. On my flip book I have raised the price from $18 to $34 - here I have noticed an increase in sales.

The market is flooded thats true but a good product will defend itself.

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Wow, great decision. I sold few models on 3d ocean as an exclusive author but then I quit because the prices were very low .