Will Envato automatically make a bunch more money though? If I could be bothered to work out the sales figures of items that are over $60, compared to the figures for items that are less than $60, then I’m guessing the increased revenue for Envato isn’t going to be as massive as everyone thinks.
Take one of the top sellers as an example… Envato currently get around $750K a year from it. After the change, they’ll get about $695K. So just to cover that one theme… some other theme, or a bunch of other themes, are going to need to sell 4500 times in the same year, for them to make back what they were getting before.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not siding with or against the decision, or denying the possibility that they might make more money from this… I’m pretty sure they’ve run the numbers to make sure they won’t be making less… I just think it’s important to point out every side of the coin, and that this might not just be some cunning ploy to earn a bunch more money.
Authors can adjust their prices in whatever way they wish. What we are warning against is simply that authors need to be aware of the legal issue of price fixing.
To your points around price movement, I’ve listed a few considerations that we talked through below:
When we Fixed Buyer Fee might impact earnings and how authors may need to change the pricing strategy on their items, we focused on how much change would be required in order to maintain the same earnings as before.
You’ve stated "CodeCanyon, WordPress: 3512 out of 4694 items are below $20, so that’s 75%"
This is correct, 25% would need no price change.
75% of WP Plugins would only need to raise the price by $1 to make the same earnings.
Furthermore, 94% of WP Plugins would only need to raise price by no more than $2 to achieve the same earnings as before.
It’s probably important to note, changes in pricing is nothing new at Envato. In fact, in the years before Author Driven Pricing was introduced, price changes on market occurred almost annually. The difference is that right now, we’re letting authors decide the price points of their own items. A change that grants flexibility which we believe will leave authors much better off in the long term.
We selected Fixed Buyer Fees based on the most common sales price within the category, not the item price. We also deliberately strove for simplicity here with the buyer fee table. While there’s a lot of distribution, the FBF is focused on the average. The reality is that there will be adjustments for many but the impact is minor for most.
Yes but responsibility was on envato’s side and it was done for all authors. Now, as many other things, its on our backs to worry about… one more thing that drives us away from our creativity.
Yes, I think most of us here love the idea of Author Driven Pricing, it gives us more flexibility on our own item pricing and marketing strategy. I am also eager to go with Author Driven Pricing.
BUT what we are arguing is the Fixed Buyer Fee, which is too high for current standard pricing and totally a disadvantage for authors. Why a disadvantage? Because authors have to raise their price to keep the same profit per sale as in the current pricing model.
You increased your item’s price, with the risks of getting less sales because of it. BUT you would get the same profit as in the old pricing. Does it make sense to you?
It’ll be interesting to see the rates for all different PHP scripts. Because they can range from $10 to $100. Is it just going to be based on the category we select to put the product in? Because this could be potentially abused if a user places their product in a category with a lower buyer fee.
You increased your item’s price, with the risks of getting less sales because of it. BUT you would get the same profit as in the old pricing. Does it make sense to you?
@SingleStroke You have to add here "… and with hope to earn more. And you would get even more now!"
What I’m trying to say is don’t be so pessimistic. Think of it as a great opportunity.
Yes and I agree, we all should raise a bit prices to legitimate our work. I also already spoken about how good it could be for many reasons, but what I really don’t understand is why you are considering “WP” as an unique block.
And yes, I’m still talking about add-ons, because they simply aren’t plugins and can’t be taxed as plugins.
Could you (Envato, Collis, staff, whoever) spend a minute thinking about it?
Don’t have to re-project whole change, is just about a new category. “WP add-ons”. I can’t believe almighty Envato developers can’t assign different fees to add-ons…! Come on… is crystal clear they have been totally forgotten in the ADP plan. There should be a new row in that fees table.
I don’t think it’s tottaly good idea. I think that Envato give real prices to items. I think that good idea would be to give some price span. For example, my https://codecanyon.net/item/creatta-multipurpose-php-website-builder/17402375 is priced 28$. If you give some span (from 22-34$) it could be very good change and inovation. You should give some limits to authors.
This is really a nice move. I agree with this. I just don’t get it why there are a lot of fees and tax deduction for us authors, like fixed buyer fee. I hope we could have a simplified fees someday.
If this improvement increase sales as the “promise” made by Envato when moving to US that make us pay more taxes, I would believe again in this company.
Sales on US decreased a lot. See which are my top countries this month and US is far from being the 1st.
For all still trying to calculate adjustments, I did this for ThemeForest with @OsamaSayegh, I’m not sure if it works for CodeCanyon, but give it a world!
Price Calculator - input your data, and the price gets calculated automatically.
Including the buyer free, he’ll probably owe Envato even more.