I am observing elements (WordPress themes) . I have seen total number of themes rising from 260. Then it was 270 and then 300. But recently its downfall. From 300 to 280 then 270 and now 249. What’s the cause?
Speaks for itlself. Theme Authors seem to know their worth. Sadly I know there will be a mass run on elements once it’ll open the gates for Audiojungle Authors. However, the point here is that there’s a big gap between what customers would like to pay and what Authors would like to earn. Creatives will shift to part time in the near future, degraded to Hobbyists. That’s the ugly truth.
Since WP Elements launched I have noticed the following: At launch and for about a week following, my account over at Themeforest received a roughly 20% boost in sales. After the first week sales returned to normal and have remained at that point (normal sales levels) - on Elements we’ve yet to receive any feedback regarding income or download frequency, so I cannot comment on that so far. The takeaway from it though is that Elements does not appear to have affected by WP sales over at Themeforest.
In terms of my experience in the backend of Elements, it’s fantastic, I love being able to save and preview a draft whilst editing an item, nice big cover images etc. One thing I can say, move the Elements item description editing page over to Themeforest!
EDIT 1: Honestly with the items I have on elements, I expected users showing up in my item comments on Themeforest looking for support or similar, so far that has not happened once, which has been great to see that it seems expectations are definitely being managed by the Elements process.
There are several reasons why item numbers might fluctuate. The first is that authors have the ability to pick and choose which themes are available on Elements.
The second reason is that our team regularly reviews items to ensure they meet our requirements for Elements. If items do not meet those requirements, they will disable the item.
@tommusrhodus thanks for sharing your experience so far!
Yea I got some intel from fellow author buds on elements, that after they got their wp themes on Elements, their tf account got pumped up with visits, however now it’s almost back to normal, I presumed that was because Envato pumped marketing resources for the launch.
For now, I am very happy that it does not affect sales on TF. I do think that hefty annual plan has to do with it somehow, which is good
It would be really cool to see more feedback from authors especially from new endeavors like Elements and also for example hosted.
But still, I think that a kickass move from Envato would be to implement theme club option on TF authors portfolios, meaning that the client can subscribe on TF to a certain author and gain access to all his themes.
I this way we can convert the returning customers (specially those that have more themes from the same author) and focus more on updating and improving current items to keep the clients and no sharing the income with other authors, envato would grab 30% from the subscription and that’s it. If you cancel the subscription, no more support, and no more updates. The stand-alone options would stay the same and if you go annual its cheaper, pure classic.
In this way, quite a few authors that want to start their own shops would stay.
Why would you say that is good thing, I personally think this will have a negative effect. I would love to see the statistics of the monthly members next to the annual members and I would expect there is lot less annual, hence not so many people downloading WordPress which means less money for the authors.
Looking at the quality of products within WordPress Envato they would have been in a better place if it had not turned its back on the early bird members.
People are not looking for it to be within the $19 which to be fair were led to believe but would have been happier if they were treated better having been members from the beginning.
The entire launch in my eyes is a mess, someone somewhere made the call to turn its back on the early bird members and this was a mistake as we are the roots of this business and have been fair while the site was in BETA and crashing etc, we helped find the bugs etc…they forget the website was very basic when it started but we stuck with it with the promise of ELEMENTS being added.
It does borderline on misselling. So when you say its a good thing, I say its far from that.
You’re in the author hangout though, so he’s saying it’s good from an author point of view that a subscriber isn’t given the choice of downloading one Wordpress theme for $59… or multiple Wordpress Themes for $19.
It would be a much easier choice for a potential buyer, so the $41 commissions would probably dry up, and the $1/$5/$10 commissions would replace them. So he’s saying that it’s good that there’s a level of protection for authors. Multiple items for three times less than the price of one item is a no-brainer… multiple items for four or five times the price of one item… that makes it a harder decision.
A thing that a friend showed me who is selling on Elements got me all raddled up today, we are constantly seeing elements spam all over the place, on TF for example, to attract customers. The footer is seen on our items also for example.
The friend in mention placed a CTA in the bottom of the themes preview linking to TF item, so clients can also buy it there and today he got a warning that he must not do that looooooooooooooooooooool
