Can You Make Money on CodeCanyon?

Envato Authors Author Hangout
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hunzonian said
Laith said

in my opinion … as a programmer, that calculation is not true because hard work is to get your project into codecanyon, then supporting is not that big part as you assumed that they worked for 17 months … hmmmmm i don’t think so … it will only need mostly 1 or 2 hours per day to provide support. that’s it !! :smiley:

Cheers

Laith

Then why don’t you read what the author himself says on an other forum post. He has no time to create scripts anymore because he is so overwhelmed with support.

as he said :: Receive about 4 support emails or comments a day. Most are with the PHP scripts.

well how much time will it take to reply to 4 support emails per day ?

22

Hey Laith how ya goin.

Yeah I agree.

But, there are avenues on here which arent that well known, esp. for new purchasers. Such as the individual FAQ section for marketplace items, a good FAQ area, can alleviate all the tediom of replying to countless questions.

Ste

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Dhruv said

You are right and wrong.

The author did put a lot of time and effort on his application + additional support, And for all these he made really less money than what he would have expected to make.

But he did gain a lot of exposure from this, And being No. 1 on CodeCanyon is huge in itself, everybody knows about him (sadly i don’t) and he must have got a lot of Freelance work from this which in turn made all these a very big (not huge) success for him.

Though other marketplace dominate Envato for now., I haven’t seen any great application published here since i joined. They are good but not the best. (this might be 1 of the reason)

Not everybody want to code, thats the reason they look for feature rich ready made solution (WordPress in this case) and see how well WordPress themes are doing.

I saw your Product it’s good but not the best (that might be one of the reason why it’s not doing well and since it’s not doing well CodeCanyon is not doing well.)

Anyways your question was can we make money on CodeCanyon and my answer would be Yes.

Recession hit the World, and CodeCanyon is still recovering from it, That doesn’t mean it wont Recover.

Thanks for your response.

I think, that if exposure is what you after, not many things will do a better job than creating some good quality open source apps and let people have at it. There are so many sites of this kind, they are all completely free and in the spirit of helping others.

By the way, I would like to return the compliment on your software but I see that you don’t have any. Your account is empty and you have zero sales. Was I looking at the wrong profile?

I wanted to find out, what the best ways are to approach a market like this, who and what percentage of the constituents are making money, and what is their business and marketing model as well as the type and quality of products they create.

So as a good and diligent citizen I do my research and make up my own mind about things. The first thing of course is to research the degree of potential and the first step in that is to see who is doing well and why.

If the top sellers are not doing much to speak of (depending on your perspective), then that’s what it is. Its nature depends on one’s perspective. That is exactly what my post was about. I decided to create a forum topic about it because I was stunned at the results however preliminary, and I wanted to see some feedback and personal experience(not personal attacks).

The question is not how a handful of people are making out like bandits, but rather if the market is conducive and flexible enough to support all the rest (probably 90%) and to what degree.

Because of the taboo nature of the topic, I knew that some people would hurry to grab the pitchfork. All in all, the post was a bad idea because - You don’t ask a priest if Darwin was all wrong about evolution - do you? You know the answer you would get.

This gives me a general idea whether my engagement is a good way to monopolize my time or not. No one cares whether I come or go and no one forces my had to do what I don’t want to do - which is all the more reason to do my own research and make up my own mind.

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Laith said
hunzonian said
Laith said

in my opinion … as a programmer, that calculation is not true because hard work is to get your project into codecanyon, then supporting is not that big part as you assumed that they worked for 17 months … hmmmmm i don’t think so … it will only need mostly 1 or 2 hours per day to provide support. that’s it !! :smiley:

Cheers

Laith

Then why don’t you read what the author himself says on an other forum post. He has no time to create scripts anymore because he is so overwhelmed with support.

as he said :: Receive about 4 support emails or comments a day. Most are with the PHP scripts.

well how much time will it take to reply to 4 support emails per day ?

No my friend, this is what he said:

“It totally agree with siredesigns. I almost have no time anymore to develop new script because I get so much support emails every day. I know that giving support is optitional but all the buyers here think it’s normal to get free support with all the $x scripts. There should be something like a suport service where buyers need to pay some extra money for.”

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Hi, everyone. A few notes on my end:

  • CodeCanyon hasn't even had its first birthday yet. We're doing very, very well, considering that.
  • As with all the Envato marketplaces, you get what you put in. For example, the WordPress Events plugin sold $30k worth in five months...because the developers did an exquisite job of branding, creation, and support. If you don't focus on those three key components, you can't expect your item to sell as well.
  • More recently (yesterday, I believe), Justin submitted his new status board, which I'm sure will perform well, too (for these same reasons). http://codecanyon.net/item/wordpress-status-dashboard/143800
  • As Jeremy noted, hunzonian, your Math is incorrect. You're assuming that the author worked every hour for 17 months to achieve those sales...around the clock. This is far from the case. If you want to divide my yearly income by all the hours in the year (8736), it'll look like I make minimum wage as well. And, also, please don't disrespect CodeCanyon reviewers. There's no need for that.
  • Since January of this year, monthly sales have doubled many times over. 2011 will be even bigger. I've no doubt that 2011 will see us sky-rocket!
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One last note: I’m actually pleased to see threads like this. It means we’re making huge strides! Let me explain:

When the crazy successful ThemeForest first launched, things in the forums were mostly quiet. However, within a handful of months or so, we started receiving killer submissions that sold really well. And then, at that point, as soon as other authors started to realize how well they could do if they put in the proper amount of effort into the prep-work, things exploded…and the quality levels increased like crazy on a monthly basis.

Throughout this process, we started seeing the angry forum postings more and more. So, seeing one here is a good sign that we’re on the right track! :smiley:

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hunzonian said

Because of the taboo nature of the topic, I knew that some people would hurry to grab the pitchfork. All in all, the post was a bad idea because - You don’t ask a priest if Darwin was all wrong about evolution - do you? You know the answer you would get.

It’s not a taboo topic. What drew ire and “personal attacks” was your (mis)representation. There’s a difference between, “hey, I want to know xyz and I did 1+2+3 which may not be entirely accurate but it’s a very rough estimate” and “according to my irrefutable math, being trudging through a sewer every day for less-than-minimal wage is better than selling code, and how dare anyone come against me and my purposeful degradation of this establishment.”

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@Jeffery way +10000 :stuck_out_tongue:

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@jwmcpeak no offense but when you’re one of the responsible entities here you’re required to handle matters a bit more professionally; I skimmed through some of the posts and both, you and hunzonian, seem to have been going at it … i like the way jeffery replied and that’s how it should be i think … just a friendly note …

@jeff … when is the bargin bin getting updated lol it’s already 7th December! and my point about “things being slow around here” seems validated :stuck_out_tongue: haha

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The calculations are wrong and you can’t look at it that way.
For the moment I work around 2/3 days a week for Codecanyon and for the rest I work as freelance developer. 90% of my work/clients I got through Codecanyon.
Also, in your calculations you forgot the bonus incomes you can get when one of your items is selected for a bunble.

Also the beauty of these kind of marketplaces is when you go on vacation that you still earn some money. Without a marketplace you would earn nothing while on vacation as a freelancer.

Without Codecanyon I wouldn’t be a fulltime freelancer at this moment.

So to answer to your question:
Can You Make Money on CodeCanyon? Yes

31

The short answer to your question is yes.

The amount of money you can make on codecanyon is all up to you. That’s the beauty of it. If you put out quality products, give killer support and self promote, the sky is the limit. Envato provides you with a wonderful platform and vast audience to sell goods. Yes, they take a chunk out, but that figure dwindles down based off the customers and money you bring in. I consider it like this. Envato’s commission pays for a virtual booth where I can set up shop. Along with supplying the materials for my booth, they send out fliers inviting potential customers to purchase my products. If my products are great, then they advertise them along with other great items which in turn brings in more money. All this is done “FREE”, but I consider the commission to pay for all of that which is a lot if you think about it. I started here on code canyon pretty much as a “See if I can do it” attitude. I created scripts and I have a steady flow of extra income. Like others have said, Envato gives you the opportunity to make money while you’re on vacation, sleeping, eating, or on the crapper. It’s like when investors say, make money work for you don’t work for money. Also, many times, like said before, you create a script and a buyer needs it customized. Bang, you got a free lance job. So I would say, don’t let the “math” of not becoming successful here stop you from trying. It all depends on you, good luck!

32

Ok, I’m sort of new here and what I mean by that is that I’ve finally got a chance to get involved with envato although I signed up a year ago.

All of this bickering back and forth is nerve wrecking for a new comer like myself. Although I plan to market most of myself in the other marketplaces, I’ll be using CodeCanyon a lot.

All I read in 4 pages was scenario… “Hey, I got some figures for ya and I’ll post’em up here even though there from speculation and then maybe I’ll discourage other people from competing with me.”

Next I heard… “Here are some real number and by the way, I’ll show you a success story to prove it.”

Then one person can’t defend his position on the matter and the other person is instigating.

I mean I want to be a part of this community as much as the next person but I wonder if childish games are always prevalent here.

It would have been better if the topic was started… “I can’t make any money! Can one of the big dawgs around here help me figure out how to make some money?” At least that would have been better than being argumentative, etc etc. People will respect you more if you reach out to the community instead of supply them with useless facts based on poor research.

Even I did my own research and found an author;Web Treats; that made over $108,000 (after envato commission and I was counting the 70% structure) since just February of this year on one item alone. Granted it wasn’t a code canyon item but still.

Look at the file, it’s called in focus and here is some basic math.

Created: 8 February 2010 (that’s approx. 10 months to this day)
Sales: 4,417
Price: $35

So what is 4,417 x 35? Maybe $154,595 and x .70 = 108,216.50 for 10 months!

Is this for realz???

Maybe I’m doing the math wrong or maybe I’m completely misunderstanding the envato program and how it works. But if I’m right in my calculations, then that my friends will buy a lot of toilet paper!

Now I see big money every day but come on, in a marketplace as passive income! Why would anyone argue with that???

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Smack3 said

Is this for realz???

Maybe I’m doing the math wrong or maybe I’m completely misunderstanding the envato program and how it works. But if I’m right in my calculations, then that my friends will buy a lot of toilet paper!

Now I see big money every day but come on, in a marketplace as passive income! Why would anyone argue with that???

Provided you get that kind of sales. InFocus was the first theme to bring that special something in wordpress theme and to that it owns it’s success.

And sure it seems like passive income at first, but you always have to provide support, release updates for your files etc. Not sayin’ that it’s not worthwille on CC, 'cause it is, just saying don’t get expectations that high because it’s not always peachy as an author

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I don’t doubt that there is work to be done even after making a product. Policies need to be set for yourself as an author, like times for support or maybe offering a certain amount of support for free so you don’t get overworked and underpaid… assuming it’s allowed to set your own policies on here.

I try not make a habit of getting my hopes up though. Bad things happening to good people are to be expected and not everyone is going to be successful selling their items. Just the connections alone that you can make here; from what I’ve seen, are worth a million bucks and more.

35

Again - the key to success on our marketplaces is focusing on the entire picture – the code, the presentation, the thumbnails/item preview images, the support, the documentation, video tutorials, etc.

Justin Scheetz did a great job of this recently, and he’s made over 100 sales in a bit over a week. http://codecanyon.net/item/wordpress-status-dashboard/143800