I think Envato is trying to get into competition with site builders like Square Space, WIX and similar, that’s why they probably spent a lot of resources on creating this “Simple Site Builder” thing: https://sites.envato.com which I think is unfair to authors, it’s basically competing with our products and its being offered for free:
Envato Elements is also a frustrating thing. I am almost Power Elite, have an average 5 star author rating and all my themes are 5 stars, but I have not even received a reply after I applied to try Elements. If you can’t find time to reply to your big selling authors, I can only imagine what smaller authors are going through.
It looks like Envato is losing focus. In my opinion, competing with Site Builders is not a way forward for marketplace. Most customers here are familiar with WordPress and want a theme they can extend with plugins. If they wanted a simple site builder - they would have used Square Space or Wix in the first place. A template built for your niche is always going to look and function better than a thing you scramble yourself with a site builder.
I am also having a lowest sales month in the recent years. And looking at other authors (especially on CodeCanyon which seems to be a ghost town nowadays) - they seem to be leaving the marketplace too because of that. Look at “featured items” section on CodeCanyon, it’s laughable, some items there don’t deserve even to be approved in the first place, nevermind featured.
We also need a better way to sell our own themes if you want to have us send traffic here. I don’t want to spend money advertising my themes and plugins just so the customer ends up signing up with elements or using a free site builder. Give authors better control over a referral experience. For example I still can’t track PayPal sales in my Adsense, so it’s almost impossible to measure if the campaign was positive or not.
I know it’s always easy to complain without suggestion anything, but I really think that instead of spreading your attention on multiple things you should better focus on something and do it right. You have Elements, Site Builder, the infamous discontinued Envato Hosted thing, now this category experiments, which look like a ripoff from new Apple store design.
Envato,… never forget!
Authors pay a huge price for your experiments!
This kills any motivation!
You and your experiments can make every author to diffidence about himself!!!
Why every month when a certain amount of sales is reached, the sales stop!
They stop until the last hour of the month has elapsed and start again in the first hours of the new month.
This can be a one-week period without a sale!?
Why the authors’ portfolios being discarded from search results for exactly eight or twelve hours on certain days!?
You are not telling the whole truth here!
Perhaps it is forbidden to talk about it, but these are limitations in sales!
Envato is now very alarming, is this the beginning of the destruction of Envato? now writers and customers have turned to other, more promising markets, they don’t appreciate writers who have built Envato for years to be like this, and then just dumped them by experimenting like this, maybe even some of them expect their main income from envato.
Can you please stop with this hashtag spam. This thread will be locked again because of that. We need to provide a constructive feedback instead of just spamming
When I came to AudioJung two years ago, I liked everything and it was cool. And then something happened and everything went to hell (it feels like after moving the company). Last year I have only experienced stress and irritability. All new experiments or “improvements” for me personally were only a minus and had a negative impact. People have restrained themselves during the last experiments, but what do we see again? The authors did not have time to calm down after the last experiment as they announce the next one and the administration responds to all the negative reviews as “Do not worry, everything will be cool”, but this “Cool” does not occur at all. Old design, old searches I was more than satisfied, I found everything I needed and watched everything I needed. I do not leave the feeling that I cheat especially after they said that you need to do marketing on their own, but okay. Well, let’s say I do my own marketing, but after a person follows a link to an item, does he see an “Elements” advertisement? Are you seriously? This is just the highest hypocrisy. The authors express their dissatisfaction, which is logical, but you are trying to convince them that they seem to be right, but no. I like Envato, but when I try to figure out what to do next, only one thing comes to my mind, to leave with Envato, to other markets. Many authors also understand this, but do not want to do it, and you use it. Everyone wants to get the exact answer, why are you doing this? Develop “Elements” separately as it is a separate area with those authors who agreed to the transition, and those authors who are not related to “Elements” leave alone.
Reputation is earned by many hard works and years…
But the reputation is crumbling in an instant…
Envato team - think about what you are doing and where your path leads…
This is not talks not for thread, this is last call from people, who helping you earn YOUR money.
Profit is cool, but all of your activities lately have been contrary to common sense in the long run. What you want? Earn a lot of money overnight or earn constantly and long time with cooperation with authors? When you will answer this question - you will turn to the authors face and start a dialogue, or turn away completely.
Anyway, thanks for the best times in the past. I hope for your reasonable view to the situation and long mutually beneficial cooperation in the future…
I just try to show you, that now you need to begin dialogue with authors, with many authors. That is no good time for standard answers. That’s time for seriously talking…
I talked about stealing attention, banner placements, ethical and moral responsibilities of this practices, the absurdity of our own marketing efforts without the tools, etc. a long time ago, nothing has changed and I doubt it will anytime soon.
There are many more issues besides the ones stated, that should have the highest priority, like the absurdity of product family policy, the allowing of money back guarantee, the discount campaigns without discounting Envato fee, the validity of the commission price for support, still no discount codes options, etc.
99% of all decisions are detrimental and restrictive to authors. Those which are not, have a higher value to Envato.
In the end, what can you do but despair and rant and try to do as best as you can with what you got until something better comes along. Envato used to represent 95% of our income, now it’s down to 70%. So… adapt It still possible to have a nice living here, however with much more effort.
Back when we started responsively hardly was a thing, no visual builders, no frameworks, no bootstrap no sliders
Nowadays building a theme is much easier, selling it is a whole different story
@CleverSoft Even most tragically, this happening also on exclusive author pages and checkout pages. This simply try to force visitors to not buy your item
Envato thinks/knows that customers come from Google, not from the category pages, but does Envato know/think that Google BOT come to count WordPress > Category > Items higher score than WordPress > Category > Newest > Items?
New items now have lower SEO score in the first place they start low and more low now
Feel really bad. I stopped uploading since the change. Hardly authors are getting sales for new items. only the old and popular ones are receiving sales.
