Category Page Update

Hi, i uploaded two projects and got 1 sales, now 0 views in a few days. I deleted one project and downloaded it to another market. The second project will also be deleted when there is time to prepare it for another market.

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Envato , please give us good news and make “Newest Items” as default from June.
It will make summer better :slight_smile:

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Hi Stereonuts. Going to ask a tough and honest question in this thread and your feedback will help many understand. I have been extremely outspoken about elements and subscription models for music since day 1. I always felt as though the moment that Envato embraced a spotify like business model for B2B music licensing the entire music licensing industry will slowly start to implode. (My earnings are down 50% from normal levels btw)

You are the beneficiary of the banner ad as you have your catalog on elements. So what is the problem? Everyone who is selling through the subscription model seems to be claiming that “I am sorry but I simply make more money each month prior to elements”. Please clarify what the issue is? I am also surprised to see Olexandr showing dissatisfaction with the way things are going.

I realize this thread is about category page update and here is my opinion on that. Envato just needs to clearly display each option so a customer can decide for themselves what kind of content will be delivered after they enter their search words: New / Best Selling / Trending / Price / etc.

Since all artists and software geniuses across the globe are here reading this I have to say to all again, no one forced anyone to participate in subscription services which clearly undercut everyone’s price by insane amounts. These are just facts. No one can deny these facts. Elements undercuts massively and the only reason why elements participants are profiting from this is because there have been limitations as to how much content is going in to that market. Doesn’t everyone realize that if the entire market were to shift to subscription only and everyone was allowed to have their content in that ecosystem, everyone’s earnings would plummet?

Really, it is time for everyone to look in the mirror instead of blaming envato.

If you embrace 90% lower pricing, YOU are part of the problem because YOU are supporting the problem.

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Hi, SteelSound

At first, sorry for my bad English.

Let’s start with the fact that since last year, when Elements were introduced on AJ - all this was taught as an additional market to reset the format, which is not very consistent with the main direction. And the further and more it developed, the more questions the authors received.

As you rightly noted, I do not have problems with earnings, but I’m sad to see how most colleagues get a decline in sales, but this is not the main thing - the point is that Envato does react to many important questions from authors and gives standard answers to non-standard questions.

That was the essence of my post.

You’re concerned about my presence on the Elements, that’s normal. I am there and earn a certain income - this is normal. But I don’t support the idea that traffic from the main markets (such as: AJ, VH, TF, etc) is led away by a banner and misleads many customers, and misleads thousands of authors on Envato.

I am not dissatisfied with “how things are going”, I am not dissatisfied with my earnings, I am concerned about how Envato treats Envato’s sound issues and how Envato reacts to these issues.

Get the gist. I have no claims and questions to Elements, systems subscription and camping on D. the Only question, which, I asked Envato in the preceding post, on which you so acutely reacted - WHY there is NO ANSWER, why there is no adequate answer authors from team Envato, why follow only standard answers…

And the second question - what are the goals of Envato, quick profit or long cooperation with the authors. I do not understand why Envato does not see the obvious things and that’s what I asked in the previous post.

I hope it’s clearer to you now what I meant.

If not, then again, the result: I do not like the situation Envato attitude to the authors in General and most of all of this - uncertainty and standard twists. The second point - the Elements are not the subject that was originally filed as…

and one more thing, I don’t really understand now, what are you doing and what are you want to say in your post? Are you trying to compromise me or try to elevate yourself by humiliating me or what are you trying to achieve? Maybe what I earn normally and can’t support the colleagues? Or what if I’m fine and I have to ignore what’s happening? What is your position? Explain please, if you since started this topic…

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Hey, buddy, no one’s complaining. I tried to support the appeal of many authors to Envato, but I see here some of them are very beautiful, clean and high-quality, and still very proud and independent, that perhaps I will not say another word here. Come on, keep your protest going. The main thing is to decide against whom your protest and why. All the best and goodbye.

Two men are now shifting attention from the problem to the person who was trying to support the topic. Come on, guys, let’s go. I don’t think I’m in the same boat with you, it’s really, apparently easier to vent my anger on me than to try to continue a constructive dialogue with Envato.

Well, that’s my part here, over…

Very cool, Guys! Best Regards, Bye.

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thank for the update

What if there is another side?
For most non-elite authors Elements earnings are higher then market earnigns, in some cases 2-3 times higher. Mine are around 60% from VH, next month should be around 65-70%. It is growing constantly (And it’s far not 300$)
So what if it is future? And this is how overall markets evolve? Will you blame someone for his choise of future earning?
Everyone of us is earning money there individually. And after all been said Elements+Category pages design update should make markets the place where customer can find mostly high quality, complex, big packages items and so all other stuff will move to subscription. And this way it will be real separation, market won’t be over-saturated with lots of same kind of projects and mostly premium templates would sell here

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Exactly my point:

The issue for most authors is not that Envato doesn’t seem to be working towards helping the authors, but that Envato seems to be working against the authors, with each new feature making it harder for authors to get sales (elements, promoting only old items, changing fees and item prices without notifying the authors first, etc.). I personally don’t expect much help from Envato, I think they provide enough (platform, payments, support, huge number of customers), but I also expect for them not to work against the authors for their own benefit (which in the long run is actually in their own detriment, as authors will leave, items quality will go down, customers will leave).

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Note that lower price doesn’t necessarily mean more sales. Customers might run away from a theme that’s $8, just because it feels cheap and probably poorly coded.

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You gave a great, honorable answer Stereonuts. You are absolutely right communication from Envato to authors has basically just stopped on all issues. In my 6 years of working on the platform, I have never seen the forums so tense. I just believe it all came to fruition with the launch of subscription models. Those models have been the shocking disruption that I believe, no author ever really wanted.

Everyone feels compromised, disgruntled, and discouraged. These feelings are inevitable when artists and designers of all kinds accept models that devalue our work by 90%.

Then we have endless category page sorting “experiments” going on in the search engine. That clearly is disregarding new works getting published because everyone is reporting how hard it is to sell a new release. We are, where we are… Some will win, some will lose, and envato controls the outcome. Just to toss in my personal experience as of late - I have not sold a track in 9 days and that has never happened since joining. In fact going 3 or 4 days without a sale used to be shocking. 9 Days with 0 sales is very telling to what is happening.

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i once said envato is like a family for me .i still believe in my company “Envato” please think about everyone its very hard for me to sell .please rethink on everything .thank you.business is left only half

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I still have little hope to they change it to default, so we can live as we do in the past then :slight_smile:

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I am new on TF. Sales 000 :frowning:

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I used WayBackMachine and checked the total items count for Elements from September 2018 until now:

Elements item count:
685 000 2.Sept 2018
712 000 3.Okt 2018
739 000 2.Nov 2018
Audio Added to Elements. Music and Sound effects, big increase in items.
853 000 6.Dec 2018
876 000 2.Jan 2019
909 000 2.Feb 2019
Category pages experiments started, big increase in items uploaded after that.
992 000 2.March 2019
1 033 000 2.April 2019
1 143 000 2.May 2019
1 200 000 4.June 2019

So after the category experiments some months are doubled or even tripled in item numbers added to Elements. In total a 32% increase of the whole Elements catalogue just since the category page experiments. Not bad for a “side effect” is it? Certainly beats the logic of 5% short term increase in conversion at the markets. It seems like the decision makers are actually thinking long term with this experiment, sadly it’s on a competing market.

It’s all a balancing game with an increasing number of Elements customers that needs to somewhat match increasing item/author numbers to maintain steady, controlled and hopefully growing Elements author income overall. It for sure can’t be an easy task balancing this.

And these creative assets do not just fall from the sky, Envato is very dependent of authors feeding Elements new items to make to it more attractive for customers. If Elements authors were so easily replaceable “over night” the catalogue would already be filled up by now, which it is far from. Especially in categories like stock footage. That’s why those very author unfriendly “All items in Elements or none” offers are happening to stock video portfolios for example.

As for why new items sort is still on AJ, I believe the incentive for boosting the Audio section in Elements is not very high because Audio already provide 95% of what the customers need. The music section could actually be 80% smaller and still fill the average customers need because of the very wide use music tracks have compared to other items.

If you look at this in a very cynical way, if it works sorting best sellers to make authors upload more to Elements, why wouldn’t Envato do it? Envato has no problem misleading or manipulating customers, so why would we expect authors to be treated differently? At least this “conspiracy theory” has some logic to it, sorting outdated best sellers does not have that logic.

So it’s quite clear that “new item default sort” won’t return before Envato decides the Elements catalogue is “big enough” or if authors boycotts uploading to Elements until it is restored.

Anyone that wants to finally debunk this conspiracy theory, please do. Nothing would be better then to have this very sad theory demounted.

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Is your plan to ruin most of the mid level authors completed or you still need time to ruin all others and only entertain the top sellers?

Our new items are not getting sales at all, We spent months of hard work, paid salary to staff and now what, Almost no sales.

Do you even know how much a WordPress theme or a good html template cost to a company? and how much we are getting after your recent update in TF category page? I understand our post wont change anything for you but if you just check sales/earning statistics of most of the authors, YOu will see the pain behind that. We are 100% dependent on Envato and please DONT just throw us out.

We are now helpless and in a bad condition with finance so do SOMETHING, YOur kind response is highly appreciated

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https://themeforest.net/search?date=this-week#content this is all anyone needs to look at to see what’s happening on Envato markets.

Only 2 themes released in the last week have any kind of sales, both on intro price sales of $29 and $19 respectively.

New items are dead thanks to these changes @jamesgiroux

Interestingly, even the top seller numbers seem to be going down week after week.

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Still hope that Envato Team will solve this BIG problem. In the past $19 for theme was impossible, now it is normal, and even with $19 not good sales. Sales looks to be low for all authors - elite, not elite. In the past new theme release was a fiesta, big celebration day, because it is really a lot of work to do in a good theme. Now day of new theme release is day X, don’t know what will be with it. Still hope that Envato Team will solve this, and we will be able to get paid for our work as in the old good days.

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You’re wrong! Our team of Astrologers found that the position of the planets in the solar system, the lunar phase, negative brain radiation from Proxima Centauri and summer, all these factors strongly affect sales of new projects.

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The saddest thing is this type of the answer we can expect from Envato. It would not be the first time that the reasons are always something else…

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It seems the Envato team ignored this topic. Only the authors are discussing in this thread and “new items” default sorting will never come back. So sad, I think we should go to other markets to save our jobs.

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