…I’ve had an idea. It’s not going to win any awards or revolutionise the world… but I think it could be beneficial to both Envato, buyers and authors… and wouldn’t cost Envato any money other than a few person-hours every month. Which is nice!
So… Envato Most Wanted Competitions. We know they’re dead and buried for now. They’ve not been officially retired, but their absence makes it clear they may not make an appearance again any time soon. I assume the whole idea behind them was a disparity between what people are searching for and what Envato have available… both through the search history and current trends in the marketplace.
So the plan would be to get more of these items on-board, to meet the needs of buyers, and to offer a financial incentive of doing so. My suggestion is to do a monthly Most Wanted post in the forums with one, two or three most wanted items for each marketplace. No prize required… the financial reward is cold, hard, filthy cash from people actually buying these items from us that are in high demand. Much like some of the other marketplaces out there that publish a monthly list of things that people are searching for, buying trends, what the marketplace is short of etc.
I know there’s a what we want and what we don;t want page somewhere, but I’ve forgotten where it is, I’d say most authors wouldn’t know where it is off the top of their heads, and I’m pretty sure it’s not updated all that often.
Maybe this has already been considered. Maybe there are reasons it’s not been implemented that I’m not aware of… I just think it’s strange that there’s such a disconnect between the people who are making the stuff and the people who are selling the stuff. I mean, lets say there’s an Envato marketplace called MeatBeach and it’s essentially an online butcher shop…
…if I’m the farmer uploading goats heads, cows hooves and chicken’s eyeballs… I’m going to be getting reasonably poor sales, and I’ll be sat there mumbling to myself thinking “I’m making the freshest and most delicious chicken’s eyeballs in the world, but my sales are terrible. MeatBeach is the worst!” But if the manager down at the MeatBeach emporium was to send out some kind of newsletter saying that “Ok guys, chicken’s eyeballs are great and all, but we’re seeing that most people are looking for chicken breast, joints of pork and beef steaks. And this month we’re seeing an increase on people looking for more specialist, old skool cuts of beef that are becoming more popular of late… like skirt steak, flank and short rib.”
Then people would tone down the eyeballs, move towards the more popular cuts, and dip their toe in the ocean of short ribs. The downside could be that people eliminate thinking for themselves and the site gets inundated with beef steaks… at the expense of new and unique cuts. Maybe nobody would come up with a rack of lamb if the butcher told them all they wanted was beef, pork and mince.
I guess you could delete the previous month’s most wanted, post so people aren’t uploading older stuff that isn’t in demand. Make it clear in such posts that you’re still looking for people to come up with unique and fresh items, but just use it as a means of boosting the numbers on things that you don’t have many of… but that customers are looking for. And I guess you’d have to sell it to those who will be “Before you’d get $5,000 if you won this kind of thing… why should I do it for free?!”. The answer to that would be… there’s a bunch of buyers out there with a combined amount of much more than $5,000 in their pockets, itching to buy something that isn’t yet available. What’s not to like? Or just throw in a mug or two persuade them!
Anyway, just thinking out loud. My main TLDR point is… we’re the suppliers… you’re the shop… so how’s it going? How are the customers… happy? Anything specific they’re asking for… anything we could do to better serve your customer base? ‘When you succeed, we succeed’ works both ways!