Today we’re launching updated guidelines around how authors in ADP (author-driven pricing) categories and marketplaces can promote their items.
Specifically, we’ve updated the Setting Prices Responsibly guidelines and we’re introducing a whole new set of guidelines around how authors can promote sales and introductory offers on their items.
These new guidelines outline when an item can be promoted, how long an item can be promoted and how often an item can be promoted.
If your item is in a category that has author-driven pricing, please take some time to review these new item promotion guidelines. They take effect immediately and will likely require an adjustment to your current and future marketing plans.
If there are any questions about item promotion, please leave a comment or reach out via our help center. We’ll be actively monitoring this thread for the next seven days.
One question,who’s going to check if there’s any violation of the rules? Have you created a system that could track the discounts e.g for 6 times so you would get a notification or you’re expecting the authors should follow all the items all year long and inform you in case of any violation?
Yup, and for the love of god to expose the part where authors offer 30 days money back guaranty as this is still being used and those are some quite big authors, and 24/7 support, if it has 12h or 24 response time then its not 24/7 isn’t it.
It’s like updating the rules but without checking it. You need to have another team to check all of these issues. Even though, I have reported “violation” of the ADP, the support team doesn’t have enough knowledge or information about the actually rules so I had to send 2-3 emails that trying to explain to the support team that is a violation of the rules
This is cool and all, but when we’ll get a coupon codes system? I want for example to offer 10% discount for people who come from a specific ad/site, this way I can track conversions or maybe offer discount for purchasing another product.
Or maybe have something like, first 100 users who use the code FIRST100 get 20% discount.
Just saying, coupons/discount codes would be nice.
We do have systems in place and as with many other things within the Envato community there are several things at play here:
We expect authors to know and keep updated on the rules and guidelines, and follow them
We set up systems and processes that help us monitor and manage compliance
We rely on our community to help us identify possible issues and report those
The first step in this process is making these new guidelines available to authors and giving them time to understand and implement any changes that might be required (which we’re doing here). Then it becomes a combination of community-driven identification and our author operations team working to identify, inform and correct as necessary.
at the time of launch, you intend for the price to truly be introductory only and you have an honest intention to increase the price after the introductory period.
sorry to be the pain in the bottom but, does this apply to Envato elements?
to be honest I see the mention of “honest intention” so I guess you had honest intention just changed your mind later on
Some items are sale off (or launch at) $29 or $39 original price $69 or $79 but look at those past items of that author, I see no such items at that $69 or $79 price. That is totally false advertisement and cheating!
I saw one author also play cheating with the buyers: Increase the price to $99 and said it is sale off from $129 $149 well it once was only $59 most of the time.
And many case studies I can’t count…authors are gaming the system and unfortunately this leads the market feel very low cheap & mediocre with many cheaters.
I can see the guideline but cannot find any penalties, why they have to obey when they are safe or even encouraged to do that?
“Please note this article only applies to items within select categories on Envato Market that allow Author-Driven Pricing, where pricing is determined at the sole discretion of the author of the item.”
Above message is put on the top of the article.
AFAIK, Envato Elements doesn’t belong to Envato Market, it is not author driven pricing (author has no power to set the price).
Believe me, I will only publish an article after carefully reading it to see if there is anything against me.
@jamesgiroux can you please confirm the legitimacy of authors advertising 30 & 60 day moneyback guarantees, this is now spilling into my presales questions. This isn’t something that authors should be advertising surely?
Great stuff in here. Was just passing by onto the forums and I “accidentally” landed here, otherwise i would’ve probably found out much later about these policy updates. Would be great if authors would be notified by mail too.
