End of year AudioJungle and VideoHive marketing campaign.

Hopefully not…

I’d actually like control over my own prices. I’d fear for a race to the bottom but I’m sure there are some tweaks that can be made to prevent that.

I think it really depends on what the campaign is, what items are included and who the target audience is.

I think if you ran a Cyber-Monday-all-of-market sale every month you’d rapidly run into a situation where a sale means nothing. However, the plan is to run campaigns that are more targeted and specific- giving exposure to different categories and more oxygen to different authors.

Important to note, we’re not forcing anyone to take part. It’s up to an author to decide whether or not they want to participate.

This is what I fear indeed. And it would equate to price dumping.

I hear what you’re saying about the campaigns being specific and targeted. If you manage to keep them specific every time, then why not.

But in my opinion, resorting to slashing prices to highlight a specific niche or category, is a sign of weakness. Don’t you realize how good Audiojungle’s content is? There is no need to undermine its value. Surely, there must be some more creative ways to push this content…


Thing is Matthew, these sales will affect those who choose to partake as well as those who won’t. You know this and we authors know it.

Well if choosing not to partake has a negative effect on sales, and choosing to partake has a positive effect on sales… surely the choice whether to partake or not is an easy one?

Isn’t it more a sign of attempting to highlight a specific niche, and bring in new potential buyers to the marketplace? If it was a sign of weakness then they’d just drop the price on everything, cut commissions, go for buy one get one free, free Tuts subscription with any purchase etc. Sales are sales, everyone has them whether they’re desperate for more sales, or pretty happy with their sales.

It’s interesting that this marketing campaign is presented to be made for “non-ADP marketplaces”. I can’t help getting the feeling that AJ (and VH) are in the spotlight for the next potential ADP introduction… maybe this is a way to find out more about buyer behaviour when it comes to price? In any case, let it just be clear to anyone that might have missed it, that AJ prices already are so low that slashing them in half isn’t really going to double the sales. The typical AJ buyer is not going to “stock up” on music that wasn’t on the shopping list in the first place. A boil-down of the majority of buyers’ mindset is this: “I’m looking for something like bla bla bla… OK this will do”. Hence, EXPOSURE, RELEVANCE and QUALITY is what drives AJ sales on the regular pages and in the search - and campaigns and features are just “hand-made versions” of this.

Price is important, and the reason many come here, but slashing prices from “low” to “extra low” on this marketplace will most likely only result in slashing revenue, for the reason stated above. While having a track in this and similar collections may get me and my fellow authors a few extra views, IMO a much more efficient way of selective exposure (for a larger number of items than would fit in the Featured Items row) would be to have these featured items ranked higher up in the search result listings. That’s where the real money is.

I can understand why the original Featured Items and the Popular Files page are concepts left “untouched” for several years. Many people see these, go there on a regular basis and they buy a lot this way. When the presumed number crunchers at Envato (hi, are you on the forums much?) run the monthly stats they are surely seeing that these areas are “generating” lots of conversions, so it doesn’t make much sense from a pure conversion perspective to change anything about them. Instead, the focus shifts to other areas and ventures that seem more like “hidden opportunities”, or “uncharted territory”. I feel a need to share my viewpoints on this, as I’m not so sure that running a series of price-slashing campaigns is the way to go.

At this point, there is an unprecedented exposure gap (or canyon) between the 50-60 Featured Items / Popular Files and the other 250K+ tracks that fight it out in Search. The ratio between “exposed” and “not so exposed” is of course growing with the number of approvals. The gap is unprecedented also in terms of sales - top authors make more now than ever.

Since a Featured Item have potential to break into Popular Files, “generating” more sales, and more sales inevitably means being pushed up in search, these items become Mammoth Items (if they are older than a year I call them Dinosaur Items :wink: ). To make things worse, the current search engine has a list of some popular keywords that will be sorted almost only by sales - we now see almost all top selling authors RENAMING their top selling items to a cluster of popular keywords from this list. Yes, you guessed it, now they are also sitting at the top of the MOST POPULAR SEARCHES as well. This is where I get really concerned. Search - wasn’t that the place the OTHER 250K+ tracks would have a go? Now these Mammoths are basically everywhere. Sure, it’s great music and these items “deserved” to get ahead - but the compound effect of all this extra exposure is that they suck up a disproportionate amount of sales from the rest of the marketplace. The gap only widens.

Closing (or narrowing) this gap should ideally be the #1 priority - not squeezing out a few extra sales by means of “pushing” other content. Granted, it’s more than likely in a company with more than just a few employees that the people working with these “marketing activities” (which are nice by the way, don’t get me wrong) are not the same people deciding on how to restructure the web pages and the search, however these are not things anyone should be ignorant about. It is the future of AJ that rests on these parameters. The goal is, I think we already agree, to showcase popular music and at the same time make it worthwhile for authors to submit new music. The goal is NOT to create a lottery with less than a 50/250,000 chance to win - IF you happen to have a killer track, that is.

A certain level of luck and timing will always play its part, and I do believe the Popular Files serves as a motivator for many authors, but the numbers are just running away as of now. 55 tracks with a median of 38 sales per week, I guess that roughly equals 2,000 sales for the items on that page, many of which sit there for months. I don’t consider myself an unfortunate author (I finally reached the AJ Top 50 recently), but I can tell you that after 3 years and 500 items I’ve still never had an item with more than 20 sales in a week. I think that goes for 99% of all AJ authors as well. Given that it’s so hard to get in there, and so good to be there, I really think a larger number of authors should be given an actual chance to succeed.

So, the underlying problem is that the Popular Files page is too “sticky” - and this is mainly because Search compounds exposure for featured items - pushing all other items down (especially new ones). It’s like a feedback loop, and the effect it has is out of proportion.

As for the campaign, I think we quickly need to come to terms with the fact that neither marketing campaigns nor lower prices will not in any way change this systematic dominance of the [ popular <=> search ] feedback loop. Some sort of brake must be pulled when an item takes off. It could be as easy as limiting the maximum number of weeks an item can stay on the Popular FIles page - or similarly, how many weeks an item can stay on top of a popular keyword in search.

Many people in these forums constantly complain about their sales, how they are pushed down in search, and how they never break into Popular. Guys, this is the #1 reason. Market saturation and mass approvals is another thing, and yes that makes it difficult for everyone, but you shouldn’t think that the influx of MORE files needs to lead to LESS variety in the Popular Files page.

Envato probably and justifiably wants to give the most exposure to the items with the best conversion rate. That’s fine. Top authors systematically gaming the search engine to get top exposure for their already top selling items, (I’m not blaming them for doing so - they do it because they can), that’s a bit “over the top” :wink: .

It just doesn’t feel right to me. It makes me feel less motivated to compete. I don’t like the Popular Files page very much. Just looking at it makes me sad. That’s why I write all these long posts instead of making new music :confused:

The PF items actually need not be sorted by sales. Instead they could be just random. More even distribution of sales -> less likelihood of a few items completely jamming the system. The buyers won’t care much. They’re not coming here to find out which track is #23 and which is #24.

Anyway, probably time-limiting exposure on the PF is the way to go. Remember, these items already have had high sales from somewhere else (they needed that to get there, right) so they already clog up the search pages big time. They will continue to sell, no worries, just not in a crazy smoking feedback loop.

Also, divide the PF into categories already. It’s due :wink:

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Thanks for that, sincerely. :thumbsup:

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Sadly yes, that’s what I’m praying on the forums for quite a while. In the long run it will familiarize customers to lower prizes. Take a look at Envato Studio, it’s a mess.

You’ve made 2 within a period of 3 months. You’re giving out free files every month. On top of that you’re preparing ADP for the whole marketplace without a working mechanism that will prevent a race to the bottom.

Envato needs to stop devalueing the work of their Authors and start to invest in them: Make TV-spots advertise on youtube, repair the fricking top authors clone search enginge. If you hit “Audiojungle” into Youtube you’ll get russian youtubers for 90% of the results. I know a handful of sucessful youtubers around the globe who don’t even know Audiojungle exists.

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Why would somebody search for AudioJungle on Youtube?

Who is one of the biggest customer base on Audiojungle?
Why are Authors uploading their watermarked music to their channels?
Why is there an Envato channel on Youtube?

There are many youtubers talking about products giving recommendations (many of them get payed by doing this, but that’s a story for another thread). I don’t say that customers are looking for Audiojungle tracks on Youtube, but it gives you an overview of what Audiojungle is about and how popular it is.

If I had no idea what AudioJungle was, then I wouldn’t be searching for it. If I did have a good idea of what AudioJungle was, then I’d just go to AudioJungle if I needed anything, I wouldn’t be searching for it on Youtube.

And if I had heard of AudioJungle, but didn’t quite know what it was, then I’d Google it… with https://audiojungle.net/ coming out on top.

There’s certain things you just don’t really search for on Youtube.

Aren’t you a moderator? Why are you trolling?

I already explained you that customers don’t threat Youtube as a search engine just like google. Total nonsense to claim that. I’m talking about a representative cross section here, which makes perfect sense. Again, as you might not have get it by now: Not as a search engine, but as a market survey.

I’m not trolling, I’m pointing out that nobody (or virtually nobody) is going to search for “AudioJungle” on Youtube, in reference to you saying “If you hit “Audiojungle” into Youtube you’ll get russian youtubers for 90% of the results.”

The thing is that you’re saying that Envato should invest more in marketing AudioJungle, both on Youtube and in other ways. My question to you would be… how much time, effort and money are they currently spending on marketing AudioJungle; and how much time, effort and money do you feel they should be spending on marketing Audiojungle.

I fail to understand your binary logic. In any case, sales don’t mean much to authors, revenue does. The impact on revenue will affect everyone.

There are plenty of ways to highlight specific niches and bring in new buyers, this is the job of the marketing department. If all they can come up with is slashing price, then yes, it is a sign of weakness.

Originally sales were clearance sales so that sellers could get rid of all unsold items of the season. The more item you had in a sale, the less success you had during the season. Though it’s not true anymore and sales are just a marketing gimmick, there is still this vague idea in the back of the buyers’ minds that associate sales with cheap.

In any case, it shouldn’t be paid for with my earnings! I already pay a hefty author fee for that.

Shhhhh! Don’t give them new ideas!!!

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Nope. You either can’t see the context or I indeed am not able to explain it simple and clearly so you can get it. Otherwise I have to assume you’re trolling. Last try:

If someone is looking for royalty free music and wants to decide which library suits him best he tries to campare them. In fact many people do. What’s the best recource for comparisons? Youtube. So he hits “Royalty free music comparison” into YT. Someone else already heard from Envato/Audiojungle, so he hits “Audiojungle” into Youtube to get an overview and more information, maybe he adds “camparison” to it.

I did this, and Youtube presented me 3 Royalty Free comparison with one more than 1.000 views, 2 with more than 20.000 views, all of them not older than 2 years: Only one of them was featuring Audiojungle.

Let me be clear here: This wasn’t an attempt to degrade Russian people (I have some very good friends who are russians), I just wanted to to show the discrepancy between the results and the fact that Envato sells digital goods globally. And yes, I’m aware that Audiojungle might be very popular in Russia.

Obviously not enough if they have to make promotions where they take quality items and reduce their prizes by 50%. Envato missed the opportunity to build up Audiojungle as the leader in RF. People shouldn’t search for comparisons but head straight to Audiojungle. That’s something you can achieve by advertising, not by discounts.

Hey @stockwaves,

Just want you to know- I don’t agree with everything your’ve written, but I do agree with a lot of it. Exposure mechanisms in the face of a growing marketplace is a big challenge facing authors and is front of mind for many of us at Envato.

Campaigns are not a solution to that problem. Nor are they trying to be a bandaid fix. They are a separate piece altogether. The objective of a campaign is to create new transactions on market that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and to that objective they are very effective.

Relying on campaigns exclusively as a means of fixing the exposure problem would be like using a piece of two-by-four to conduct brain surgery: It’s highly likely to change your mind, but it’s a blunt instrument for that job.

Exposure to distinct authors is a by-product of a campaign- and to be clear- it’s a really awesome by-product, but it is not the main objective.

This is not to diminish any of your points- they are good ones and incredibly valid. I simply mean to sat that generating better mechanisms for exposure is one body of work, whilst generating additional transactions is another.

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Sure, I wasn’t lashing out against “additional transactions”, we could all use some :thumbsup:

Seems we’re on the same page (literally), I just wanted to relay my perspective.

A good starting point :slight_smile:

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Sir, if the music business falls apart you can always make a living by writing :slight_smile: I love your posts and this one is no exception. Couldn’t be better said.

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Sorry! But I do not quite understand what you mean.