Envato Birthday Marketing Campaign (ThemeForest Nominations)

Hey @unvab and @WPExplorer.

Good catch. The price change with the7 was an administrative error with the price change tool. There were a couple of bugs with a few items. We’ve since fixed.

The7 file was a last minute nomination from the DreamTheme team. Originally it wasn’t going to be included, but we went with it because there were a few files that we had chosen that we needed to remove.

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If you will sort it by a price then you’ll find a lot of others items need to be fixed too.

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Yes those are the brains we refer to … ADP is terrible. You just proved it with comments about the item you referred to.

Authors who do that, are not using their brain. That is what we are referring to. All the while Envato isn’t bothered by any of it due to their fixed pricing on WP items.

Shame.

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Yea well if all the big guys would participate more in the forums/community voicing their opinions maybe things would change, but you guys voiced it when you saw they crept its way into top 5 with the price change and it ticked you off.

And you guys also complain and participate in Envato hostings which is another way to price dump everything especially as it’s being presented as each demo its own theme.
But that aside I to hate ADP, and was extremely loud from the day 1. And well it is not longer considered as a long term business at least Envato doesn’t seem to think that way anymore, considering all the choices they made.

And about the campaign, its horrible no effect at all. And why? Well just look at the landing page, elements is upfront, and the first 24 our it was all about elements.

Just check how confusing is everything, and what do you need to get to a certain product. This campaign looks like it was given to an intern to put together until lunch time which he messed up with prices and the mail sent by the way. I mean to set up a landing page and then link to collections… lol

In ADP we had 1 experiment with the pricings for 30% off which lasted 7 days and were in 2 campaigns which had I guess 0 impacts.

It’s still some days before the campaign ends but I doubt anything will jump up. We already communicated on our mailing list and other channels otherwise we would stop the campaign right away.

The cyber Monday campaign was pretty straight forward and brought much more.
Now I know there are much more items here but to have such a little effect well…

extremely disappointed on the execution of it all.

Cheers

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+1 Couldn’t agree more, well said.

For those who may have missed it: Burning questions, Q & A

Yea missed that, sadly it seems it’s one big no to your questions which were great. The problem with forums posts are it takes much too long to get through anything and if one doesn’t want to comment on something well they just ignore you. But I upload James for taking the time and put that all together, even those are not the answers we were hoping for.

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There is one good point: the overal demand for WordPress themes is flat but the number of new authors/products has been increasing; therefore, per product/author income has been descreasing. And the trend is steady.

Envato knew that a couple of years ago; therefore, absolutely ALL their latest initiatives (ADP with fixed comissions, Envato Hosted, Envato Elements, etc.) have been implemented to keep the current level of revenues.

From a business point of view, this is logical. And cancelling any of these initiatives (like ADP) would be completely illogical (and harmful for Envato). Someone has to pay for making Envato survive. And the people are Envato authors.

Let’s be honest: there are too many authors with too many products here. 100 authors with 500-1,000 WordPress themes is more than enough…

Thanks so much for the reply! We were just thinking of discounting some of our niche themes this week and thought it couldn’t hurt to ask if you were taking additional submissions :slight_smile:

They probably knew that 10 years ago, or longer. It’s been happening since the beginning, here and on every other site that sells digital items… and also pretty much every place that sells non-digital products to an extent.

Someone decided to do something that ends up making them some money, other people see that this person is making money doing this thing, they decide to do it as well… original person makes less money because of the new person. New person doesn’t make as much as the original person as the amount of customers won’t double when the offering doubles. Sales gradually get diluted over time as more and more people enter the market.

And it will become more apparent as time goes on. Upload ten items in year one, it’s easy to double your portfolio in year two by just uploading another ten items. Want to double in the third year? You need to upload twenty items. The fourth year? Forty items. So while you’ll see large gains early on as your portfolio increases, it will become harder and harder for your growth to match the growth in your previous sales. Your graph (in a lot of cases) will go up rapidly, start to slow, level out, and then gradually start to drop.

Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done about that.

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If you only knew how much we voice our opinions to people at Envato, the people who make these rules you’d be shocked. We met before ADP was even released and many others.

We have been against all of it claiming that this exact thing would happen, and it has. But truly, what does this matter to Envato? That is the question that needs asked.

Many top authors have voiced their opinions in these forums time and time again … it makes no difference. We’ve spent far too much of our time doing this, specifically to contacts at Envato.

Nothing changes that makes sense. Why would Envato make changes, when they only see their profits going up?

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In regards to hosting, that is also a sham now. Please don’t make judgement on “top authors” when you do not know the full story. Unless I am misunderstanding you, that is what it feels like you are doing.

When we were approached to join this, it was all about the theme itself + hosting. And was going to be open to anyone who wants to join it. A aimlessly “Buy Theme” or “Buy Theme + Hosting” option on item pages, the author still gets the item sales and it opens it up to additional buyers who want the option of no hassle hosting.

First it was just a normal page with theme preview images like this: http://d.pr/i/AL1IeP

Then, sometime in April it changed over to a hybrid with the new hosted site, yet still showed the theme itself: http://d.pr/i/YqUuAo

As you can see, both of those screenshots show you it is all about the theme still, not designs. Now, it’s all about designs and not the theme… this was not part of any original discussion nor told to us about it. Envato has made this change, and it is now all about the “design” and has absolutely nothing to do with the theme. The theme
s capabilities, ratings, reviews, history, features, author, etc have absolutely nothing to do with it anymore.

We currently have an on going conversation with Envato about this also.

Don’t presume to know what is going on with top authors, the ones I know are on your side and we do all that we can to battle decisions like that that overall hurt the community of authors who helped build this place into what it is today, or at least was the other day. What we do realize, is that Envato looks at the forum as a place for people to voice their opinions and chat, not a place for change.

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Not sure what happened there… it was definitely nominated by the author.

Yes our thoughts also, my only guess is they calculated how much money they are going to lose through bulk sales (hint hint ADP!) … and want to back out.

But hey, that’s an assumption as well :slight_smile:

It seems that they are really surprised…

BUT:

The 7 Theme got 115 sales in last 6 hrs.

Let’s get something clear if we ignore the difference in income we are on the same ship here. I do know that you go talk to Envato as do I, but voicing your opinion directly to them has no effect what so ever. However voicing on forums can have a bigger effect since it rallies people behind you and also if they see that the big kahunas are also experiencing the same frustrations then other small authors can relate and see that their concerns are not just there.

Now don’t get me wrong talking directly to them is great, but that is their goal not to disturb everybody else. You guys (top 10) represent like 5 to 10% of the entire TF income if I am not wrong. Now that’s a big deal which Envato cannot ignore, however they can do that separately, if you are up for sayings how about divide and conquer or in this case even better one for evil to succeed all it needs is good men to do nothing (not that Envato is Evil… @jamesgiroux don’t go all Rambo on me :stuck_out_tongue: )?

Now regarding the hosting itself, it’s not about the theme it’s about the price and direct competition with other authors. And for example, when this shifts started to happen why then you did not, for example, share your experience? There are quite a few threads and questions regarding hosting.

I have been following you guys from day 1 and when ADP hit I knew we all are in trouble and you were the first that will eventually feel the blow.

You cannot even imagine how your posts can influence the community, and when you chat with them directly as I said nobody knows and Envato doesn’t care.

Keep in mind that that before ADP Avada was the compass for sales. But well we all know that Envato knows that you do not have a better option, hence they don’t care. And when something gives a little shake as X did then the new policy gets implemented.

And just do check the bigger discussions in quite a few of them you will see spacestock saying that this just a few authors complaining and does not mean it is the same for all, but your voice is something totally different and would resonate much muuuuch further especially if it was voiced more and now imagine other big players joining in.

Always ready for a skype discussion :stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers

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Hello @matthewcoxy,
Miroslav here from @Dream-Theme.
We have never received a proper notification that The7 would be included into the sale.
Today I was shocked to see that the theme price was reduced to $19. At first I thought my account was hacked, but then I realised that it went on sale as part of Envato Birthday Sale.
If you’ve given us a heads-up - we would prepare the marketing campaign. Now I don’t even have a designer at my disposal (she’s on vacation) to make damn banners. Not to say about the proper team of marketing specialists. Now we just suffer losses earning $7 per sale. And those people are buying extended support packs as well…
Therefore I kindly ask to withdraw The7 from the sale and return its normal $39 price ASAP. I have also submitted a ticket #892452 and sent twitter messages about 6 hours ago…

That’s your decision, and you have every right to not want your item included, but surely…

…would have been the same if you’d been informed and had prepared your marketing campaign, or if you hadn’t.

First of all, I have misread “The included buyer fee will not change” as “not charge”. Sounded too good to miss the opportunity.
Do I feel completely utterly stupid? - Yes. But I’m not afraid to admit it.

Second, don’t underestimate the power of the dark side #1 spot in Top Sellers List.
Jokes aside, I think that if a right product will make there, it may potentially turn the tables. But not The7. At least not this time.