Envato Should Let High Selling Or Higher Rated Authors Sell Fringe Or Cliche Items If They Want Or Just Have More Upload Credibility

One of the things that annoys me most about AJ is when an item is rejected when I already know people are interested in it. I’ve had a few items that were initially rejected and I resubmitted exactly the same sound with a slightly different title and a different reviewer had the experience to approve it and now those items have sales.,For example,


Like I know what I’m doing when I upload something that seems a bit strange or that seems cliche, why not just give established authors the benefit of the doubt?

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Although with 0.178 sales a month on the wind one, surely you’ll agree that the decision to approve was borderline… at least when it comes to sales potential?

And for the other one, if we look at revenue… that’s making Envato 10 cents a month. Three dollars total over 30 months.

I’m not dissing your work, and it’s great that they approve stuff on merit rather than sales potential, but sometimes you need to look at it from a business standpoint as well. They can’t approve everything.

According to your reasoning, Envato should gut the sfx category entirely and delete 80-90% of songs because they don’t have 1000+ sales, and yet we know that if Envato did that they would lose tons and tons of revenue and AJ would probably be permanently shut down. It doesn’t seem like you understand that some sales is better than zero sales and it’s the culmination of all sales that matters, the revenue that the CEO reports to their government in Australia doesn’t care where it came from (to the extent that taxes vary depending on its origin).
If 1000 different audio files have 1 sale, on average that’s just as much money as one audio file having 1000 sales. But, it’s bad if there’s only one audio file with 1000 sales because that means customers need more than one audio file for all of their different projects, so you get a measurable phenomena called “diminishing returns.” The same item can only do so much before it inevitably falls off.
So in the long run, AJ would lose revenue if they had 80-90% less audio files. The only considerable point in limiting this is the amount of time customers spend sifting through audio to find what they want and allowing AJ to expand into different categories to satisfy more customers. Envato is afraid firstly that with too many cliche sounds, customers will not be able to find the audio they want to exactly satisfy their varying needs.
At the same time however, they are also afraid that if they try and satisfy too many different consumer segments, they will make it harder for the largest consumer segments to find their desired audio and lose more revenue than they gain. Or alternatively, AJ is also cautious because they feel there is a risk that the money they spend promoting a niche market will be drastically less profitable than improving the platform for their larger consumer segments, like for example video designers seeking ukulele music for positive relief scenes in their ads they design for clients.
Thus, they rejected it the first time because they thought it was too cliche to make any sales and would only waste a customer’s time as they sifted through the already saturated market of wind sounds. But, I said it was particularly high quality and loopable so it would stand out as a unique item and get some sales and I was right. On top of that, a new item and one that people buy at least advertises AJ on the internet and is more likely to create customer loyalty and shows growth.
Additionally, there’s all kinds of niche markets that Envato doesn’t promote but that people are still interested in. Somehow for some weird reason Envato doesn’t have a “Scary” category, but people still buy my scary sfx and other scary audio on AJ. When you capture a niche market, that’s something that draws people to that site, that’s something that makes people say “OMG I couldn’t find this audio anywhere else, I love AJ!” and I’m the same way when I look through graphics templates on graphic river, and that’s why established authors should be allowed get fringe items approved.
Now I know AJ has gotten better about that because they run into problems with market saturation, increase in the demand for higher quality and they want to compete with Pond5 more, but occasionally I’m reminded that AJ doesn’t have any regard for what authors think or that they might be submitting an item because they know what they’re doing.
So I would say that because no single reviewer can represent every demographic, reviewers should defer to the judgement of established authors in the case of fringe/cliche items, and I’m not the only one either, I’ve seen complaints on the forums in the past specifically about this where some author with a bunch of sales complains that an item they know someone wants to buy ends up being rejected because it’s uncommon or cliche. And those are just the authors who take the time to come out and complain about it. A reviewer who use to be a DJ might personally say “I wouldn’t buy this item because I don’t know what it’s used for, so I’ll reject it,” but a videographer or CGI effects specialist as someone creating a sci fi or fantasy movie/game would easily say “oh this is exactly what I’m looking for, I’ll buy it.”

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