Envato will reduce fees?

Envato Authors Author Hangout
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Title of this topic is more like expectation than a question. So, let me start from the beginning. I am co-founder of Pixel Industry Ltd. from Croatia. My team and I are working here on Themeforest for the past 4 years. Till some time now, ThemeForest is main finance flow for our company. With recent changes that you, Envato brought we are unable to predict our finances and our business future. Besides that there is a lot more responsibility on us, which takes more time than before. Here is what I mean:

Mandatory support - we need it or there will be significant decrease in sales
We have our support member. For support, we get 30% of item price for six months. The amount we get is not even close to hourly rate for our team member. So the long story short, we loose here, quite a lot. But ok, that is not that big issue, let us move forward.

Support Forum
As Envato did not provide us a ticketing system or some kind of support forum, we had to make our own. We pay the hosting, maintenance of that forum, we develop plugins for checking if user has licence, if his support has expired, etc.

Pricing definition
I personally like this new practice, but it takes us more time to plan our business and finance flow. Secondly, for HTML category we had to increase our item price to get the same amount which we had before this new policy. The main thing is, whole planning, research and s on is on us now, it is our responsibility. So more time on business and finance planning and less time on actual design and development.

Refund process
Envato is shifting responsibility of refund to us. Ok, no problem. This means more time on handling buyers and refund requests. So one more responsibility less for Envato and one more for us.

US Taxes
We live in a country that did not signed agreement with US and we have to pay additionally 30% for US taxes from our earnings. Again Envato shifted this on us. One more responsibility is on us and we loose here yet another 30% (this is the case for our country).

Review times
Standard review time was like a week. Now it is 60 days. We only get an answer that you are thankful for our patience. We are not patient, we are a company with fixed expenses and we can not tell our employees that they will not get paid, because Envato can not handle something they should and we are thankful for that. We are a company and need faster review times. You maybe did not think you will become such a large community and have so much items to review, but sorry that is not our problem. We came here because of all the things you offered in your agreement, and one of it was review times. You changed the rules.

What has changed in this 4 years?
Not sure if I missed anything from whole range of changes that happened recently (because there is so much of them). When we came here, we were paying this platform 50% - 30% of our earnings for following benefits: handling taxes, pricing definition, fast review times, support features (never implemented), no mandatory support, handling refunds and of course exposure. Today the situation is quite different. Only thing that we now have is exposure, or do we? Exposure is a lot far from it was before, but I will not get into this as I could wrote three more pages.

So the question is: In which time can we expect Envato will reduce fees and to which percentage? Staff reply is appreciated.

Kind regards,
Andrijana

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Thanks for creating this thread. We are exactly in the same situation. I feel your pain. :frowning:

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I’ve been here for 6 years and I’ve been lurking for a while, and quite frankly, I’m surprised anyone does this as a full time business. Your net hourly wage must be far, far below minimum world in most countries around the world. Your post is very well worded and is why the consumer is getting an absolutely bargain with templates, code, graphics etc. The authors are the ones losing out big time.

So as a customer thanks for selling your items dirt cheap but as authors, you should really consider your relationship with Envato and whether it will continue to be a worth while venture. If not, make your money elsewhere. Simple as that.

(It’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the cold hard truth. If you need money you need a solid plan that you know will generate ‘x’ amount each month, which you clearly do not have).

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Till now it was pretty good. We have pretty solid sales, but we are looking what will happen in a few months/a year. Of course we also work outside of Envato and our hourly rate (for clients) is pretty different from what we achieve here. But it makes us a bit sad that we should let all this effort go away (which we put in creating themes), simply because someone (Envato) is not handling their job as they should. If the situation don’t turn out in our (authors) favor, of course we will put a minimum effort in creating themes and focus more on custom work for clients, and probably in one moment abandon this marketplace. But the thing is we are not the only ones who think this way, there are more Elite authors like we are, who will also start thinking like this, or already are. Envato got here where it is thanks to us, their authors. And it’s sad that they don’t see it. We are just trying to raise our voice to see what happens. Just an honest and simple question from one business to another to see if we can all achieve something that works for both sides.

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I find it funny that somebody flaged my comment that is public information you find with a google search…

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@Compot interesting…

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Since elite authors are already at 70%, I would say in the end there is not much to reduce anyway. Even if they gave authors 80% for example, there wouldnt be much of a difference in earnings, I think less than you loose on unfortunate usa 30% treaty tax.

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I sign under this post! It is time to recalculate things… Who knows maybe when Envato sheds some light on situations and we will find ourselves wrong :stuck_out_tongue:

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Sadly we already opened a topic like this, but like with most criticisms it fell on Envato’s deaf ears.

And we don’t say this just because the sake of criticism, for example, we have been waiting for them to fix a bug in the UI Designs section for 6 MONTHS and we still don’t have a solution.

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Unfortunately,
The situation is pretty clear to me. As long as they are not hurt, they don’t care. We’ll have to see if we will receive - NOT answer - BUT solution to the problem, and if that’s not happening to decide whether we have any dignity and if it’s worth it working on Envato projects in the foreseeable future. If not, leave it forever. Once Envato loses 50% of their major authors, they’ll realise, that without us, they are nothing!

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simply because someone (Envato) is not handling their job as they should.

Envatos Job is to make money, their strategy is to use the platform they have created and allow authors to submit items for sale, if Envato were not making money, or if their criteria is not being met then they would consider their options, and they clearly think these changes will benefit them.

Their job is to ensure their platform they are offering remains fully legal and that their platform is viable - one day, this place may die entirely, companies can go out of business at any time, more fool you if you are putting all your eggs in one basket. Envato owes you nothing. Same with the Apple app store, Google Play, Steam and so on, if they are legal, and they are operational then the owners may consider that a success…

Dislike it? Simply don’t bother creating items and find something else to do…Sure you may be unhappy but as long as they remain in business then why should they care?

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Cause when we leave, they die.

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Actually, no. the issue is that no other market comes close to generating this amount of income on this kind of sales model. And Envato is well aware of that.

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Yes, but there are marketplaces offering better payouts. With the time a lot of authors might go there, and if most of Envato’s authors goes there, what happens?!? Things change… bad for Envato. This is business man, they should realise that Authors are their resources, their oxygen. Without us, they are a nothing.

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Yes but you need quite a big reserve of money to migrate everything since Envato exclusivity agreement prohibits us to sell elsewhere :slight_smile:

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Just delete your items and transfer them elsewhere. Easy as that. Imagine 50% of all major authors deleting their files and transferring them to another Marketplace. Would then Envato consider giving a proper solution to the problem, when they lose millions of dollars of net annual revenue?!? I’m sure they will, but it’ll be too late.

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Yep, imagine :smile: . In reality you know that’s not gonna happen. It’s almost impossible at this moment. The only and absolutely only way Envato Market will lose authors is if the traffic (and sales obviously) will drop. The chart is increasing so, not gonna happen.

If we’re imagining things, let’s take CreativeMarket for example. Basically it’s the same 70%-30% split. How many authors left and remained there? Barely a few, and it’s clearly why.

Sure, i wouldn’t mind if Envato would drop fees, but i highly doubt that’s going to happen mostly due to its increasing demand. If there was an authors crisis i would anticipate that, but i don’t.

Don’t want to ruin any hopes but it’s best to stay on the ground and be realistic.

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Totally agree. But Envato should do something on item reviews, months of review time is not suitable for a professional marketplace.

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As i already mentioned, removing exclusivity would be a very fair move.

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They deleted my comment too when I was asking if you were referring to a specific case or not.
Welcome to democracy! :slight_smile: