Let’s talk about the Huge Elements Banners on the Homepage

Envato Authors Theme Authors
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We just saw the newest change to the market’s homepages, and we still can’t believe it. They are pushing almost 650 PIXELS the market items just to blatantly advertise Envato Elements.

Speaking frankly, this aggressive Elements advertising has become disgusting and disrespectful for all Market authors. Not only we have this new ad on all homepages, but we still have the banner on top,

Check this screen: 60% of the “above the fold space” is used for advertising Elements you don’t even see a single item of the market

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and to end the joke, when someone chooses the market option with the “continue browsing themes” button, it redirects you to the main category page which ALSO HAS AN ELEMENTS ADVERTISEMENT so those new boxes doesn’t even matter because Envato keeps trying to push Elements, even after the buyer chose to stay on the market

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situated almost on top, when If someone wants to quickly see the newest items, they have to scroll all the way to the bottom!

Even when a buyer searches for something, at the bottom of the results, you can find 2 MORE ADS.

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As a team that relies on Envato to make a living for themselves and their families it makes us really sad and frightened because Envato is toying with our future. This just reeks of cash grabbing desperation at the expense of hard working authors who redirect their customers to the market.

There hasn’t been a single positive change for Market authors in years, instead of revamping the homepage to help market items, all efforts are going into pushing Elements. Is this the “homepage refresh” @collis was talking about in the Envato Annual Public Impact Statement? 2019 Envato Annual Public Impact Statement

Sorry if we seem a bit blunt but when companies make this kind of changes, showing a total lack of disregard for their the authors and risking their livelihood it makes us wanna speak up.

Authors of Envato Market, what do you think of this new change? We’re @ some of you to see what you think. @fuelthemes @WPExplorer @tommusrhodus @MVPThemes @enabled @getbowtied @anps @ProgressionStudios

We are also @ some Envato staff to see if we can get a response to this @steve_lam @jamesgiroux @trent-aus @collis @BenLeong @KingDog do you think is fair with Market Authors to have such an aggresive ad campaign?

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As an Author:
I do consider this to be an aggressive marketing tactic. I saw the banner … my forehead still hurts from the face palm. I’ll keep my eyes on my traffic and how sales are affected. My main concern, to be honest is the fact that this is unilateral. I don’t see any huge banners on Elements pointing to the marketplaces. If this is here to stay at least make it bilateral. Slap ads on Elements as well.

I perfectly understand why Envato is pushing the subscription system, and can accept the fact that this model is the “norm” nowadays, but I see absolutely no reason why the marketplaces should be zoned out so hard. Push both Subscription and Individual Purchase, both ways! Make everyone half happy! :blush:

As a Moderator:
This thread is sensitive, and will most likely start a heated discussion. Keep it civil guys, keep the feedback relevant, keep the useless vents out of the thread. Heated threads get closed, and the valuable feedback some authors can offer gets lost with the thread. Stay professional and leave your constructive thoughts here.

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I have some serious concerns with the wording in the banner:

Envato Market: High-quality themes with ongoing support – ongoing implies indefinitely, this needs clarifications.

Envato Elements: No mention of lack of support?

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Unfortunately this is very sad and very worrying. It will kill the entire market even though it has been noticed over the past years that sales have decreased greatly. This problem was from this platform called Envato Elements. We are tired and tired in order to get sales, but we download high quality items in a big way, but they do not get sales because the customer has preferred to go to the other fund and this saves him money greatly and destroys us, too, the Envato administration must address that fatal problem that may result in The future is to close all platforms and open the Envato Elements platform. Because this thing might kill sales in this market that has a good reputation around the world!
I am sad and disappointed :rage: :sweat: :pleading_face:

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Well, as buyers find out the hard way, they don’t get any! This drives traffic back to Envato Market. If you need support, you’ll buy the item.

I have a few items on Elements and I do get the occasional email asking for support. Share a link to the Item and my Support forum and that’s that!

The frustrating part, I had a … customer … (Elements Downloader) a few months ago that really had a bad attitude, probably the worst in the past 11 years of being here. “I have a premium subscription, I don’t need to purchase any item or give you any purchase code”… :man_facepalming: I can see this being a problem in the future if these terms aren’t more clearly elaborated.

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Totally agree, I’ve actually had bad reviews on Envato Market after an elements subscriber wanted support, so they purchased the theme, got the support then left a 1 star review. I also had an elements subscriber not do that, but then go on to find my company Facebook, Twitter etc. and give me bad reviews anywhere it was free.

I mention “Envato Elements: No mention of lack of support?” because it’s frustrating that expectations are not set up-front. I honestly think it’s quite misleading how deep you have to go to even find out Elements does not come with support.

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I just released a new theme that is easily the most well-received theme I have created in the 8 years I’ve been on this marketplace as it’s gotten 12 five-star reviews in the first 100 sales over the past 3 weeks. But it’s gotten a fraction of the page views of previously released themes. I’m down to 500 views per day (and only had a high of about 900) when in previous themes, I would get 2,000-3,0000 per day in the first couple weeks.

So yes, the changes Envato has made over the past few years (including this most recent to advertise Elements all over the site) has absolutely demolished new item exposure and sales.

I’ve written about this before, but what they’re doing is incredibly short-sighted given that new items are almost impossible to get rolling without a large capital investment to advertise your item outside of the marketplace. And at that point, what incentive is there to even sell through Envato if you’re the one driving traffic to the page?

I decided to give this last item one last shot at the marketplace and while it’s doing fairly well, if I’m unable to really pick sales up to where I want/need them to be, I’m out. I already won’t be releasing any more themes on the marketplace and if sales dip again, I’ll have no choice but to pull my existing themes and jump ship to a number of other marketplaces that seem to take care of their authors in a way that Envato did at one point.

It really is sad that Envato has destroyed its credibility among the vast majority of authors for a quick cash grab that will ultimately destroy them in a few years when innovation has tanked and they’re left with the same handful of themes that will eventually become stale since the developers will have no incentive to improve them as much with no new competition threatening their sales. The marketplace grew because of the fair competition and ability for new themes to be promoted well. Kill that competition, and the marketplace dies. And Envato will continue to implement more and more desperate changes as overall sales continue to dip instead of just returning to the original formula that got them here of “you do the creative, we do the rest”.

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@Odin_Design @tommusrhodus @Enabled @LockThemes @MVPThemes
Unfortunately this is very sad and very worrying. It will kill the entire market even though it has been noticed over the past years that sales have decreased greatly. This problem was from this platform called Envato Elements. We are tired and tired in order to get sales, but we download high quality items in a big way, but they do not get sales because the customer has preferred to go to the other fund and this saves him money greatly and destroys us, too, the Envato administration must address that fatal problem that may result in The future is to close all platforms and open the Envato Elements platform. Because this thing might kill sales in this market that has a good reputation around the world!
I am sad and disappointed :rage: :sweat: :pleading_face:

This is unreasonable. I only have 9 sales for a week.
The market was destroyed and sales were destroyed with it.
What to do if this pattern continues is to go to other markets take care of their authors.
Or I sell my features for $ 3.

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Years later, I’m still torn on the Elements situation.

As an author, I hate the idea of providing my items to customers for practically nothing. On the other hand, from a business standpoint, it’s brought a TON of new customers to the table, and I’ve been earning more on Elements than I have on Market for more than a year now.

So in essence, because of Elements, I’m actually earning more with Envato than I ever have, and I’ve been authoring here for almost 10 years.

The subscription model appears to be the way of the future. It’s up to us authors to adapt.

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@MotionRevolver
My friend
If you enjoy yourself with Envato Elements and get a lot of profits, we must also enjoy and the management includes all of us as authors to Envato Elements and the closure of Envato Market.

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We experienced something similar with our newest item, with a peak of about 900 views the first day (when, as you said, before it was in the thousands) and the views keep decreasing. Our item is now on the “Top New Files” category, but we’re very worried about what will happen when the month passes and our item no longer qualifies to be in that list.

It’s really sad that it has come to this. Hoping that they turn ship before they realize it’s too late and Elite and Power Elite authors start leaving and taking their customers with them

Hi MotionRevolver, please keep in mind that, even if this works for you, it won’t work for all other authors. We don’t know how much time you spend on each item, but imagine a Wordpress developer that spends 3/5 months on one theme. Do you think that he would want his item to be sold for 1 cent a pop? If Elements is such a great business, why don’t we see the Market top sellers hop on?

The solution here is, like @MVPThemes said, for Envato to go back to what made the Market a great place for authors, not just “improving” things under the hood, but also giving new tools, improving pages and homepages, spotlighting new items, etc

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This is the first time I am writing about elements.

I think we should say ‘bye-bye’ to our magic Envato who changed our lives. All decisions over the past 2 years have been simply suicidal for us.
Unfortunately, Envato will lose many authors who have worked with them for years, at least all my friends and me are trying to find something else to leave the market.

Envato is a good marketplace with good traffic, but they would not be so successful without the hits that the authors created for them.

Thank you.

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The market goes to sink :sweat: :sweat: :sweat: :sweat:

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This is a backdoor move from the front door!
Don’t wanna hear no bullcrap about Envato caring no more, please!

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This is not about hate. What is happening with Envato is unrecognizable… I feel stressed every time I visit the Envato pages or forum, the passion for creating new stuff is gone… this is far from beeing fair for authors who helped get Envato to what it is today, we deserve more respect. I dedicated almost my entire career here and they are lietarally killing our hard work, is despicable.

The banners should not be on our pages or front page, Envato has to find a way to advertise some other way.

I am was unhappy with the banner on all pages, now this is too much… for god sake start thinking of us authors not just profit, this is a dizaster on the long run for both parties.

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Up to a year Envato is dead … or a corpse.
There will be only pseudo designers (downloaders) from pirated sites waiting to make “their” new great work!
This is the most false community that has ever existed. Even in the former communist countries there was no such fake!

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It’s pretty clear that sooner or later providing support will be mandatory for all authors.

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@Rembassio, a moment ago I mentioned to keep the discussion civil. Please note that if we lock this thread, we will be sure to mention which authors lead to our decision to lock it. Discussion regarding your selected “subject” are never a good idea on the forums. Please keep that in mind for future posts.

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Plugins and themes without support have no value, I don’t see this happening.

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Guys, I’m going to post this once:

We hate locking threads on subjects where 100 authors give great feedback, then someone decides to derail the entire thread and go on subjects outside the community terms.

Please read this: Due to previous situations with Elements, ADP, and other strongly debated topics on the forums that were derailed in the most negative way possible that lead to discussions, fights and arguments some with illegal ramifications, we will lock the thread if it derails / goes off course / starts including unprofessional rants or illegal implications

Please provide your awesome feedback, we love it, appreciate it, and I personally send it and tag staff wherever necessary, but also consider flagging posts that don’t bring any value to the thread to avoid locking it. 100 authors can give awesome feedback, and 5 authors can turn a thread over to being locked and forgotten due to unprofessional behavior, attitude and just useless, pointless vents.

Keep yourselves away from breaking the Hard Rules mentioned here - https://forums.envato.com/tos and flag posts that do, and we’ll keep all your threads alive and make sure the feedback you provide gets heard.

I understand, as an author and a moderator the importance of venting and letting out negative feelings toward changes like these, therefore, I’m encouraging everyone who wants threads like these alive to keep their feedback relevant and to flag posts that have the tendency only to rant without any end goal in sight or that blatantly break the Hard Rules of the Community TOS.

Cheers guys! :blush:

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