The thing is those authors uploading their work on elements are either dumb or don’t have brains at all. They are getting paid just few bucks there and content quality is not that great too. sorry to pick out but these people are mostly from south asian countires like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Srilanka and so on. They are ready to get done $100 worth of work for just $5. This brings the whole markets value down to its knees. When i first started wordpress development i head out to sites like freelancer and upwork but when i saw a budgeting war over there i didn’t bother wasting my time and i choose envato but after 2 years of continuous struggle i am getting a bad feeling of getting any success. I quit studies because i was not into it and started working for the web but i made a wrong decision i guess. And on subscription based platform like ELEMENT, envato can earn more then from authors at other channels like themeforest, audio jungle, codecanyon etc. People like me have heavily invested like thousands of hours on our product and what we are getting in return is just heart breaking.
I think a large part of the reason you may be receiving low # of sales is because the quality of items on Envato has decreased overall. People are now purchasing from sites like CM instead because the quality is higher.
I’m not a seller on Envato, but as a customer I can tell you that I rarely purchase from Envato any more. The ThemeForest Wordpress theme authors sell buggy and slow themes, discontinue support for their older products (even if just a couple years old) as they focus solely on their latest and/or top selling endeavors, fail to respond to support inquiries quickly (if at all), and refuse to address bug reports.
I will never purchase another ThemeForest theme again because of these issues and Envato’s ignoring of these problems. If the problem for theme authors is having to offer too much support for too little of money, then charge more. Simply ignoring customers is not the answer. As a result, I now use OceanWP and Elementor and the products work well, there are very little bugs, and I’m ok paying more for these conveniences. And this is why both companies are making a lot of money, while Envato authors and the company as a whole appears to be hurting. I warned of this years ago, but nothing has changed.
And I rarely purchase my mockups from GraphicRiver because the quality is not very good. Cheesy 3d looking mockups just don’t cut it. Faulty items don’t cut it. Not replying to customer complaints doesn’t cut it. I can purchase much better mockups elsewhere (CreativeMarket and various other sites).
It’s a shame because I use to love Envato market places. It’s no wonder sales are down. When quality of items and service diminishes, it’s not surprising to me that sales have diminished as well. The only fix is to focus more on quality; but I fear it’s probably too late for Envato since they’ve aready destroyed their reputation by allowing poor service and poor quality items to become the norm. I feel the Envato Marketplace is a last ditch effort to increase their sales while their contributors are left in the dust.
And yes I agree with you that Envato’s focus strictly on the Marketplace is probably hurting non contributors, because the cost is low and the messaging is confusing. While I haven’t checked your profile for quality, I won’t comment directly on your items, but if your sales are low, it might be a combination of quality issues, support issues, the Marketplace, and overall lower sales on Envato as a whole. Best of luck.
Elements are not a problem but this banner and advertising are.
This banner at the top is a clear lie for all visitors and we all know that, the themeforest getting bad reputation among all the customers because of that.
Check here for example where this going: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.envato.com
One interesting part found related to this topic:
Not anyone from decision-makers of Envato answered our questions
last month, i got the lowest income on videohive since 2012, crazy! less than $100, it is never happened these year until last month!
same here bro!
You need to thank Elemets for that 
Envato is doing a great job.
I will do my best to create new project and use social tools to save my sales.
Looks like I join this market too late. I have two plugins be approved after hard work by night every week.
It’s so happy when it passes review phase. And now we’re facing with 40% sales campaign with “all of the chosen items” + 16.5$ unlimited downloaded…
The life is so hard, maybe we need works harder to get over it…
does not matter. But the real problem is “16.5$ unlimited download”
That’s just not true. The minimum that any Elements author got paid this month, as long as it wasn’t their first month there, was $274, with the average probably being quite a bit higher than that. That’s definitely more than a ‘few bucks’.
Surely that’s a good thing for people who are against Elements as it means Elements is less of a value proposition versus the marketplace. And it’s a good thing for authors who want to be, or are, on Elements as it makes their good content stand out from the rest.
Even if that were true, it has far less effect on Elements than it does on the marketplace. You can’t set prices on Elements, so no matter their economic situation or how much work somebody is willing to do for $X, an Elements author from India will get the same split of the revenue pool as an author from New York or Melbourne.
And keep in mind that it works the other way as well… you’re willing to get somebody’s $200 worth of work done for $100.
Same here, but at Elance. To get around the bidding war I marketed myself on quality, targeting only the small percentage of clients who were happy to pay for professional work. By the end I was the highest rated Design and Multimedia provider in the UK… but competing purely on price is a slippery slope, so I don’t blame you for avoiding it.
That would depend on the split when it comes to exclusive and non-exclusive authors. I know it;s changed a whole back with the author/buyer fee setup but Envato are paying around 36% to non-exclusive, 50% to new exclusives and up to 70% for successful exclusives who have been around for a while. So they’re breaking even on new exclusives, doing pretty well on successful exclusives who have been around for a while, and losing out o non-exclusives. So although they probably might be earning more, there’s also a possibility they’re earning less.
Work smart not hard. Go through your sales figures and see what has sold and what hasn’t sold… what did they have that your other items didn’t? What items are trending right now… does it show a shift in popular items… styles and technologies? When you come up with an idea, are you checking the market to see if there’s something similar? Will your item be better… if it won’t, is it worth the time invested? Even if it is the same or better… are similar items selling… what makes similar item A have more sales than similar item B. If you’re creating something that has never been seen on the market before… is there something elsewhere you can compare it to? Is there a call for this kind of thing… have people been asking for it on forums etc? If no such item exists, is there a possible reason for that, one that might impact sales.
You may do all that, but just a few points to consider incase you don’t!
And last but not least… if anybody is not uploading the same, or higher, amounts of items this year than the year before, then you’re really not doing yourself any favours. The way this, and most other marketplaces work… it’s not enough to make a load of great items one year, sit back and enjoy all the sales rolling in and then be surprised a few years later when the sales are drying up. Every year you are selling here it will get harder to maintain the same sales figures.
Yes, I don’t doubt that Elements has had a negative effect on average marketplace sales, but Elements is here to stay for the foreseeable future and there’s not much we can do about that. If people don’t want to join, or can’t join Elements then the only real options are to carry on doing what you’ve always been doing… give up… or get into gear and make more high quality content to offset the decline in your sales.
I thought most of them had been answered by other people in this thread. If you want to compile the outstanding ones into a list for me, I’ll see what I can do. Keep in mind that there have been low sales threads on the forums for as long as the forums have existed!
That would be your best bet. You’re really not doing yourself any favours not uploading new content as it’s impossible to maintain sales figures if you’re not. Based on your portfolio it looks like you uploaded 27 items prior to 2015, and then it’s been an average of 3 items a year. And if we focus on AE projects, which I’m assuming have been your main source of sales… less than 1 item per year. You can’t get complacent if you want sales to remain constant or grow.
Thank you Envato 
Just checked your portfolio and your item demos are not really working. I get:
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
You may want to check this.
Something strange is going on with sales, indeed. My plugin is quite popular and usually I get 1-2 sales daily, but this week it’s dead quiet.
Got one more DDOS attack 
Just sad man. Good luck!
To be honest, I used to have an account here back in '13. And wow… how things can change to the worst. It looks like all new items are struggling (talking about CodeCanyon but maybe other markets are affected as well)
Sorry guys… anybody from the old family? What happened here? What did happen to Envato? I think the best selling items are selling normal, and are always in demand but new author with a fresh item? Forget about it. 0 chance.
The problem is Envato CEO is not realizing this truth that whole Envato is going down including us. Authors are now thinking of other marketplaces.