Hello, fellow authors of the Envato Ecosystem!
While WavePlayer – the WordPress audio player I developed – is about to turn 1200-license old and a completely rewritten version 3 has just been rolled out, I got in touch with the Author Support in the attempt of understanding the criteria the Quality Team uses to periodically pick the featured items. This post is mostly about CodeCanyon, but I am sure that authors from the other markets will relate to it.
The reply was kind and detailed yet insufficient to understand any valid standard that an author could possibly follow in order to get rewarded with that market milestone.
This is the reply Skyler from the Author Support team offered:
When they choose to feature an item, they’re looking at a whole bunch of different factors. Quality is obviously one factor, but then they look at things like the quality of item support, the authors’ history on the marketplace, have they had an item featured before, and so on.
How can you maximize your chance of being selected? Simply keep creating more and more awesome items. Present and articulate those items well so it’s clear how they work. If you can make something really special, and everyone can see why it’s special, then you’re maximizing your chances for success on the marketplace regardless of whether the item is featured or not.
When assisting my customers, I always go way beyond the obligations of the Envato support requirements. I do so because I do care about my customers’ satisfaction.
Before turning to the Author Support, I myself tried to analyze the featured items, in the attempt of deducing a pattern and, most importantly, trying to understand whether or not my item fits in that pattern. After receiving the reply from the Author Support, the discrepancy with what I was told and what I observed from the market was even stronger.
- quality is obviouly one factor: of course, although quality can be sometimes subjective.
- quality of item support: my plugin has a spotless 5-star rating, with the vast majority of the comments focusing on the quality of the customer support and even the Envato API returns my plugin as the #1 in the whole WordPress Media category when ordering by rating; at the same time, this month one of the featured items had a 2.20-star rating with most of the comments focusing on how appalling the customer support was!
- authors’ history on the marketplace: 6 out of 30 (20%) featured items this month are from authors with just ONE single item in the whole Envato market and fewer sales and fewer reviews
- have they had an item featured before: this point makes no sense to me for several reasons. If having a featured item before gives more chances to have another featured item, those who never had one will have fewer and fewer chances to get one. Furthermore, that doesn’t explain why there are authors with one single object
I swear all this is not for the pure sake of speculation! I am honestly interested in learning how to increase the chances of having an item featured and look at all that information with the only intention of understanding the criteria. For sure it is frustrating or at least demotivating that someone else with a fraction of your selling history or a poorer rating gets that spot instead, especially after pouring countless hours in tirelessly assisting my customers way past the call of duty.
Any input helping me to better understand this whole situation would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Luigi.