Quite Discouraged And Insulted

Envato Authors Code Authors
1

So I spend nearly two years trying to resolve a situation where I can not seem to get my Payoneer account connected to Envato, then finally I just give up, remove my items from Envato marketplace and then create a new Envato account, then it connects to Payoneer just fine (after Envato spends 2 years blaming Payoneer as the problem).

So I take a WordPress plugin that I created about a year ago…

(an actual WORKING WordPress security plugin that I designed specifically because the ones I purchased from Code Canyon fail miserably or destroy SEO by blocking crawlers and other terrible flaws).

…But of course my own plugin works great, I haven’t had ANY spam since (and its the only plugin I use for that), no hacks, no scam pretend clients, no bots, no proxies, no anything AND my SEO is now working fine.

But of course … the plugin get’s a hard reject from Envato (with no explanation as usual because they don’t actually have one other than the one they didn’t actually want to say…

“I was just too lazy to check it so I moved on to something easy”

within only 30 minutes of being submitted (which is not even enough time to actually install and check the many features within the plugin[over 30]) and I am supposed to believe that these people actually even looked at it. (probably because it would be a huge crime if you actually bought something off of Envato that worked as advertised) - Who wants that, right?

Now I am too discouraged and insulted at this point …whereas I feel that I am completely done with Envato. Here they are judging you when their only job is to sit on their butts doing nothing creative or productive whilst profiting off of your hard work and brag about everything as if they are the ones who created it.

I’ve been doing this for more than 26 years. I have enough plugins and other items to start my own marketplace if I was so inclined to do so.

What I want to know is this…

What incentive do I actually have to keep using this site? this is not a rhetorical question. I am simply seeking some form of encouragement to continue rather than being insulted again.by a bunch of people who haven’t been doing this nearly half as long as I have …and being judged by any of them is akin to having a street bum tell a doctor to get a job.

No Trolls please . It’s a serious question. I’m certainly not insulting the developers who work their butts off here. You would think that at the very least, they could stop being so lazy and just tell us WHY it was rejected. Without that… then I can only conclude that there is no clear reason at all but pure laziness and incompetence. And of course they are too full of themselves to actually give anyone a straight answer. All of their skills and talents consist of a masters degree in ‘Canned Responses 101’ …so yah, this question is for Developers …Envato, don’t bother wearing out your CTRL,C, X, and V keys. I’m not interested in talking to faulty robots. Not that I expected them to show up and answer people anyway… when do we ever see that happen?

2

Out of interest was this an item you had previously had for sale or something you had never uploaded before?

It’s quite difficult to judge individual cases because no one in the forums has seen your item or has the full details of the review, but on a very general level, unfortunately feedback on every (tens of thousands) of submissions simply is not feasible or actually necessarily productive in a big % of cases. The current soft .v. hard process is the best of a difficult situation.

I don’t think anyone would try to suggest that everything is perfect but, while of course as with any organisation of this size there will be examples of things not necessarily working as smoothly as people may like, I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that they are not committed to doing their best to make the marketplace run as best as it can.

Out of genuine interest as you mentioned you are in a fortunate position to have enough items to launch your own marketplace. Is there a reason why you are/would not do that?

3

No, i had not had it for sale previously because, as I mentioned, it took more than two years to get the Payoneer thing resolved and I had only created it a year ago due to other scripts failing at it (scripts I bought from here that seem to be still selling). I have used my script on several of my site and even use a debugger to seek any potential errors or conflicts. Plus I made sure to continue it’s usage for a while to be sure, prior to attempting to sell it on the marketplace.

unfortunately feedback on every (tens of thousands) of submissions simply is not feasible

That’s fine. Then why don’t they just shut down since they have the perfect excuse not to do their job properly? It takes far less time to type out a simple paragraph or even a couple of sentences than it does to check an item so I find this reasoning a bit along the lines of conjecture rather than a speculation or a guess. I’m sure they use the excuse to their advantage as this excuse also defines laziness. They sure had no problem spending nearly two years making excuses about my Payoneer not connecting to my account. I would hate to think they spend much time writing a sentence or two after being so professional about checking the items fully before coming to any conclusions about it.

Out of genuine interest as you mentioned m you are in a fortunate position to have enough items to launch your own marketplace. Is there a reason why you are/would not do that?

It’s a fair question …and one that I expected so it’s my fault for not initially mentioning this… But the reason is because I am a developer, not a marketplace. In order to create my own marketplace it would require a lot of time, effort, and money to “market” it so people actually knew it existed. Simply creating one is the easy part. Does me no good if nobody knows it’s around. So it brings me to two problems…

1 The money involved in doing this properly
2 I am a developer. I have recurring clients that depend on me and I put them first. I won’t have the heart to make excuses and tell them I am too busy to do what I dedicated my profession to in the first place. “The Customer”. Dropping everything to take a chance is not a guarantee that my wife and kids will continue to get fed and have a place to live.

Did you her that Envato? THE CUSTOMER. Memorize that. Go look it up and see what word means to your business.

Honestly, If I had the time and, most importantly, the money, I would definitely be creating my own marketplace. It’s not like I depend on Envato to succeed at my business. They are simply a tool that likes to treat other people like tools. They forget who is doing the REAL work. Think about that. Every penny in their paychecks are from things that YOU created. Who is the real professional entity? Who is the panhandler middleman? They may think they are choosing or rejecting me but the fact is, that decision is ultimately on us “the people creating what they sell”.

4

Per your curiosity about the plugin… I forgot to add the following…
Some screenshots. I won’t add the item though, I am not ready to provide it for free to people. I use this on client sites with full success as well.

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11153×905 325 KB
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21153×905 302 KB
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31153×905 303 KB
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41153×905 290 KB
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51153×905 300 KB
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61153×977 326 KB
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71153×1315 445 KB
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81153×2104 917 KB
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91153×1078 328 KB

5

With respect you, at least in part, answered your own question - there is an astronomical amount of time, resource and investment in just setting a marketplace up let alone maintaining one big enough to cater for users from all over the world and thousands of items, payments etc. This is why people continue to use it.

Again I am not in any way (please be aware that as a MOD I am NOT employed by envato) suggesting that the systems are flawless. I just think that there is a bigger picture to a lot of it.

We wouldn’t be able to comment on your situation as we haven’t seen the plugin etc. but given the quick rejection, could it have been another reason eg missing documentation?

Just for context feedback is not only about the time required. For example, if a reviewer said “typography is poor”, is that really going to make any difference? What % of authors do you think could take that type of feedback and actionably resolve the issue?

Again of course there will be items which may not deserve the hard rejection.and where the author is positioned to fix things but you only need to look through the forums to see that this is probably a vast minority

6

In all honesty I don’t have the experience to judge plugins properly esp from screenshots

The features look useful but it wouldn’t be right for us to try and judge it in any detail.

7

I’m not sure I understand your reasoning by your first sentence. There is a HUGE difference between setting up a marketplace to sell other people’s items and setting up a marketplace where you sell your own items. And as long as Envato is not transparent enough to explain their final decisions, then I find it extremely difficult to believe that there is anything astronomical about what they have to do.

Additionally, there can not be that HUGE of a list of projects for them to review. If there were, then how did I suddenly jump up to the front of the list where my items was checked, reviewed and rejected in less time than most people take to make lunch? I really don’t feel anyone can actually explain that.

Yes, documentation was included. The code is even documented as well. Install instructions are included. And each page, as you can see, is simple and comes with it’s own explanation. It couldn’t be clearer. Even if no documentation was included (although it was), how could this be considered not documented (by just what you see in the screenshots)?

If they simply wrote “typography is poor” and it was something completely different, then …why are you asking me that? That is more a question of “should we fire this reviewer?” If they wrote that but it had nothing to do with why it was rejected, then this would be a whole different topic altogether.

Vast minority or not, that’s just another excuse. It’s no different than saying “Oh they probably made a mistake but oh well” because mistakes happen once in a blue moon as well. from what I see by looking through the forums (and staying on my own topic) is that their inability to write anything at all, is a majority issue… not a minority one.

8

As I sit here, it Kind of makes me wonder. I wonder if any developers actually work for Envato who submits their own items and approve them. Then reject anyone else’s similar projects just so as not to be a competitor.

I wonder if having a publisher on the payroll is a conflict of interest. I am going to ask my lawyer about this just out of curiosity. Seems like a reasonable concern even though I really don’t know if any publishers are actually employed by them. But makes one think.

9

This has been mentioned before but is just another one of the various conspiracy theories that occasionally crop up.

I am certain that some reviewers are also authors (this actually helps better understand the standards and what sells), but they are not people that envato just choose on a whim. They all established and experienced and neither they nor envato would allow their status to cloud their judgement or create a conflict of interest.

10

I’m not certain that this is the case at all and therefore make no claims. Nor is this a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy would involve a group of people and I am merely referring to the intentions of potentially one individual (where even that is impossible to identify or prove) so it was just a hypothetical question at that point. In part, it was also a curiosity. But after giving it some thought and realizing that Envato is not initially based in the US, it’s pointless even inquiring about it. Furthermore, if Envato or it’s employees were guilty of this, not a single one of them would stand up and go “ya, we do that” so denying it is also spoken in vain (especially because I fail to believe that you can read their minds).

Nonetheless, and for the record, I did ask my lawyer about it (without actually mentioning Envato’s name) and it turns out that it would only be illegal if it were proven to be the case or possibly illegal if there was sufficient evidence to suggest it is the case. The idea that it is a “conflict of Interest” would only serve true if the intentions of that employed developer rang true or are made known by him/her but even then, still not illegal unless those intentions were put into action. So it would all come down to simply proving someone did something.

Needless to say, if I ever submit anything to Envato again, it will NOT be something unique and capable of being stolen by another Developer as their own. Sorry Charlie… The trust is just not there anymore.

Especially after reading recent reviews…
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.envato.com

11

It’s totally up to you and you do of course need to be comfortable.

For what it’s worth, having skimmed over the first few of those TP reviews, even without more info, at least some appear to be complete nonsense.

This is my biggest pain point and why I try to offer clarity when it’s needed (which is more often than not taken as be just siding with envato! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: ).

Hopefully you can find a suitable marketplace for your items that proves efficient

12

It’s totally up to you and you do of course need to be comfortable.

Such a response really deserves being marked as the solution. After all, what else can anyone say that rings truer?