I have analyzed the market sales from 2018 to 2023 and saw the number of sales is drastically decreasing! You can see the items sold number in the footer of the Market like Themeforest. Also you can check and compare the sales from older years using archive.org.
Yes, we noticed this too, I was actually checking the wayback machine to understand what is happening. Here is a quick analysis:
Elements attract more users
Users are leaving due to poor item quality, and security issues
Competitors are doing some marketing and building better products
Low prices and “always on sale” attract more users from poor countries, buyers are getting used to low prices
Because of lower incomes developers from rich countries are leaving the market
#4 & #5 affecting the #2 (low item quality and security issues)
Since some items are priced at $13 which yields $1 minus taxes for an author you can’t maintain and provide support for a WordPress product for $1. Those items most likely will get abandoned in the future leaving a buyer with a bad experience and eventually leaving the market to find a better service.
Low-priced items attract fewer affiliates since they earn less from those, affiliates are leaving the market
Envato aggressively promotes low-priced items. The priority is best sellers → discounted items → elements → new releases.
Here is also the comparison of the estimated traffic. As you can see ThemeForest traffic is always in decline whilst the Elements is pretty stable and increasing. Only the last two months have some small increase. But still, TF from 3.7m in Nov 2022 to 2.7m in May 2023, whilst Elements 2.1m in Nov 2022 to 2.7m in May 2023.
I used to be a web designer and I used to buy a lot of themes for my clients. I think I bought about 170 themes and about 40 plugins.
After Elements came out, I completely stopped making any purchases and just bought and used the Elements subscription. Elements is great for users. Access to many high-quality items at low prices.
Usually, WordPress themes on Elements are of low quality, but I and other users prefer it because of the low cost!
I think Elements will destroy the Envato market. Because it has greatly reduced the income of designers and developers, and they will no longer be interested in working in the market with this low income.
I see some professional developers on ThemeForest who have completely stopped development and support and are no longer in the market.
Nevertheless, I think that professional developers will stop their cooperation with ThemeForest and Envato market, and only new developers who are satisfied with low income will be present in the market. Usually, they are non-professional people who are not capable of designing high-quality products.
Elements will destroy Elements as well all premium authors will search for other revenues and new marketplaces will merge from this and yes I agree with everything you are saying.
I don’t understand the Envato management they literally want to kill this place, it makes no sense!
Back in the day, FalshDen had competition but they offered such a good platform that killed the competition, I remember there was a website called FlashComponents and I think ultra shock, the same will happen with the Envato market if things continue like this.
To constantly discuss Elements when sales are down only distracts from the main problem and is just smoke in the eyes. Elements is a success story and is here to stay. Full stop.
Indeed sales and traffic have been down 50%, more significantly since 2022 and 2023. This is an unnatural decline. What is being done to contrast this fall? This is what I would like to find out.
And how is its success being the main cause for the downfall of the marketplaces merely “smoke in the eye”? Of course it is!
As a contributor to Elements you are made to be one of the undertakers of the marketplaces. I mean, it’s so obvious that you’d have to be delusional not to see it. Authors need to take responsibility for their choices.
How is Elements a success for authors I don’t get it?
The stock marketplace is dead and I doubt authors are making the same as they would have via AudioJungle, VideoHive etc…
Elements is not a success it is a story fo greed and bad decisions, Envato is about creativity and passion at least it was, now is all about numbers…
As for fixing this how can we do it if nobody form the staff is taking any actions or discussing with us authors, complete silence since Colin left!
It is a success because Envato is currently “the leader” in the unlimited downloads (one price) market segement. If they didn’t do this, someone else would. I’ll admit, Envato had good foresight.
For all we know, the market might have had the same precipitation even without Elements and could have gotten worse.
By all this constant discussion about Elements, ask yourself, are you solving the problem or just admiring what you “think” is the problem?
Perhaps the solution is to discuss ways to improve the market with constructive feedback. I started a thread a few weeks ago about this and guess what? None of you participated.
I can tell you exactly what happens.
Envato only gives about elements.
Tons of terrible flyers with the same oversaturated look are been approved everyday, its about quantity and not quality anymore like 2019 and before when you have a lot of quality designers created very creative flyers, professional and honest reviewers.
These designers and reviewers are gone because envato only wants quantity.
They stopped with envato studio because of the same envato elements.
And this is just the beginning of the end of envato.
They are digging their own grave.
