Hello, recently i came across some ridiculous pricing in themes… $1,000+ looked some more and I now see that there are many themes that are priced well over $100, etc.
As market customer for many years i find that concerning.
Over the last few years i have seen a significant decline in quality of products here, but i was still able to rely on envato to filter out some things based on pricing… now that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Now i know there are arguments that “you make thousands on our themes…etc.etc…” which is not true in most cases… in fact in most cases i buy a theme, work on it for a client … and if i’m lucky it works and client pays me for the work customizing it.etc … but more times than not theme stops being supported or breaks due to plugin issues and there is no reasonably timed support so i end up having spent money for absolutely nothing… since i dig around in the code i guess i call it learning and cut my losses…
Now there is nothing wrong with charging $1,000 plus but then you better be developing some nice customized things and provide 24/7 support and setup for this stuff… because i can hire a web developer that would work for some time for the price of several of these themes…
. I wonder what do the creators that actually provide good quality themes and then followup support think about this phenomenon.
The crazy prices like $1000 is normally just the author not wanting to sell that theme at the moment. As you cant pause sales or remove a theme and then re-upload it.
Its the same on other market places like ebay.
As for your theme problems, find one or two good themes with very high continuous sales and suport and stick to them. Tying new themes on client sites will never make you any money!
The only reliable on going customer service and quality support is if you subscribe, the extended support is ok but it is still extremely low amount for a serious company.
The issue here is that client buy a theme for 59 to 100$ and sell it further on for 500 to 1000 or more but you expect us to support it for one-time payment indefinitely.
It is quite easy to do research, check comments, change logs etc. and in the end contact the author. Do check the profile, maybe there own website, see if this is a company, a team behind it and make your call on those facts.
Quality demands bigger prices, sadly most new theme have low pricings. We authors also pay our fair share to Envato, so not all the money goes to us and there are taxes, employees, expenses to ensure ongoing business.
I am quite frustrated when we get extorted for those 41$ that we end getting, by someone that does not know how to customize a theme for which he got a request from his client whom the client payed.
So this is our side of the coin with which we battle all the time and we do support our themes but as in other ventures old product get removed if those products are not profitable to maintain anymore.
Especially if you are an agency that makes sites for a living then do your research!
Indeed quality is suffering over quantity. I remember the days when envato was so strict now everything is approved, to be honest I think they don’t really care anymore they focus on elements and the rest is whatever… this is how it feels like for me.
