I know all of this. It just looks like envato doesn’t. Or at least they don’t care. They earn more money today with this sorting than with another, so they set this sorting as default.
When sales will fall, they maybe will think about customers and authors.
Right now they think about “5% higher conversions” 
I´m going more for “Or at least they don’t care”. Because Envato knows everything about all this, more than what we do.
Basically, we are talking about same things just with different words. I understand that there won’t be newest by default, I mostly talked about new page design. But anyway, no one signed contract with a devil here, so we have options to act in any direction,
Cheers
As for waiting:
Let’s say one option is to become non-exclusive, for me it’s kinda risky to lose exclusive bonus at once - I just don’t know If i will be able to compensate that loss on other places. So to figure it out - I need time anyway. Also non-exclusivity on elements might make this decision to be easier
I think it’s not risky at all to create something not for videohive. Invest one item to see how it goes outside this place.
This is what I am exactly talking about. It’s risky to put existing portfolio, but to start from zero it takes time which i have now with this “best seller” story
I know one thing. I earned all my money here not because I’m special. I earned it, because 7 years ago I was lucky to find this place. This place gave me opportunity, and I was rather smart to take it. Without this luck, I could be a different person, and in most cases I think my life wouldn’t be so easy as it is now.
Now I’m smarter than I was before. And I will not wait for another luck. Today Envato doesn’t give any opportunities. It’s always better to act before the crowd. Predict changes, etc. Maybe the real risk is waiting.
Speaking as customer, the company I work for is a long time Envato’s customer and we have bought over a hundred products from the market. What makes this market our first choice to cover our needs is the vast content and diversity of products. Not marketing, not products on sale, not emailing lists.
Our prime directive was to avoid best sellers and always check new products and trends. Elements changed our purchasing behavior and now it covers 80-90% of our needs. That means that at least from our company Envato is getting less money.
Now if latest decisions force a considerable amount of authors to move their content to another market and start publishing their new projects there then it is logical for customers with our needs to consider the new facts and the enrichment of competitive markets from all those authors .
Of course when you have thousands of authors waiting in line I don’t know how much of annoyance a mass exit would cause to Envato but from marketing perspective I would find very alarming the possibility of the bad publicity that a wave of discontent authors would bring to other communities and social media. Many customers are quite susceptible to negative rumors and bad publicity whether it is based on facts or not. This would only add to the negative image customers have when they are misled by the elements banners on the market and shopping cart, the handling fees, or when they have to wait a few days for their ticket to be reviewed.
100%, same for me.
Funny thing is, few weeks ago I would have said that all the “oh, few years ago it was so much easier to get to elite” is just whining of people with low sales who are looking for an excuse. This was said when I started here as well, and there are items with over 2K sales that have been released in the last year from new non-elite authors and I have regularly made the experience that it is only the quality of products and your niche that decide if you will have success here or not.
But with the new sorting, all these people are correct now. 
Guess we were lucky to be one of the early ones.
My latest item has zero sales and has156 views since the day published in my profile (((a month ago))) which means is barely hard to get sales and I’m sure all the views come from authors itself.
it’s kinda weird that Envato took this step because of 5% revenues and bury most of the authors down deep the market, it’s really sad 
bad sales 
Very bad sales! Gone to about 20-30% from previous years. Disaster …
Real numbers: Page 1 and 2 of “After Effects Project Files - Newest Items” have a total amount of 60 items recently approved. They all made a total of 9 sales, some of them 2 sales, others 1 sale, but a total of 9. One simple word: catastrophic.
Sales are very bad last two months.
Only 3 sales in this month.
$@%# I just noticed most of the project descriptions has gone.
I have the same issue.
what do you mean?
They did.