I was talking about this image. @jamesgiroux said it is a good example. I don’t see any “bundled” word in there. I do understand that there’s this https://help.market.envato.com/hc/en-us/articles/213762463-Bundled-Plugins and that this is why we have to say “Bundled”, but I’m saying, there’s no consistency to this. You guys aren’t aware what’s correct or wrong. So, at the moment items being reviewed are in or out depending on reviewers subtle decision. This in my case lasts a month, the month in which you guys are agreeing on how this should be handled. Hopefully the guides will be more clear soon.
Thanks everyone for the exchange of ideas and feedback. A few things to remember when posting:
Be civil. We all have ideas and are passionate about them, sometimes those ideas are different to others and it’s important to engage with an attitude of openness and to seek understanding.
Don’t call out individual authors. We’ve deleted a few posts here that did just that. We want everyone to feel like they can use the forums to share ideas without being attacked or called out.
There are no plans now or upcoming to change the policy or marketplaces away from giving authors the freedom to set their own prices. It is definitely an adjustment after so many years of controlled pricing on the marketplaces but it is a decision we believe is in the long-term best interests of authors.
We see that there are discounted items on market as a result of ADP and authors are responding with their own discounted pricing and promotions. Looking at the popular items page on ThemeForest alone however, presents a narrow view that fails to take into account what other authors are doing throughout ThemeForest and across all the other marketplaces. Not everyone is lowering prices and there is not a ‘race to the bottom’.
We do see an item’s price being an effective strategy for authors looking to accelerate their sales. Often in an effort to get on and move up popular items pages. This is for good reason. Historically, being on a popular items page has been a great way (if not the way) to grow a brand, build sales momentum and in the case of some items, solidify a market position.
We’re also constantly working on new ways for authors to increase their earnings both with one-time sales and through incremental, recurring revenue.
We launched a beta of Hosted, Elements has been rolled out for a variety of item-types, we’ve ramped up the breadth and depth of marketing initiatives, and we continue to look at new ways for authors to improve their same-customer earnings.
While no one thing is a guarantee of earnings success, together they create a collection of product and service opportunities that authors can build into their business planning. When combined with the incredible efforts of our internal marketing team to bring in traffic, authors have a great framework to start and build with.
I know this likely won’t resolve the perception that prices are trending down but I hope it does present a wider perspective on Envato Market as a whole. To further widen that perspective, without Envato, authors would be leveraging price and anything else they could to attract an audience and build their business.
Great observation and we’re going to send out an email to authors in ADP categories in the next few days.
We keep track of every price change on every item across all marketplaces. We create guidelines and rules that we expect all authors to follow and being part of our community is conditioned on their ability to follow those guidelines and rules.
Thanks for the friendly comment.
We cannot comment or direct pricing in any way but we can and do encourage authors to independently assess their own business and determine the price for an item that best reflects their desired outcomes.
These are examples of a misleading price and misleading advertising. $150+ is not a real price. If the price was $150 and the author had a sincere intent to sell at that price eventually, then that would be fine. The inclusion of the “+” indicates that there is no formal set price in mind.
When “today” passes without a change in either the marketing or the price then it is misleading. If the sale meets business objectives and an extension is thought to be a way to accelerate growth then updating the marketing to say “extended for three days” or “extended until the end of the month” or until thirty days have concluded should be done.
An author does not have to specify an end date but they do have to remove their promotional marketing after thirty days.
When we discover an author is not following the guidelines we activate our processes to coach that author to success. The process is fairly straightforward:
Warn: We send a written notice to authors informing them of the identified issue with their item and request that they fix it within a given timeframe. Depending on the severity of the breach, we may temporarily remove an item from a marketplace while an issue is addressed.
Coach: If an author needs support in getting to the place they need to be, we help them through that with coaching. This could be in the form of pointing them to the appropriate help article, personalized feedback or other assistance.
Farewell: If, in spite of warnings and coaching an author proves either unwilling or unable to comply with guidelines, then we may permanently disable their item, their portfolio and in some cases their account, depending, again, on the severity of the issue.
That would essentially be going back to the way things were. It is up to individual authors to determine their pricing. Some things an author could consider as they look to determine the price that is right for them are things like:
How much does the average user cost in terms of ongoing support?
How do I factor in the cost of initial item creation and/or ongoing development?
What ratio of sales to support am I comfortable with as an author?
What is my cost per acquisition?
What’s my break even point?
What are my long-term plans for this item?
Pricing is a unique formula for every author and needs to consider the factors that make sense to them. Yes, there will be times when another author, in an effort to hit their business objectives decides to discount. How authors respond to that should be based on their own business objectives and take into account all the levers available to them, including but not limited to price changes and promotions.
My thought process behind this was, set a minimum price in which everything is included. So, basically the same formula that applies now + minimum price amount.
Example.
WordPress = 13$ Fee + Buyer Price - Old
WordPress = 13$ Free + Buyer Price + Minumum Cap = 49$ + Whatever amount authors want to have added.
Support would still be available as an extension as is now.
You could ask the same about items that are now selling for 19$ and their actual worth is well over 50$
Considering some are selling for 50% lower than the minimum cap that was selected before ADP, I’d guess yes, the ratio should be perfect.
Considerably higher than selling at 60% of the minimum cap.
This I cannot answer, but if an item is removed fast from sale, that would result in lower quality throughout Envato.
I’m really curious what you guys think about this. I mean, having a minimum cap would set the standard higher for higher quality items and would stop the devaluation of items.
As an author with 6 years of membership I remember when Envato raised the price of items on the market several times. The explanation behind those changes was the fact the market is growing while the items are getting more and more complex and powerful hence their prices must be higher. So we reached the border of $59 per theme. Suddenly it turns out that $15 per Theme is “a good strategy to accelerate sales” and lowering the price just to get to the popular items page is just fine…
From Envato point of view. They wants low price WordPress themes so they can expand their market to more buyers in this case more countries.
I did some experiment on pricing and found out that if you price your theme lower than $39 especially lower than $29 you will get more sales from countries other than US and EU.
Basically overall Themeforest sales is not growing or slowly growing unlike 2-3 years ago and they want way to expand their revenue. So they changed to ADP and use fixed fee so they can earn a little less than they got from $59 theme even authors price at $13
So I am sure Envato won’t remove ADP and go back to old pricing model. This model make sense with their revenue plan.
As an author, I can see that price is going down for sure with this model. Unless there is a new model or marketplace which can break Envato market share on WordPress themes and force them to change their model.
Hiding my post doesn’t change the facts! Also I didn’t break the rules as nothing specific was mentioned in my post - no names, no brands, no URLs, nothing offensive.
Is it now a secret there are other marketplaces? If so - I am sorry. Sincerely. Envato is the one and only. Amen! Tripple Hallelujah!
Anyways, I wont persist. People are not blind and deaf.
Back to the topic: Generally, the ADP is a good thing and there’s no doubt about this. It was just poorly implemented on the market with no care for the bone of Envato - the authors who make the quality content.
Our forum rules around discussing competitive marketplaces are not limited to names or links only. As you can understand, simply discussing or recommending a competitive marketplace doesn’t look great. Thanks!
I have recently discovered one more thing - bundled template. Just take a look at the latest approved admin template, it’s basically a bundle of a few other templates from the same author and pricing tag has “Sale **% off”. Since when this kind of things are allowed?
Hey! Appreciate the answer, but its really not an answer to my question. My question is: why not implement a process that does not allow anyone to violate the rules in the first place? Instead of answering that, you just listed again, the whole messed up process to try and enforce the rules, that clearly does not work for authors.
I know that it works for Envato, because it really doesn’t make a difference to you if someone is breaking the rules for a few weeks. On the other hand, during the weeks or even months it takes you to find and educate the offenders, other authors have to live with the consequences.
In addition to that: If you are an author who is playing by the rules and you constantly see people who are ignoring them, make good money with that practice, and easily get away with it just by saying they did not know better, what should stop you from doing the same?
After all, although it is friendly competition here for the most part, it is nevertheless competition and everyone is playing to win. If there is a bug in the system that allows you to increase the odds, people will always take advantage of that.
Manually correcting this and trying to force everyone to play by the rules with warnings and coaching is treating the symptoms, when you could easily cure the illness with code implementation of a few hundred lines…
So here is my actual question again: why do you not implement the checks in a way that no one can break them, instead of trying to fix it weeks after people broke the rules…
In addition to what @Kriesi said, I’d like to ask if permission to break the rules is now officially part of the higher tiers Power Elite Care pack?
There are two themes in top 5 clearly (and constantly) breaking the rules for months and nothing happens. They doesn’t seem “educated” at all.
One of them being on “promotional” sale price for more than a month and no clear promo period stated, and another one started a NEW promotion after an “Easter sale” which continued for 3 weeks well AFTER the Easter.
If that’s officially part of the higher tier Power Elite care packs - let us know so we work more eagerly towards achieving the PE status.
Sick of double standards, really. It’s even more annoying than other things a lot of author would lately describe as “bad move”.
I think you already answered to that question with the quote above. They really don’t care because it might even benefit them. Probably those big authors also advertise on their channels that they have “OMG BIGGEST SALE EVER” which drives traffic to Themeforest. And since there is a minimum fee of $12 Envato earnings are still great. There really is no other reason to set a minimum fee, but not the minimum price. How can that benefit anyone else but Envato in the long run?
Sorry to hijack, but yes, top most doesn’t seem “educated” at all…one in top 3 clearly states ‘free updates and support, no recurring fees’. Though in comment they answered complete opposite!
If they cant be bothered to respond properly to one of TFs finest and oldest authors (@Kriesi) - I doubt they will actually be bothering to check the actual state of things
Even if they do, or already have, by the time they gently persuade the offenders to stop it, there will be 100 more themes copying the same tactic
Just like Kriesi said, the best they seem they can be bothered with is simply not going to fix the issue anyway so its a waste of time.
We feel the need to jump in here because we have tried taking the more diplomatic route of sending in tickets/emails/etc for authors breaking the rules and it has not worked. We have to admit it has worked in one case (misleading pricing) but all others have not had a resolution in regards to ADP guidelines. This is not a slight at any individual who works at Envato, but at Envato as a whole. While we do understand new rules take time to implement and the marketplace is so huge that the overall size also holds a factor in righting the ship … we now feel those facets no longer matter because it’s the middle of May 2017.
We have petitioned Envato more than a dozen times for authors who have broken the new ADP rules. Currently there are items going on sale for longer than 30 days, items who have broken thumbnail/preview rules, or those who simply adjust the sale price to a new sale after 30 days is up.
Things have clearly become out of hand and it makes us ask … Envato, why are you not acting quickly for authors in violation?
As Kriesi said …
We 100% agree. Franky, we are tired of sending in reports of rule breakers, that is not our job. It’s Envato’s job. Why make rules and guidelines if there is not a process in place to stop them quickly? Even a 24 hour period would be reasonable but that does not happen. As I’m sure you can also, we could describe more than one example of violations that have not had a resolution yet.
This is not a slight at James in any form, James is a very nice guy and has been very helpful to us in several ways. But this process the Envato team takes is nonsense. “Warn”, “Coach” and “Farewell” is the reason why we are all hear complaining about this. It should be …
Warning: You have broken/violated this rule. You have 24 hours to fix it, or your item is disabled.
Well said and not only that, others are doing exactly that and jumping on the bandwagon. We believe this relates to the “coaching” aspect Envato feels is needed. The truth is that authors know what they are doing, they are taking advantage of customers, the marketplace and their fellow community. If an author needs coaching to follow a set of guidelines then they should not be here.
The solution in our mind is simple … first off the guidelines need adjusted.
30 day max sale is long … 1-2 weeks at max. Right now you can have a sale for half the year if you wish (6x a year and for 30 days each time) … but as we know that is not even being followed.
authors should not be able to set any price they wish, there should be a range of how high or low you can go. Ex: WP themes have a $10 range to play with, this is included for sales and regular pricing. Sale rules mean nothing when an author can just drop their normal price consistently after the max sale date is up.
once changed, send out a form or have a sign in form popup for every author and make them agree to the terms, if they don’t, they can’t sell on the marketplace.
This would solve a lot of issues. After all, Envato is the one who makes all the rules. We sell an item on Envato’s marketplace and are required to follow their terms and conditions … why not make the ADP madness stop through your own rules and regulations?
I’m sure Envato would say it’s more complicated than that. If so, please explain why because it’s hard to envision from an author standpoint considering how the Envato/Author relationship is.
We also have a few questions …
“request that they fix it within a given timeframe” …
What is that timeframe? If there is a max of thirty days, should a warning not be sent out before the 30 day mark is hit?
“Depending on the severity of the breach” …
If rules are in place, why would the severity of them matter? A rule is a rule and is meant to be followed. Why would the severity matter? Would a sale longer than the max limit be severe enough?
Lastly for clarification, we’re sure some will mention our own sales. We have had 2 sales this year. The first was for New Years (2016) but lasted til January 2nd of 2017, this was our first ever sale. The 2nd sale was for our 300K celebration milestone which was more recent in April. The reason why we has these sales is to give our customers a deal who have repeatedly asked for one over the past 4+ years, and to celebrate our 300K milestone. Sales are good for customers when done in a healthy environment, not a drive to basement bottom pricing competing for sales on a marketplace through cheap prices.
We have hope that Envato will be able to reason with the many similar complaints shared in the forums/tickets/emails and come up with the proper solution to make the community happy.
