Hi,
I’m an author here on Envato and I’m also an affiliate. Envato made me (as an author) and is making me feed my family. So I decided to step further on affiliate.
How we do refer people
So, I’ve created CodeWatchers where I’m paying people to write reviews following guidelines I’ve provided (I’m also a writer). We, therefore, go over every Envato Items (CodeCanyon/ThemeForest) that worth us paying attention to them and not only review the item itself but also the Support, Update Frequency, and many other aspects. Why are we doing this? Because we want to build a trusty audience. Recommending a theme might also consist of recommending some WordPress plugins that can be used along with that. But from what I see, well we’re just paid on our first referred purchase.
So, if our review post contains more than one Envato item we’re referring to, we’ll only get the sale for one of them, even if the customer has purchased more than one item (that we’ve also referred). If the customers start their search from our platform because he like the time and passion we put providing the best of Envato items, we will no more get any sales, just because he has already landed on Envato.
Are we referring to Envato Items or Envato Marketplaces?
The current aspect of the situation makes every affiliate needs first to quickly forward any people landing on their website to Envato, because well… he’ll just be useful for that affiliate once (unless right after the purchase, his computer is destroyed, or he deletes cookies, or he doesn’t reach Envato marketplaces for 6 months). Advertising as we’re doing on Twitter (CodeWatchers[en], CodeWatchers[fr], CodeWatchers[es], CodeWatchers[de], CodeWatchers[it]…) worth nothing as well for our trusty audience, if they have already landed on Envato Marketplaces.
What are the consequences?
For those being at the top of the affiliates (I’m friend with one at the top 15 affiliates), that force us to use very nasty solutions on our website to, well… push the visitors to Envato Marketplaces (since that’s what we’re referring). We can’t build trust and likely a visitor who went through our website might never want to go over that again (we’re okay with that, as he might no more be useful for us). So, we’re just focusing on new visitors, somehow we might even be tempted to show to returning customers (Your Browser is deprecated change it, or Your cookies are rotten, clear them all)… these are extremely nasty solutions and I don’t like it. People willing to live from the Envato affiliation system, the right way, I think they can’t easily. Fortunately (and unfortunately) other marketplaces are backing us up.
Summary
The Envato Affiliate Program is just for referring Envato Marketplaces by pointing any of the existing items on sale. We should only focus on new visitors and don’t really plan to build a long run audience.
Am I wrong ?
