What should I pay attention to in the products I will produce specially for CodeCanyon?

Envato Authors CodeCanyon
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Hello everyone, good forums!

First of all, I’m new here, so please bear with me if my questions seem inexperienced or have been asked before (I’ve generally scanned the forum and help center, but I may have missed something). So please don’t get mad at me :slight_smile:

This week, I’ve decided to create content specifically for CodeCanyon and start selling here. I want to develop my content exclusively for this platform, so I’m currently researching the categories. I have identified the categories I want to work on and I’m conducting market research by looking at the existing content, sales volumes/prices. This way, I’ll be able to decide what my first product will be.

The products I will develop will be focused on CRM/ERP systems. I’m referring to tools that generally facilitate and assist with tasks related to a specific industry or problem.

So far, I’ve given a brief overview. Now, with your permission, I would like to ask my questions:

1 - The system I will write should have multiple themes: Welcome section, User panel, and Admin panel. For admin panels, I will only provide support for light and dark mode. For user panels, there will be customizable color palettes and light/dark mode views. For the welcome section, I will provide multiple interchangeable themes. I usually acquire these themes through Envato Elements. I get them as HTML and break them down. Can I do this, or do I need to develop from scratch for the front-end?

2 - If your answer to the first question is “Yes, you can use them,” what should be the licensing method? Even though the purchased content of another author is being used, it is used again for commercial purposes. Yes, normally this is a common practice, but I want to do everything properly. Will it be sufficient to create a separate folder containing the licenses and authors of these themes, images, sounds, and include it in the zip file?

3 - Can I make in-app sales? For example, if my developed system is a multi-themed system and I sell it for $25, with a total of 3 theme views, can I make an internal sale for the fourth theme view for $5? Or can I provide paid add-ons? For example, in the application I developed, there is no live chat feature as a standard, but can I allow users to purchase this module for $3? If your answer is “yes” to this question, can I offer this sale as a monthly subscription, or do I have to make it a one-time purchase? (Some systems may be suitable for subscriptions and can be more profitable for a developer than the software itself…)

4 - I need to use several API services. For example, customers who purchase my product will have the feature of “payment with a credit card.” For this, I will integrate APIs from 3 different companies, and my customer will be able to create an account with the company they prefer and start using it by authorizing. Is there any problem with me doing this? Are there any services or companies that are on Envato’s blocklist and should not be integrated into my products?

5 - One of the main functions of my products is to provide notifications via SMS. For this, my customers need to have the right to send SMS. Can I sell these SMS, or is it mandatory for the service provider company to sell them? For example, when I connect to A-SMS company’s APIs, can I make a deal with them to buy a package that normally costs $12 for 1,000 SMS at $10 and sell them for $12? Or can I make similar agreements with API providers? Also, if you recommend internationally used companies for SMS usage, I would be very happy.

6 - Can I receive custom development requests for my products? For example, assuming that there is a feature that does not exist in the product or an API service that is not valid in the customer’s country, can I take special orders for the customer to use it? Will CodeCanyon create any issues for this?

7 - How can I ensure the security of my products? I don’t want to sell the products I develop on another platform, so I should use a special license for my products here. I saw something related to the license API in the frequently asked questions section, but I couldn’t find a detailed article.

8 - Hypothetically speaking, if there are not many similar products in the category I develop my product in, or if the product features are significantly more than other products, can I have regular monthly sales at a reasonable competitive price? I know this topic has many variables, but I’ve seen people making sales every day on the forum. Is this possible? Can I achieve a relatively stable income from this platform?

It turned out to be quite a long post, so even if you answer my questions or not, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this far. As I mentioned, some of my questions may have already been answered and I might have missed them, so you can simply provide a link for those answers. I sincerely thank everyone who responds. If you regularly respond to this forum, I believe you can help many people like me who are new to the platform.

Happy coding!

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  1. You cannot use items from envato/elements as part of your product without express permission from the original author and an extended license which means buying it from Themeforest/CodeCanyon not Elements.

  2. Not allowed

  3. Not allowed to have in app or subscription based add ons

  4. What 3 companies? This would need more info but sounds like a potential issue as many items/solutions have commerce/payment functionality built in and does not require further subscriptions

  5. You would be best checking this with Envato Author Support but you definitely can’t license or sell SMS as an addition to the item, and there is a host of data and privacy issues with this that could be a challenge

  6. You should not use the item/profile to openly market these but you could offer it on your website etc. or via support. Bear in mind that this will be between you and any buyer and envato would not be involved.

  7. Envato have their own API for license verification but this is up to the author to implement

  8. Impossible to say without seeing the item but the above questions do raise some immediate red flags - check this post we wrote about market and sales suitability

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Thank you very much for your response, I didn’t expect it to be this early :slight_smile:

It’s great to know that I can sell on CodeCanyon using the themes I obtained with an extended license. However, I don’t understand why sales are not allowed for applications. The whole point of a modular structure is precisely this. Free and paid add-ons are developed. Is this completely rejected, or is it subject to certain conditions?

In the fourth question, what I meant was that 3 companies were just a random number. For example, in Turkey, there are 2 major companies for virtual POS, PayTR and Iyzico. I want to integrate both of them and allow users to use whichever they prefer. It can be as simple as saving the API key and token information. What will be my responsibilities regarding the integrations I make?

I will discuss the fifth point with support. In the past, I worked with an agency that purchased a script from CodeCanyon, and I made modifications to it. That script had an SMS notification feature, which means that the customer could send notifications to their end users through the product. This requires SMS rights. From what I understand, you are saying that I can use the integrations as long as I don’t sell them.

Regarding the sixth point, if I charge a fee when reaching an agreement with the customer, and if Envato does not impose any penalties, it should be sufficient for me. I don’t have to protect the trade.

These are the questions that came to mind along with your response… Thank you so much for taking the time to answer them.

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You can create new separate items which act as add ons but selling them directly within the app is not allowed. The model here does not accommodate this because envato do not own the items sold so creating that type of purchase creates issues with the license and the way envato/authors earn, update, and support items.

Again it’s hard to say but if your app is providing the API integration to access/use these then (certainly in most countries) you become part liable for any issues. could you not integrate some form of familiar commerce solution?

You definitely cannot sell them. there are numerous items offering SMS notification but on the whole (not an area we operate in) I think that it’s just the ability to have or to integrate that functionality, but all the technical management, provisions, and management is via a third party.

It’s entirely third party - just means there’s no official protection for you or the buyer should something go wrong

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You provided an excellent answer. You gave definite answers to almost every question I had in mind. I just have one more thing to ask about selling add-ons. For example, within the application, there is a Zoom API module. They will need to use this module to conduct live classes through Zoom (as part of a school management system). I want to sell this module for a fee. They will be responsible for any future fees required by Zoom, but they will need to pay me for the module. For this, I can showcase the application as locked within the product. I can publish my module as a separate product on Envato (if approved - I believe that a module belonging to a published product would be approved), and I can place a purchase link on the “Buy Now” button within the product. This way, anyone who wants to purchase the module will have to buy it from Envato. Afterwards, they just need to install the downloaded folder to the product following the installation instructions. It would be fantastic if Envato allows this.

Additionally, if this is feasible, considering there are multiple paid modules for the same product,

Product Name: School System
|
|__ Free Modules
|__ Email Sender
|__ SMS Sender
|__ School Bus Module
|
|__ Paid Modules
|__ Zoom Live Class Module ($5)
|__ Google Cloud Disk Module ($3)
|__ Online Exam Module ($3)

In this case, the total price for all three paid modules is $11. Can I sell them together as a separate product for $9?

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So it’s ok to sell things that rely on third party subscriptions but you need to do everything that you can to make that clear in the demo and the item page to prevent mis understanding

You can demo addons in the item which would need to be sold separately but again theres a big risk of buyers not realising that and you need to find a way to make it very clear if you go down that route.

Although you are not mentioning doing this, just FYI - as an exclusive author you cannot sell addons for the item on your website or externally. Anything related to the item sold on envato needs to be sold on envato

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Yes, I understand very well. I will be coding these products from scratch exclusively for this platform. I don’t plan to sell products here that I have previously developed or sold to my clients. A product I create for Envato will be sold only here, and it will be listed on Envato and my personal website (with the purchase link still on Envato).

For the additional features I will sell for a product, I will clearly indicate them in the product descriptions with detailed visuals. This way, it won’t be difficult to understand. The person who purchases my product will understand that the Zoom feature incurs an additional charge.

Alternatively, for example, if an application I developed with Laravel becomes popular and later on, I decide to develop it with Node.js, I don’t see any harm in selling it as a separate product. There is no restriction on that.

Now, is there a way to prevent selling to agencies? I want to implement a domain-based license using the Envato API or by developing a custom API. This is because it is very common in my country; agencies purchase a product once and sell it to their clients continuously. I don’t want that to happen. The extended license should not give them unlimited selling rights, and they don’t even bother reading the license terms… This situation is quite frustrating as they refuse to pay for the work of others from which they profit. Does Envato have a solution for this? Or can I implement my own security measure without it being open source?

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Envato don’t sell multi use licenses

Extended is an about how it’s used not how many times

You may need to consider managing staging sites versus live versions but envato’s own api helps to manage installation limitation

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Thanks for everything, I took a lot of your time. You have been very helpful!

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