Thank you all for the great replies to my original question…
some really good advice in these comments, very helpful.
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100% agree.
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I heard somewhere that you should decide to be the best in the world 
I think it was Seth Godin. I know it sounds a little pathetic, but if you think about it - if you go to the best authors or best selling tracks on AJ, you’ll hear they are the best in what they do. There are always exceptions of course, but if you wish to make great success, you will increase your odds dramatically if you make great music instead of just good music. Make it sound so good that no one can beat it
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I have acquired 1500 sales in one year without single featured tune or trending megahit. My most sold tune has between 20-30 sales. So yes, it is possible to get reasonable sales by just producing wide spread of genres if the quality is good enough. The bigger the portfolio, the better amount of search terms you can span and genres as well. I haven’t been uploading new material for a few months now but my monthly sales have stayed pretty decent still. Will be interesting to see how long they stay. In my opinion this is more safe tactic than the battle for that corporate hit.
Regarding luck - one tune that has only sold 2-3 licences on AJ has sold over 100 on another marketplace. No other reason but it getting good visibility there and bad visibility here. If it manages to sell that many licences at all, it has to be good tune, but like many other good tunes, if bad luck is on your side, it can very well fall into oblivion the moment its published.
Just keep producing material you enjoy and love and hope for the best.
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Step 1: Make and upload a lot of tracks. Not always easy on AJ, because they review and reject a lot of tracks, so it can sometimes be a bit of a frustrating, uphill battle, but it can be done. The more music you create and upload, the more income you will incrementally generate, especially if you are making quality stuff.
Step 2: Promote and market your stuff. Unless you’ve been in business before - and I imagine most musicians haven’t - you likely don’t understand just how important marketing and promotion is. The best product in the world will not be purchased by anyone if no one is aware that it exists. Think about the top selling artists in the music world today. Are they producing the highest quality music, and are they the most talented musicians in the world? Of course not. Every once in awhile someone truly great leaks through, but the point is, they all have huge, huge, huge, marketing and promotion machines behind them pushing their stuff, so much so that at a certain point the music almost become irrelevant to the musicians brand.
Step 3: Make sure you are always working hard at steps 1 and 2.
These are the keys to success in music and business in general. Of course, some people will just be in the right place at the right time, call it luck or whatever you want, but so what? That’s not anything anyone should ever be counting on.
Another piece of advice I’ll add is that you really need to treat something like this seriously, as you would any other business or job. Part time or hobby is fun and fine, but I would never expect to be successful at something like this doing it part time, somewhere between 40-80 hours a week seems more reasonable. So, again, like any other business, you can’t just quit your job to do this, you need to have a plan, money saved up, or borrow money (not recommended), so that you can take the time necessary to be successful. How many people do this, or are capable of doing this? Probably very few. I’m sure a lot of people try, and then give up after a few weeks or months when it doesn’t payoff. So, as with all things in life, persistence is the key, and the people who just plain never give up are usually the ones with 8,000 sales. The end result is that there will be many, many more failures than successes, because very few people are going to be willing to put in the work necessary to be successful at something as competitive as music…
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I absolutely agree with your opinion, that is happened in almost every aspect of life. Just remember to learn in every failure you get. And it’s not a wrong thing if you want to change direction as long as you do the new thing with 100% effort. 
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Well… this thread turned out to be very MOTIVATIONAL, UPLIFTING and INSPIRATIONAL. There’s a lot to learn from this!
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Adam, the marketing and promotion machine starts right here on the features page…the front and center prime time space. I mean seriously…we can all upload our watermarked tracks with links to license on soundcloud, youtube, or wherever…but I really do not think that helps. Successful authors have told me straight up that they did not see results from those efforts. I have tracks on soundcloud that link here to buy but I really do not think that drives traffic to one’s portfolio. Our customers are right next door at the Videohive. They click on “brands” that are exposed, front and center on features page and popular items page. They follow authors they like and will check out new releases when they cross the follow feed area.
Everything helps.
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Its also the article of “Do You Want Fries With That? – The Art of Cross-Selling”
Experience will vary. I’ve had a successful author or two tell me things in these forums like youtube absolutely boosts their AJ sales. I’ve also heard featured artists say things like being featured did very little for them. The more you read these forums, the more you realize just how different everyone’s experience and expectations are. I think it’s a bit of an over-generalization to assume that, just because something didn’t work for one or two people, it won’t work for someone else. If you want to be successful, you have to be willing to do everything you possibly can. I know that the last thing any musician wants to do, someone who has spent several days producing a track, the last thing that person wants to do is spend a few hours promoting their music or themselves, I get that. I don’t think any musician really likes the business side of music. But really, that’s just business - that’s how business works. I don’t think that, fundamentally, Audio Jungle or other music sites exempt people from that. Audio Jungle is never going to go out of its way to sell your music for you. I’m not saying front page exposure or being featured won’t help someone, but being featured is something an author has very little control over. I think it’s better to focus on things you can actually control.
What do your clickthroughs look like? I have a measly 31 items (some are SFX), but 809 referral clicks, and I’m not even really referring people here anymore, for various reasons. Not everyone who clicks on your portfolio or item buys your track, but sending all those people to your portfolio or item can only help, right? My referral income is about 20% of my scant earnings here. Now, even if someone was a super-successful author, and did it all without promoting themselves, an extra 20% on top of what they are already selling in referral income…wouldn’t that be worth the effort?
As an author, you have to decide how big of a net you want to fish with.
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There are all kinds of success here on AJ; for example authors with les than 10 items that have a lot of sales, authors with hundreds of items that sell constantly, one hit wanders, authors with less than a houndred items that have for each item around 50-70 sales and so on. Of course everybody wants the short path to success but I believe that these cases i mentioned are not standard but more like ways where some authors made it work. Instead of uploading a few tracks and wait to get the feature spot( which is a very long shot) maybe it is better to concentrate on your own music and try to make it as good and usable as possible. Yes, as mentioned before, treat this as a full time job and try to learn along the way as much as possible about this domain. Looking at those authors with lots of sales should be motivating in a way because you can see that somehow it is possible to make it. You need a little luck also but if you think about it luck is something you can’t control ( there is a saying here " a man makes his luck with his own hands").
Great thread and opinions here!
Best wishes!
Step 1. Copypaste popular tracks. Call it learning.
Step 2. Create insane mega corporate “hit”.
Step 3. Repeat step 1 and step 2.
Step 4. Your super motivational and corporate hit in featured items desk.
Step 5. Repeat step 1 and 2.
Step 6. Relax and have fun. You made it!
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Yes corporate and motivational style is still the leader in this market. As Lumen said, featured with non corporate track is not really affecting the sales. And you can see after his corporate track was featured then the sales blown up 
Jesus, you already opened my secret. 
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Really great thread here. Thanks to everybody for the various insights!
I think it’s crucial to constantly be listening critically to everything you hear on TV, on the radio, in movies etc. Analyse what you’re hearing and why it works or doesn’t work. Over time you build up a foundation of knowledge and ideas that you can then apply to your composing.
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Can I bribe you Leon?
Super post: Being a music author is like being the director of a small business in which on top of producing the material, you have to make it visible and present it nicely. Business mind.
Thread is great but nothing new was said to be honest
Yes and people just need that old informations to be told again and again so they can always be motivated (or bored?)
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