Sneak Peak at ThemeForest
August 16, 2008
Envato, formely known as Eden have been busy at work over the past couple of weeks getting their new marketplace (ThemeForest) developed and tested. I became one of the lucky testers of the new site and with Collis’ permission I can give you a sneak peak. The new site is similar in what it does to Envato’s other marketplaces (FlashDen and AudioJungle), it enables designers to sell their templates in one place that is used by thousands of potential buyers.
Envato’s previous marketplaces have been a huge success with the biggest money maker selling over 10,000 files making $52,000 in just 5 months. This was on FlashDen selling Flash templates and resources, the market for website/blog designs is much bigger so you can imagine the potential for a designer to make some serious money.
Templates will typically sell between $5 and $75, from looking at the approved templates currently on the site the typical pricings are:
- Website Templates (HTML) $12 - $15
- Wordpress Templates $20 - $45
- Drupal and Joomla None have been uploaded yet but I presume they will be around the Wordpress price.
You start at earning 25% of each sale and this grows as you earn to 50%, below is taken direct from the site.
“If you agree that any items you sell on an Envato Marketplace will be exclusively sold here, then the rate of payment rises from 25% to 35% and on up to a maximum of 50%.
-
Here’s how it works. If you’ve sold $500 worth of items then you are eligible to become an Exclusive Envato Author. Once you successfully apply (see the sidebar for details) your rate of payment automatically jumps to 35% of every sale. After that, for every $2000 worth of sales you go up 1% all the way to 50%. That means the more you sell, the more you make!”
-
The new site works very similar to FlashDen and AudioJungle so if you have ever used them you shouldn’t have any problems, you use the same account on all three sites. The launch date isn’t set in stone but having got in touch with Collis Ta’eed he said that he is hoping for the launch to be Monday 25th August but they are still ironing out some previewing features and would like the marketplace to have a healthy number of templates available, around the 100 mark, so this date may change.
Until the launch, I have got you some screenshots of inside the site, please bear in mind that the previewing of the template isn’t set up yet so that will be different, you will be provided with a live demo of the template on the ThemeForest site.
You can access the new site on launch, I will post again about ThemeForest on the launch day and will keep you up to date via my twitter account which you can see in the sidebar. You can access the site here but you wont be able to do anything until launch.
Let me know if you have any questions about the new marketplace as I can most likely answer them, also I would like to hear your thoughts on it and whether you are intending on contributing or not.
Greg Johnson
August 17th, 2008 at 12:34 am
I was somewhat interested in this, but I would consider anyone willing to give up 50% to 75% of their profit for advertising on TF is either lazy, values themselves at much less than what they’re actually worth or are damn fools.
Personally I’d like to see people promote Junlge Tango, a site that actually let’s you keep most of your hard earned money. I’ve spoken with the owner and we’ve exchanged ideas, and he’s a great guy.
http://jungletango.com/
Simon North
August 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am
@Greg Johnson:
I understand where you are coming from and there has been some talk about this on the forum on ThemeForest, however the same point comes up over and over again. Envato invest that money back into the site to get more people going, the more people that use the site the more sales you will inevitably receive, the system has been very successful on their other sites so it looks to be successful on ThemeForest.
Personally I would prefer for the site to be constantly marketed so we constantly get sales even if it is only 25%.
Mark
August 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
FlashDen and Envato are big thieves. Taking the amount of money they take from the developers is outrageous. Not only that, they price their stuff so low that it’s like a slap on the face for developers like us. I’d rather sell my own stuff than giving a cent to these thieves.
And as for the argument about ‘needing’ the money to reinvest on the site, that’s a big fat lie. Those guys are making tons of money by tricking the entire design community into selling their stuff for dirt cheap.
Boom Digital
August 17th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I am a member of flashden and as a designer and producer, I love the service. I haven’t created files for flashden yet, and as a professional, I don’t think I will be inclined to after reading the breakdown of what the authors get. I think what you guys do rocks and the fact that you are expanding into other creative areas is totally wicked, but you guys need to come up with much better payment incentives for authors. IMO.
Simon North
August 17th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Yeah I agree that the pricing is a little low to start off with but more sales inevitably increases the amount you make, I have been producing and selling templates for the last year and sales are continuing to decrease because so many people are now doing this so ThemeForest is exactly what the template makers like me need. At the end of the day I can make a template, sell it on Sitepoint and make maybe $200 max, now I can put that template on ThemeForest and sell it over and over again, I have put a couple of sites on the site and I have already had 3 sales and there are only designers on the site at the moment so you can imagine what will happen when they open it to the buyers.
I have run Simnor Web Templates for a few months now where I sold premium Wordpress templates and I got about $300 from it, that was it after spending about the same amount on advertising so I fully stand behind Envato in this, they have to put a lot of time and money in to marketing this site. And at the end of the day they are a business, lets not forget that and as a designer I make my income from clients and contracts, this is just a way for a designer to make some more money on the side of their day to day work.
Daniel
August 18th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Excellent. I will definitely be developing a few themes for ThemeForest. It is going to start out with large exposure, so should be a great place to sell designs. A lot of us are tired of trying our luck at sitepoint/other forum marketplaces to sell our small side designs.
Simon North
August 18th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Yeah I second that Daniel, trying to sell on Sitepoint is hard and I gave up trying to sell on forums like Digital Point ages ago, they expect to get templates with full rights for the same price as they will be on ThemeForest where you sell them over and over again.
I am glad that I can finally get out of the whole sell a template once and never again thing, there has never been a good enough place to sell templates outside of Sitepoint.
ZLatko
August 18th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Great, I’ll definitely try my luck as a designer at ThemeForest. I was selling templates a few times at SitePoint Marketplace, but as you said, you sell the design only once and you can never earn on it more times. Can’t wait to see the official release.
Greg Johnson
August 19th, 2008 at 12:29 am
You make some very valid points Simon.
Obviously this an acceptable solution for some people, but I simply can’t imagine not being able to market myself effectively enough to need to pay 75% of my profit to someone else.
And Simon, use the wordpress subscribe to comments plugin and I promise you’ll get more return visitors. I only stumbled by this post twice on accident
Eric Shafer
August 19th, 2008 at 2:25 am
For me personally, I’m posting a template or two on there just to see how it goes. Obviously if it doesn’t end up being worth it, then don’t continue developing for them. I have 1 sale out of two templates so far, so we’ll see if things pick up when it goes public. It’s a nice idea, though I was skeptical at the start, it’s a lot easier than other places and at least your templates stay up forever. One of the interesting things will be to see if it encourages freelance contract work as well. Hopefully if someone likes your template, they’ll hire you in the future. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking though.
Tommy M
August 19th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Envato makes the point (and makes it often) about marketing costs for the website. But let’s not forget, they own nettuts, psdtuts, and a bundle of other high-priced and advertiser-rich websites.
One example that Collis used “one user who has sold his flash website for over $50,000.00!” and how “that translates into, well, a lot of money!”
“a lot” of money for whom? When you do the math, envato made over $37,000.00 from that one customer. And keep in mind, that’s just one customer. They have hundreds like this. When you ad up all the other 75% of prices they take, along with the $1,500.00 ads on PSD tuts(which are always full) and the ads on the other tut websites ($500.00 each), they should have more than enough. Why don’t they release their marketing budget, statistics, and where they’re doing this marketing? The majority of all their buyers come from word of mouth or users spreading the word via affiliate links.
Basically, I consider envato’s statement about investing into their website more similar to Oil companies excuse for excessively high profits because “they invest more” in alternative energy when they make more.
Just my 2 cents.
Simon North
August 19th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
@Greg Johnson: Good point about the comments RSS thing, I’ve added it to the top of the comments area
@Eric Shafer: Yeah I agree totally, on my profile page I have added a big image with my contact details on and a little description with a link to my portfolio. In the past when I have sold a template I would occasionally get the customer coming back for me to make a few changes so if a template sells on ThemeForest the user may well want some changes, in fact it is very likely so they are gonna go to the theme maker rather than a different designer at the end of the day.
@Tommy M: The user that was on $50,000 was actually on 50% of the earnings so he actually made closer $25,000 and Envato made $25,000, its standard business; you need to make a profit else you will be out of business very quickly so I fully support Envato’s ways of doing things. As for the tutorial sites they need to make money because they pay the writers, they have overheads like every other business and they need to make money like every other business. Just because a business has lots of money in the bank you cant expect them to not carry on adding to it. But everybody is entitled to their opinions, I hate Microsoft for example because they abuse their position in the marketplace, however I don’t think that Envato do this, people trust Envato because of their success and ThemeForest is exactly what the community needs at the moment, it doesn’t bother me whether it is 25% or 75% as long as I am making money - I am making money.