After three weeks in beta of ironing out some crinkles and prepping the site, I'm proud to announce that the latest Envato website - ThemeForest - is now out of the beta wilderness and ready for buying, selling, referring and viewing.
What is it?
ThemeForest is a marketplace for buying and selling HTML/CSS Site Templates and Themes for CMS' like WordPress and Joomla. Files sell for between $10 and $75 and as of the time of writing we have an early library of about 70 files, which I'm sure will grow fast!
ThemeForest runs off the same system as our other marketplaces FlashDen and AudioJungle, so any of the 70,000 odd current members are free to use their accounts across the three sites and everything will work as if you are logged into the same site thanks to some ruby magic from our crack dev team. If you're new to the marketplaces, signup only takes a minute or two, so come on down!
If you're planning on becoming an author, you'll be interested to see our Launch Competition to win 1 of 3 Apple HD Displays.
Authors Earn 25-50%
Authors earn a base rate of 25%, which quickly jumps to 35% if you agree to keep the items you place on ThemeForest exclusively on ThemeForest, and then climbs up to 50%. Because we do a lot of marketing, these percentages can yield a very significant amount. However if you're able to do our job for us and bring in the traffic as well as provide the files, then we'll give up our half as well, because referrers earn 50%...
Referrers Earn 50%
We have a very strong referral program in place where affiliates take half of a new buyers first deposit. Moreover a new referral clicking on your link has 3 months to signup and purchase. What all that means is it's a good time to be a referrer, because nobody has visited the new site yet, so early referrers will wind up with lots of new visitors with their cookies in place. :-)
Buyers, visit our Top Sellers List
Although it's early days for our file library, buyers can check out our Popular Files list to see some of the items that have been selling well during the Beta. I strongly encourage you to bookmark the site or subscribe to the new file RSS feeds, because the library is going to get a whole lot more extensive!
Thanks!
So that's it from me, I'll be back hopefully with some HTML/CSS tutorials for themes I'm putting together for ThemeForest. In the meantime if I may say so, our editor here Jeffrey Way is doing a brilliant job!! NETTUTS has come along way recently since my old dubious posting schedule :-)Related Posts
Check out some more great tutorials and articles that you might like
User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Ben Griffiths September 2nd
Congrats on another successful looking venture collis
Been playing around with the beta, and it looks very promising indeed. As a developer, my design skills are not exactly amazing, so I’m sure I’ll be one of many who’ll be buying from there in the future!
Stefan September 2nd
Once I finish some other personal stuff, I’m certain ThemeForest will be a great and productive place for me to sell my own themes.
Collis Ta'eed September 2nd
Thanks Ben! I hope it’s a success!
I have lotsa marketing to do to make sure it is!
Shane September 2nd
Sounds great. You’re quite an entrepreneur Collis
BroOf September 2nd
Yeeeeees! I got an beta account and i can say: WOW! It just startet!
Tommy M September 2nd
I’ll be working on some personal projects for sure.
Cheers!
Tommy M.
Craigsnedeker September 2nd
YES YES YES!!!
Lamin Barrow September 2nd
Yeeppe…I having been saving up some of my 99design contest files for this. Am gonna have to havbe immerse my self in PSD to XHTML / CSS to make some $$$.
Dainis Graveris September 2nd
I just watch and I am amazed! You have really made some serious blast in blogosphere
Keep it up!!!
Craigsnedeker September 2nd
*pulls out design program and starts designing*
Taylor Satula September 2nd
I hope this does as well as the other sites. Good luck on this
P.S beta testing it was great
MGK September 2nd
Hello,
First of all, congrats !!
I have a question. It concerns the referral part. I would like to know if you have any idea of how would be the result if I use your referral program WITH adsense… Will I get into trouble ? Because, It is only a link and not another pay-per-click program…
Thanks for the answer ! and keep on !
Cheers
John Deszell September 2nd
I’m thinking of putting together a Wordpress theme or two to put up there. I’ll see how it goes. Will have to come up with a couple designs here this week and get codin!
Klaus Hansen September 2nd
Am I the only person being appalled by the way theme designers are being RIPPED OFF by this scheme? 20-35% is a laughable amount and reading statements like “[...] However if you’re able to do our job for us and bring in the traffic as well [...]” doesn’t make it better.
Wake up, guys.
Paul Gendek September 2nd
I check out the beta. It’s ok, I didn’t really like how everything was presented. If the theme is for sale then give me info about the theme! It was barely tolerable during beta, I can imagine how difficult it will be to find anything when there’s thousands of themes. Also, I see a problem with quality themes getting recognition, especially when they are being undercut by mediocre themes.
Craigsnedeker September 2nd
Klaus: It’s better than nothing!
Mike T. September 2nd
Also Klaus, nobody is forcing anyone to participate, if you are willing to design and offer your creations for sale than obviously you have read and agree to the terms of the site, if you don’t like it, don’t do it.
insic September 2nd
Congrats Guys!
Kevin September 3rd
No, I agree 100% with Klaus. This is a rip off at its best.
25% for your own work? And 65% for ThemeForest? Thats outrageous.
The bad thing, I am pretty sure people will take part nevertheless. And the site owner?
They make money with your work, with advertisements … that should be enough.
Tssssss, unbelievable.
Craigsnedeker September 3rd
Is the affiliate program a 1 time only thing, or do you get 50% everytime? that wasnt clear to me.
BTW you guys did an awesome job!
L2 September 3rd
Your whole network is crashing all the time. Are the servers to busy.
I do agree that it’s pretty much a rip-off (but thats the businessmodel everybody has to earn money). But considering that around 75% of the stuff that gets sold there is made with hacked Adobe software it’s a win-win for both parties.
Don’t like the look and feel, but I understand the design choices being made. The whole Envato family gets the same look.
Good luck with all other project, soon there is a marketplace where we can buy music
Steve September 3rd
I did expect a lot of themeforest, but… Prices like 15$ for template i can understand but 25% (3.75$) for authors it’s unbelievable. I have 10 templates designed (web 2.0, psd and png source and a lot of jquery) which i have planned to sell on themeforest. Now i’m not so sure…
Cheers
Craigsnedeker September 3rd
why do you have to be over 18 to join?
Collis Ta'eed September 3rd
Hey folks, some people raised the % question, we get asked this a lot, so here’s my response via the ThemeForest forums:
So the question is “Why is the initial split 25% / 75%? and why does it take so long to get to 50/50?”
*Why the Rates are this way … *
We believe that we have created a rates system here that compensates authors AND enables FlashDen (and now ThemeForest) to build and grow the site to then provide even more returns.
Sure we could give a larger percentage, but then we wouldn’t be able to grow and market the site, to improve the site, to keep it quick, secure and stable. And the more people who are buying here the better the returns.
You have to remember that percentages are only one half of an equation. A larger percentage of nothing is still nothing while a smaller percentage of something can be significant! Currently on FlashDen there are authors earning in excess of $10,000 a month, which by anyone’s standard is a lot of money.
Another thing to remember is that there is always more to a business than meets the eye. It’s a little like when you go into a restaurant, look at a menu, look at the prices and go ‘wow I know how much potatos cost and meat costs, these guys are making a huge amount of money’. Whereas in reality there is equipment, rent, staff, etc etc. And as we know restauranting is one of the hardest businesses around!
Likewise on ThemeForest there is actually quite a lot of expenses that go under the hood. Where does the money go?
* Marketing – We spend a lot on marketing in different ways, through ads, promotional campaigns, and building other sites in our network. By pushing marketing, we bring in a lot of traffic and visitors which thereby increases sales.
* Development – This is our most significant cost as we build more features, make the site more usable, and develop it so that we can expand into new areas – e.g. From FlashDen to ThemeForest. Again by developing more, we bring in more buyers and more happy buyers, thereby indirectly creating more revenue.
* Legals & Support – This is our biggest growth cost. As the site gets larger, we’re putting more money into making sure there are proper license agreements, solid support for buyers, refunds on faulty products and so on.
*Expansion …*
ThemeForest is of course a business, but profits are not our only goal at all. We are all about growth. That’s why for example none of the founders took a single pay check for the first year. We put everything back in, to build, build, build!
You see we believe that by building FlashDen, ThemeForest, AudioJungle and all the other Envato sites, that we can create markets where authors can buy and sell things they couldn’t before. Where creatives like us and like all of you can create an extra income stream that wasn’t there before. And that buyers can build on other people’s work to deliver better results for clients, build better portfolios and generally be awesome!
Of course it’s easy to talk, but its much harder to back it up with actions, and that is exactly what we have been and will continue to do.
*Exciting Plans for the Future*
We actually have some really big plans for the future. As many of you know, at Envato we LOVE doing new things. Not only are we working on more sites, but also figuring out ways to cross link them and merge features to make for a better experience for buyers and authors. Since ThemeForest has just launched, I won’t mention any other expansion plans specifically, because I’m meant to be focusing on growing this site first!!
ONE exciting Plan for the future OK OK OK , here’s one exciting plan for the future. I can say that after we get out of beta and have a decent sized pool of files on the site (which will probably be a few weeks after that) we are going to run a huge promotion where we give away $50,000 worth of ThemeForest money to new buyers. Authors with files will still get paid, but the buyers won’t actually be doing the paying. This promotion should bring us a huge pool of buyers!
*In the End … Try It and See*
I guess at the end of the day though, every author needs to make a choice. I highly recommend you investigate your options and figure out the best plan for you, where you get the most benefits. I’m totally confident that you will find though the initial percentage is low, anyone serious about authoring will soon find themselves moving closer to 50%.
And additionally in terms of the work it takes to sell themes and templates, it’s SOO much easier to list on a site like ThemeForest than to do it all yourself.
Happily the only way for ThemeForest to win, is for her authors to win, so we’ll be doing everything we can to make that happen.
Mike T. September 4th
Can you at least hint at whether we can expect a FlashTuts in the near future?
fodcj September 5th
Well put Collis. Keep up the great work.
rico September 7th
COUGH *ripoff* COUGH *scam*COUGH
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