Envato, the company behind the wildly successful Tuts+ Network and the Envato Marketplace, has created the ideal environment for freelancers and designers looking for new clients to promote their work in a supportive environment. Continual improvements and additional features to one of the main sites, ThemeForest, have helped it stand out from other premium theme designers, despite the fact that everyone on the site is “independent” of the main company.
The Freedoms of ThemeForest (and other sites in the Marketplace)
ThemeForest takes out a lot of the work in building your own web presence. For example, while ThemeForest won’t promote each individual member or theme that gets submitted to or joins the site, they will feature the products that really stand out. The framework is intact to help you spend more time addressing support and updating or releasing new themes. You won’t have to worry about ensuring that your own site is still up and running.
While some would say that these aren’t necessarily freedoms, I would have to say otherwise. I don’t sell my work through the site, but have reviewed many themes featured on the site, and have seen how successful it has become since launch.
- You have the ability to price your products at nearly any price. Many of the themes currently sell in the $25 to $35 price range (assuming the customer has pre-paid). The top-selling WordPress themes are currently priced at $35, $25, $40, $25, and $25, respectively.
- The community decides what themes are the best. Based on sales, you can determine which themes have the most features and are the most value-packed for the price.
- Categorization makes it possible to target specific niches. For example, you can place your theme in the corporate/business category or the blog/magazine and you’ll be able to target specific needs of your customers.
- You’ll notice new clients trickle in, as you become more popular on the site. The designers on the site have a profile page, which can be customized to attract new customers.
The Downsides of ThemeForest
Despite the many positives of adding your work to the ThemeForest Marketplace, there are some negatives, which you should consider before you join. Again, some may look at these as facts of life, simply because you are in fact submitting your work to a site and enjoying the benefits of it.
- In order to become a member, you’ll need to take a quiz to understand how the marketplace works. This is basically used to help you understand the terms of the site (i.e. Agree/Disagree to “…buy a file from another site and sell it on an Envato Marketplace, provided I chance something about it.”
- Envato takes a cut of your earnings. If you run your own site, you’ll also be taking a cut of your earnings and setting it apart for time spent modifying your site’s theme, purchasing hosting, as well as other services integrated into ThemeForest. Depending on how many sales you create through ThemeForest, you’ll be able to keep anywhere from 40-70% of all sales. Some have commented on how you need to sell $300,000+ in order to reach the highest bracket, but as long as you have a “killer” theme, it may only take a few months to reach these higher levels. If you choose to sell through ThemeForest non-exclusively, you’ll be able to keep 25% of the earnings.
- You must use the license applied across the entire site. All themes sold must have the PHP distributed under the GPL License, but the design and images are not GPL-licensed.
How Much Can You Make
I guess the whole point behind this article is to expose how successful the premium themes market has become. The results certainly do vary, especially if you have just created a site to “profit” from the trend and make a quick buck. Many of the most popular designers on ThemeForest have quite a number of products and may also run their own web design business.
Although a cut is taken out of each theme sold, you can quickly see how sales add up into big earnings. The following themes have been showcased on this page, as an example of what you can earn!
— Display 3-in-1 Business Theme: The theme sells for $42, and has sold more than 1,500 copies. This results in earnings of an average of $28,000 per month.
— London Creative + Portfolio/Blog Theme: Introduced just four months ago, the theme has sold 700+ copies at $32 apiece. The designer makes $7,000 per month (average) from this theme alone.
— Twicet Business and Portfolio 5-in-1 Theme: Selling at $37, this theme has been sold more than 1,800 times, and brings in more than $7,000 monthly.
— ShapeShifter – One Page, Infinite Possibilities: This theme sells for $32, resulting in nearly 500 sales since first release about three months ago. Again, this results in more than $7,000 in income monthly.
— BigFeature: This theme sells for $27, with more than 1,500 sales to date. This results in monthly revenue of $5,500.
— Design Agency: This theme sells for $27, with more than 450 sales since first release four months ago. It draws in more than $4,000 in monthly revenue.
— Cubit 6-in-1 Business and Portfolio Theme: Selling for just $27, this theme has sold more than 1,050 copies, bringing in more than $3,200 monthly.
— Bluelight: Customers fell in love with this theme, as they purchased more than 875 copies at $27 apiece. The designer makes an average of $2,800 from this theme.
— Convergence Community Theme: At $27, this theme has sold more than 900 copies in about a year’s time. Since then, it has averaged more than $2,600 in revenue monthly.
— Photo Nexus WordPress Gallery 2-in-1: Again, nearly 900 copies of this theme have sold, each at $27. The theme brings in $2,200 monthly.
Conclusion
Each year, those who have a negative stance towards the premium themes market say that this is the year they will die. This hasn’t happened yet, and there are no signs that it will. Despite the GPL fiasco that took place, the support/package market for themes replaced the earlier licenses that were sold based on the number of sites you could use the themes on.
Times have changed, and the market is still extremely profitable, as shown above. If you are looking to test how well your themes will do, I encourage you to check out ThemeForest and see if the whole marketplace concept can work for you. Envato has setup one of the largest marketplaces (332,973 members and 40,267 items) for digital products, ranging from themes to audio clips to code.
March 21st, 2012 at 7:22 am
Hey There,
You have given some honest and unbiased information about selling designs on themeforest and other marketplaces by the same company. I completely agree that that the quiz is a big put off. As a freelancer, I want to be ale to signp, upload & sell, sell, sell.
I have to mention here, I have signed up with another similar website called GraphicMonk found on http://www.graphicmonk.com and they are worth checking out. They are still new and in beta testing mode but boy are they picking up speed. The site is easy to use, straight forward and apart from aloof that, they have me of the highest payment rates out there. Worth checking out totally.
I highly recommend them as hey don’t tie you in or penalize you for selling designs elsewhere whethere exclusive or non exclusive, you get the high rate if payment.
Check it out, I reckon someone should write a review about them.
Cheers.