Is Selling on Envato 'Insane' for Developers?

Published

January 25, 2013

14 Comments

As per Alex King‘s comment when reviewing the Mac App Store policies for selling and Envato’s marketplace:

The more I think about it, the more insane I think it is to choose to do business with Envato given their current terms.

In order to put your products in their marketplace with a semi-reasonable revenue share you are choosing to completely subjugate your business to their whims.

You can’t experiment with your product pricing, you can’t try other marketplaces, you can’t sell direct to your customers… you can’t even choose your own software license!

He compares the two in light of revenue share, ability to sell the product on your own site, and the freedom to choose software licensing and price:

Now, you have to remember that the Mac App Store is functionally similar to Envato’s but also fundamentally different in a lot of ways. Some will look at it as comparing apples to apples in principle but apples to oranges when you dig in deeper.

I think the comparison is a fascinating look at what other organizations and marketplaces do in terms of their relationship between the developer and distributor. It’s worth looking into especially as people dig into the differences between the WordPress Foundation and Envato pragmatically and philosophically.

I personally have a paid iPhone app in the store and it’s been a fascinating first-hand look into that ecosystem so I could spend a bit of time sharing those details but I do not have any experience selling anything on ThemeForest and the Envato properties so it wouldn’t be completely fair since my empirical perspective would be obviously limited.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it fair to compare the two side-by-side or is it a good “nice to know” as we work through the kinks of licensing, fair business practices, and the WordPress economy as a whole? Or should we find a model here via Apple and their obvious financial success?

The fact is that developers have made their living (and then some) on both marketplaces and there’s opportunity for all. If we never heard of any success stories then I’d definitely have issue.

There are 14 comments

January 25, 2013 #

Joseph Mainwaring (@theaccordance)

Wow it’s been a war this week between WP and Envato! While I haven’t sold on the platform, I have definitely entertained the idea as I’m laying out my future plans (non WP .

So I’m curious, if the consensus is that Envato is unfair, what other alternatives exist?
- January 25, 2013 #
  
  Nathaniel
  
  Selling independently = There are other marketplaces out there, but none that seem to have quite the same reputation or quality of work. My question is whether it’s more profitable for me to selling independently, or to sell on Envato. I feel you could sell less quality work on Envato and get away with it. Standard Theme is a good example of a great product that’s sold on its own.
January 25, 2013 #

Cais

Using the same comparisons, and not having a horse in the race to begin with, selling via Apple works well and if I was doing iOS development I would have zero issue selling through their marketplace.

Envato on the other hand has never impressed me with those comparison points. The developer share is minimal and only improves with restrictive conditions?! Another huge sticking point is no control over price; and, to be honest, given those points the one of licensing has never really been one of concern.

I see the licensing issues from this view point:

If I were to “list” an item with Envato I would actually consider it more along the lines of a “Work For Hire” model rather than a means to distribute my works. Especially since I do not set the price; and, the revenue stream created under this system I liken more to residual income along the line of royalties.

I would no longer control the license of the product nor how or where it would be distributed. Now, does the Envato license indicate this is a correct assumption? I have no idea (tl;dr … and I’m not a lawyer), but considering I would see it as a product “sold” to a marketplace with compensation being reflected as a percentage of future sales (a common model seen on the WordPress Jobs pages), the license of the product would no longer be my concern. They are licensing the product for _sales from their marketplace_, not from mine.
January 25, 2013 #

Rarst

Apple stores have terms believed to be incompatible with GPL and had more than one incident over that. Curiously that doesn’t make WP, that has GPL app for iOS, cry in outrage over it.

I had seen many opinions voiced in discussions this week, but what I don’t see is crowd of poor Envato-exploited developers begging to save them from evil clutches. 🙂
- January 25, 2013 #
  
  Yak
  
  I don’t think anyone wants to save Envato but the people buying themes from them.
January 25, 2013 #

Rick

The comparison is not like with like, one should compare Envato with theme.wordpress.com.

Theme.WP.com

Developers Revenue – 50% and no share of hosting revenue generated

Sell on your site – No (it is one-off to WP to ensure it runs with their hosting service)

Who chooses your license – WP

Who sets your price – WP

Of course there are also many more questions one could ask, which would make it clear why many prefer to sell on Envato.
- January 25, 2013 #
  
  Rarst
  
  I don’t think I’ve seen terms that developers get for premium themes on wp.com but at least some of them continue to sell same themes directly just fine.
  
  I don’t think Theme Forest to wp.com is viable comparison either. It’s product vs service.
January 25, 2013 #

mor10

I got an interesting email yesterday from a person new to WordPress who was looking for good themes to start off with. He referred to the premium theme environment as a “WordPress Bazaar” and I tend to agree. If you do a search for themes or theme reviews these days, what you usually end up with is tons of articles of “reviews” and lists that in reality are just long lists of affiliate links to Theme Forest and other theme foundries. This explains the success of these foundries and also explains why they are so popular – they pay people to push their products. Considering the recent debacle it is worth asking the question whether the bazaar atmosphere is a good thing for the community. Personally I don’t think so because many great projects are drowned out by the big entities and the end users are left with often horribly biased information about what is good and what is not.
January 26, 2013 #

Tim Hyde

Haven’t yet published on tf but they seem to dominate so much that I have regularly thought about it.

I guess you have to congratulate them on their success in online marketing. As you say every blog of the 10 best themes simply lists a set entirely from tf. These blogs are clearly only there to collect their tiny affiliate fees, leaving theme developers with even less of the envy to lolly.

To the newbie too, it’s easy to think this is the only place to go for products.

Maybe it’s a case of “can’t beat em, so join em” as some note able authors have done so recently.
January 26, 2013 #

Josh Wagner

I gotta say, I’d sell independently if at all possible. Envato’s GPL issues aside, any terms that restrict the control you have over your creative work frustrate me. There are some things for your protection, but they can be misused quickly for exploitation.

Envato seems to be much more concerned about moving product with little legal trouble than acting as a place for creative themes to be found. That’s their business model, so I can’t fault them for that. But I’m not willing to give up all my rights to my own IP just to make a few bucks. I’d rather control it and make a few less at the start.

And the App Store is the only (legal) place to get/sell apps for iOS devices out there. So, they can set their own rules really. You can sell WP themes anywhere, producers are just choosing ThemeForest over the other alternatives. I like the parallel though, puts the numbers in perspective.
January 26, 2013 #

Dan

This comparison with the app store is useful for how it points up the totalistic model at Envato. They pit the author’s freedom against the author’s reward and explicity require authors to sell their freedom by adopting the split GPL. Then they strongly incentivize selling all your remaining freedom.

The fact that a few, good WP theme developers make a lot of money from this deal is NO argument in favor of it either ethically or as a business model. The “I’m making money here, so back off” argument does not reflect any kind of market reality.

To me the larger picture and longer term view is this: for the most part, Envato pollutes the theme marketplace with a lot of junk that crowds out superior products. It acts as a weed or parasite. This does harm to the WP brand and long term viability of the WP ecosystem. If the only good thing about Themeforest is a few devs who can be pulled away by pressure from the WPF, perhaps the ends justify the means.

The “means” in this case are the dispute over split licensing and the letter vs. spirit of the GPL. As a point of law and author rights, I feel Envato’s interpretation is valid, but they are using it to take over author’s rights, “to protect them.” I don’t like that usage, so I’m not particularly upset by what Matt is doing, and I also have no problem — and possibly a growing preference — for his interpretation of the GPL. At the same time I have concerns about his own Envato-like self-interested leveraging of assets no one else has, but so far this hasn’t been done in ways that I feel push past irritating and concerning but avoidable to totalistic and reflective of a higher value for profit than quality.

Just my two cents from the peanut gallery.
January 28, 2013 #

Gavin

For a start, ThemeForest is not the only game in town.

It is one of the best however. To be apart of that, feature on their homepage, in their promotions and press, there is a price to pay.

Again, they are no the only horse in the race, the AppStore is. If you want to get ‘your’ app downloaded a million times onto an iPhone or Ipad, you only have one option.

If you feel that it is unfair to pay that price, go somewhere else, but this stinks of those developers who see other developers making Millions of dollars kicking up a fuss because in reality they are not making anything.

IF you want everything that goes into a theme to be GPL then you will see a rise in what already exists out there, sites that offer every single WooTheme for $15.

These sites do nothing to help the WP community. If you have been anywhere near that community you will know that Envato have had a massive part to play in it.
February 4, 2013 #

Slobodan Manic

It’s not insane if it’s the best way for a lot of developers to make money. And I don’t really have a problem, because if you’re a developer selling at Envato (or planning to) you absolutely know what you’re getting into and you’re making an informed business decision. Calling that insane is insulting. The fact that a marketplace with so many bad items is the best option is not cool.

But how come no one is talking about buying at “Envato’s Bazaars”, most of all ThemeForest? A lot of WordPress publishers don’t know what they’re getting into when they buy a theme that tattoos shortcodes all over their content, handles SEO or custom posts types for them, don’t validate the options etc.

Those people will get in trouble eventually, and then, since they probably (and rightfully) don’t care about the differences between core, themes and plugins, it’s the entire WordPress experience they will blame.

So, the branch that should be used for sitting on is being cut off, while everyone is discussing which fertilizer to use (I’ll hate that analogy as soon as I post this comment 🙂 ). In long term, I don’t see how that’s good for anyone.
April 13, 2018 #

Mansour

i will not never ever buy anything from fucking envato market, they are thief, they locked my account just because i asked fro refund my money after they sold to me shit theme and they didn’t want give me my money and when i asked PayPal they just locked my account in envato market, or maybe its better to stop use wordpress at all.

How do you stay on top of your WordPress game?