Just doesn't make sense

One thing that would be nice is to take the $30k one would have to sell to reach 50% down to say $10k, I would hope one day I’d look back at my earnings and see I’ve made $30k but at the rate most templates sell that would take quite some time.

Other than that I love TF, I think its a great way to make passive income even if I only made enough to pay my cell phone bill one month its more than I previously had. But with the way things are currently going I’ll definitely be doing better than that

Costs include…

site hosting, mucho advertising, maintenance, me!, reviewers, blog authors, credit card processing, the dev staff, etc.

And sure – there’s some profit. It takes many many people to create these marketplaces. Don’t Collis and the gang deserve something for their time?

It adds up quickly. There’s no use kicking a tired duck. It will be discussed – come January. No promises, but everyone will talk it over. That I can promise you.

Yes well we are talking solely about TF, and if it’s costing too much to have a blog author to make posts on the TF blog, then maybe they shouldn’t have one? Ok so lets say there are 30 posts per month, if they take an hour a piece and they are paying $25/hour that’s still only $750/month. Unless of course they are doing that thing like on nettuts and such where they pay $150. Which is a very nice thing to do, but I’m talking about an efficient profitable business model. Many people, including me, would PAY THEM to post on one of their blogs.

I’m just saying, I’m basing this upon the fact the TF has a very efficient and cost effective business model. If they are constantly paying TEAMS of developers to develop sites like this, then they aren’t being very cost effective. One good developer could build/program and maintain a site like this (by maintain I mean maintain the code not the servers). Even I’ve built systems more complex then this on my own time, and I wouldn’t even call myself a professional programmer. However if you are talking ebay or amazon with much more complex systems, then you will need teams of developers. I guess I’m not sure what you mean by dev staff. Building and working on systems similar to this myself, I just don’t understand why you would an entire team of people working on it 24/7. There’s only so much that can be done. Then once all the bugs are out, it’s just a matter of paying people to make one time additions.

Sure this might not be how TF is doing things. I’m just stating my opinion on just how I would do things to be the most cost effective and efficient as possible.

BTW I ’m not trying to say they didn’t do an amazing job with TF, because they def. did I love the site from what I have seen of it. I just noticed right a way that the commission seems a little high for what you’re getting. Compared to other marketplace sites.

And clarklab. That’s kind of part of my point. It’s unfortunate that because they are the only site like this with traffic that they have to charge so much. However on the other end of things, I would probably be doing the EXACT same thing until a similar site like this came out. My point was just that I just felt designers should be getting paid more for their work!! Which it sounds like most if not all of you already realize and agree with.

@nickclarson – It was pretty amusing to read your post because you sound exactly like I did most recently a few days ago. When you run the numbers, calculate everything out, ThemeForest simply makes a large profit from author’s work.

Like clarklab said, there really isn’t any other competition. BUT , unless you have run a business the scale of envato, you really don’t know all the little and big things they pay for. Those numbers add up really fast as I’m sure you know.

Jeffrey said something awhile back that I try to keep reminding myself about… ThemeForest is one of the only market places that is NOT hanging on by a thread. All the other places that pay higher commission can’t afford to keep going let alone expand.

In the end, ThemeForest / envato is a business. They are making sure they can pay their bills, employees, make a profit and set some money aside for expansion. As much as I would love getting 65% and think that author’s do deserve more… I would much rather get 50% and see ThemeForest continue to grow rapidly so that my sales also grow just as fast and in turn I make more money at the end of the day.

Also remember, envato has a proven modal of this that has been running for years (FlashDen). They’ve spent money on their research and figured out the “sweet spot” of the market. I’m pretty pessimistic about these pricing structures but after a lot of thought, I think I will just trust them.

Oh and if you know that someone is illegally sharing your files, let them know. They are stealing from envato as well as you and at least they have a legal department that can do something about it.

I def. agree that with such a big business there are going to be many other costs involved. However as a giant company I do think it’s in your best interest to run an efficient, cost effective business. There are ways to minimize spending/costs while maximizing profit even if you do run a large scale company. There has to be, otherwise what’s the point in becoming a big business anyway? If I knew that I could make more money on my own with maybe one or two other people I would never want to turn myself in to a big company. So there’s obviously profit advantaged and other reasons to forming something big rather than just staying small. Either that or someone made a big mistake along the way.

So I guess that just brings me back to what I calculated before. There should be no reason in my opinion that they aren’t churning at least a decent profit off this site like I calculated before. Regardless of if they are a big company or one person. If they aren’t that leads me to believe they have some flaws in their “big company” model and maybe need to rethink a few things.

I hope they do have things figured out. I’m honestly hoping they HAVE spent money and time on research to figure this out like many people have been saying.

Guys,

Whatever you calculate and say; it has all been thought, planned and put on the run by Envato pretty well.

So speaking of Themeforest, I personally believe this is the best we get. For more, I assume we will have to wait and see how more popular the community goes, how more we do on sales.

For FlashDen(which is a year older than TF), I know plenty of guys who made already over $50.000.

Nick,

Do you have any files on here to sell?

Just curious

Yes I do, that’s part of the reason I was curious about this.

TF is giving away 50% for referrals. I guess that sums it up.

Nick,

I have something you might be interested in.

Here’s my email if you want to contact me.

caboudreau@gmail.com

Nick, what files do you have? I don’t see any in your profile.

I don’t really see how you can disagree with a system you haven’t even used yet. Get a few GOOD templates up here and see how it goes for you. What you don’t make in higher commission you could make up for in a high sell rate.

I’ve had a great experience so far, and since this is just a side hobby for me, the extra money is just plain extra and really nice to have every month.

Give ThemeForest a shot!