WordPress Category Pricing Changes

ja32 said
... You can call the increases only 5, 10, and $15, but in reality they are 14, 29, and 43% – enough that as a buyer who visits this site regularly, I shouldn’t have been surprised by these changes.

I think the pricing are too old and in the past 3 years, there is a massive additions made by the authors which happened gradually. Since pricing can’t be made to increase gradually (to avoid confusing buyers) the only way is long jumps like the current one. Not exactly sure but that is my guess. Also It feels long jump only when we see it in percentage.

Great work guys! I’m new to creating wordpress themes, but I also like to think I’m a quick learner.

Computer Science student (3rd year) by profession, and I must say I couldn’t be more excited now about creating some themes for themeforest!

IulianN said

RuvenThemes said
However, I think some recently approved WP themes were left out, so it would be cool if somebody could check that

+1, my last theme is still $35

Same for me on my latest one – all others were updated – just noticed

ja32 said
You can call the increases only 5, 10, and $15, but in reality they are 14, 29, and 43% – enough that as a buyer who visits this site regularly, I shouldn’t have been surprised by these changes.

Just see it the other way round Paying a developer for a website that is as good as these themes you usually have to pay at least 2000$, probably much more. So instead of paying only 2% of that price you now pay 3%. Still sounds like a good deal to me ;D

I think this is a good move for everyone. Authors earn a little more and customers (at least mine) will get even better support, since I plan to put most of the additional money in support staff. And if sales go down and I dont earn more, then the customer still get better support, because less people buying = less support requests = more time for you. win/win if you ask me ;D

Kriesi said

ja32 said
You can call the increases only 5, 10, and $15, but in reality they are 14, 29, and 43% – enough that as a buyer who visits this site regularly, I shouldn’t have been surprised by these changes.

Just see it the other way round Paying a developer for a website that is as good as these themes you usually have to pay at least 2000$, probably much more. So instead of paying only 2% of that price you now pay 3%. Still sounds like a good deal to me ;D

I think this is a good move for everyone. Authors earn a little more and customers (at least mine) will get even better support, since I plan to put most of the additional money in support staff. And if sales go down and I dont earn more, then the customer still get better support, because less people buying = less support requests = more time for you. win/win if you ask me ;D

Fair enough, they probably could have announced this outside the forum, you got a point there

We can argue all day about whether this is good or not… but for me, the proof will be in the pudding. If sales volume stays constant, it proves that the market will bear the price increase; If sales volume decreases significantly (to the extent where total sales revenue actually decreases), the market will essentially be saying that it doesn’t tolerate the increase. Naturally, this will take time to really get a good read on this though… power buyers might be pissed off at first, sellers might be ecstatic (or in some cases, irritated), but only time and statistics will tell.

So, I’d personally love to see some rough percentage statistics of ‘before’ and ‘after’ in a month or two. Any chance we can get something like that (I know the marketplace has done this in the past… they are remarkably transparent with this stuff from time to time).

I’d gladly share my own numbers as well! It’s always fun to see how the marketplace as a whole is doing though. Just percentages would be cool – ie: 18% increase in total sales. 10% increase in units sold.

PS – on the note of power buyers… what if we had a sort of “power buyer” perk where once you cross over a certain threshold of dollars spent here, you get a permanent discount?

Kriesi said
Authors earn a little more and customers (at least mine) will get even better support, since I plan to put most of the additional money in support staff. And if sales go down and I dont earn more, then the customer still get better support, because less people buying = less support requests = more time for you. win/win if you ask me ;D

A huge +1 on this point; My buyers will also ultimately get better support out of this move.

Most of the top authors will simply see the price increase as a mandate to improve overall product quality and customer support… which, and I only speak for myself and the authors I chat with, we already spend a huge amount of time and money on already. This is a huge departure from the ThemeForest of 2 or 3 years ago where product support was never really taken seriously. That’s an awesome thing for buyers if you ask me… and well worth the price bump if I were an independent developer.

ja32 said
I understand that the authors need to earn more $ – they/you deserve it. The problem I have is that, from a buyer standpoint, I would have liked to be made aware of the increases. If themeforest would have put something on their site such as “Effective 6/4/2012, prices to WP themes will increase by 14 – 71% or 5 to $25” it wouldn’t have been an issue for me because I would have been prepared for it. If you are going to increase prices by that much, I feel you should definitely make it a point to let your customers know about it.

I have to agree. The prices are very accurate and long overdue, but consumers don’t like to be surprised by big price increases regardless of whether they’re warranted or not. So hopefully we’ll have yearly increases from now on to soften the blow.

Nevertheless, I’m thrilled for WP authors and this is a tremendous thing for all those who’ve been advocating for price increases. And kudos to Envato for making it happen

Kriesi said
Fair enough, they probably could have announced this outside the forum, you got a point there

The most sensible thing I’ve heard in all these posts… That (pre-announcement) would have provided a really nice burst of sales and would have been a WIN -WIN for everybody… now, as said… time will tell.