This insider’s experience has been shared by Henry Rise, the CEO of ThemeRex, Power Elite Author on Themeforest.

内幕专家的经验已经由Themeforest的杰出作者ThemeRex的首席执行官Henry Rise分享。

Five years is a very long period in anyone’s life, especially if you are talking about the life of the IT business. Five years in the IT business could be regarded as 20 years in any non-virtual business, because the market is developing at such a fast pace. WordPress does not wait for anyone. It grows and grows very quickly, so the competition gets tougher and tougher.

五年对于每个人来说都是很长的时期，尤其是当您谈论IT业务的生命时。 在IT业务中，五年可以被视为任何非虚拟业务中的20年，因为市场的发展速度如此之快。 WordPress不会等待任何人。 它的成长和发展非常Swift，因此竞争越来越激烈。

Just keep in mind the fact that WP themes are now taking almost 85% of entire market on ThemeForest. It is huge. Not only people find it easy to develop WordPress themes, but the world seems to love WordPress above all the other CMS platforms. ThemeForest authors have to make necessary changes in their strategies, like it or not. Aggressive tactics that multipurpose themes used to jump to the top of the selling lists have resulted into a decrease of sales for the teams who placed their entire business solely on Envato’s hands. Choosing not to run a marketing campaign for your brand, regardless of whether you’re an elite seller or whether you’re just looking to learn WordPress theme development, does not seem reasonable nor affordable in today’s competitive atmosphere.

请记住，WP主题现在占据了ThemeForest几乎整个市场的85％。 很大 不仅人们发现开发WordPress主题很容易，而且全世界似乎比其他所有CMS平台更喜欢WordPress。 ThemeForest作者必须对策略进行必要的更改，无论是否喜欢。 过去，多用途主题跃居销售榜首的攻击性策略已导致将整个业务完全放在Envato手上的团队的销售下降。 在当今竞争激烈的环境中，无论您是精英卖家还是只想学习WordPress主题开发 ，选择不对品牌进行营销活动似乎都不合理，也负担不起。

使用ThemeForest的优点： (Advantages of working with ThemeForest:)

I am sure everyone knows it, but it has to be said anyway. There is really no competition when it comes to building a theme/template business (actually building a business, not just creating a theme once in awhile). No other marketplace has the stability and security in the future that Envato gives to its vendors.

我确信每个人都知道，但是无论如何都必须说出来。 建立主题/模板业务(实际上是建立业务，而不仅仅是一次创建主题)确实没有竞争。 Envato将来会给供应商带来其他稳定性和安全性的市场。

1) Huge traffic. Your themes get exposed to lots of relevant people. Not just some random traffic, but those who are already familiar with the topic (and sometimes know more than you do about it). All you have is to convince them you have a good product.

1)交通流量大。 您的主题暴露给许多相关人员。 不仅是一些随机流量，还包括那些已经熟悉该主题的人(有时他们比您知道的更多)。 您所要做的就是说服他们您拥有好的产品。

You’d be surprised how quickly your website grows in monthly traffic. Starting from scratch ThemeRex.net has grown to 200K visits per month in no time. However, don’t get to overwhelmed with that – most of that traffic comes from demos. The majority of “your customers” never get to see your homepage. So make sure you actually use that traffic. Show them more templates on demos, or use banners, etc.

您会惊讶于您的网站的每月流量增长速度如何。 从零开始， ThemeRex.net很快就增加到每月20万次访问。 但是，不要为此感到不知所措–大多数流量都来自演示。 大多数“您的客户”永远都看不到您的主页。 因此，请确保您实际使用了该流量。 在演示中向他们显示更多模板，或使用横幅等。

2) The choices are really yours. I am not talking about the strategy here (multipurpose vs. micro-niche themes, for example). I am talking about the freedom of choosing the prices for your products. It is totally up to you, whether to join the “race to the bottom” for the lowest price and sell your half-a-year work for $1 in revenue just to build your name and climb to the top. Or, go in the opposite direction, like some at the high end of the charts, setting your price at hundreds per theme.

2)选择实际上是您的。 我在这里不是在讨论策略(例如，多用途与微型利基主题)。 我说的是为您的产品选择价格的自由。 是否以最低的价格加入“竞逐低谷”并以1美元的收入出售半年的工作完全是由您自己决定，以树立自己的名声并攀登顶峰。 或者，朝相反的方向(如图表的高端)，将每个主题的价格设置为数百。

I can’t speak for others, but at the start we did not have that much of experience of selling themes on marketplaces or elsewhere, so we had to rely on Envato. And there were just two ways to choose from – Multipurpose theme or lots of micro-niche templates. The choice was obvious for us. We simply had no funds nor experience to wrap up something shiny for the world to see, so we’ve done lots of quality micro-niche templates people could use to create their businesses on. The prices are moderate so anyone can afford ThemeRex WP Themes.

我不能代表他人，但是一开始我们没有在市场或其他地方销售主题的丰富经验，因此我们不得不依靠Envato。 仅有两种方法可供选择–多功能主题或许多微型细分模板。 对于我们来说，选择是显而易见的。 我们只是没有资金也没有经验来包装一些让人眼前一亮的东西，所以我们做了很多高质量的微生态模板，人们可以用它们来创建自己的业务。 价格适中，因此任何人都可以负担得起ThemeRex WP主题 。

3) Another big choice is the exclusivity. Some choose the non-exclusive method of selling their themes everywhere, not just Envato, and are happy with 50% revenue. But most are sticking to Envato and selling their themes only there. The fee then depends on the gross sales, but you can get it as low as 12.5%.

3)另一个大选择是排他性。 有些人选择了非排他性的方法在世界各地出售其主题，而不仅仅是Envato，他们对50％的收入感到满意。 但是大多数人都坚持Envato，只在那卖他们的主题。 然后，费用取决于总销售额，但您可以低至12.5％。

Personally, we’ve never considered any other possibility than selling themes on ThemeForest. We’ve given Creative Market a shot, but it was nothing like ThemeForest, so there was not decision to make for our business.

就个人而言，除了在ThemeForest上出售主题外，我们从未考虑过任何其他可能性。 我们给了创意市场一个机会，但它与ThemeForest完全不同，因此没有为我们的业务做决定。

One thing you should not follow us in though, is marketing. We’ve depended solely on Envato for a very long time. Five years without proper marketing – can you believe that? Just quality products and premium support, nothing else. Now who else could give you 35K in sales except for Envato on such terms?

您不应该关注我们的一件事是营销。 我们长期以来一直完全依赖Envato。 五年没有适当的营销–您能相信吗？ 优质的产品和优质的支持，别无其他。 现在除了Envato以外，还有谁还能给您3.5万的销售额？

4) Envato does care about you being recognized as an elite/power elite author. Lots of perks, badges, wall of fame inclusion, interviews on their blog and other significant boosts. Like for example the new theme boost — your theme gets on Envato’s homepage when it is released and gets super-exposure in the first days.

4)Envato确实关心您是否被认可为精英/强力作家。 许多特权 ，徽章， 成名墙，博客上的采访以及其他显着提升。 例如，新的主题增强功能-您的主题在发布时会出现在Envato的主页上，并在开始的第一天获得超级曝光。

At least, that is how it used to happen. Now it does seem to take more time and effort to happen. Envato team does have to manage millions of requests with the number of vendors and customers growing.

至少，这就是过去的样子。 现在看来确实需要更多的时间和精力。 随着供应商和客户数量的增长，Envato团队确实必须管理数百万个请求。

5) You get to raise good money on Support! Though quality of support does matter a lot.

5)您可以通过支持筹集到丰厚的资金！ 尽管支持的质量确实很重要。

Ever since customers have had to pay for support, the support department practically pays for their own salaries, which has worked out really good for us.

自从客户必须支付支持费用以来，支持部门实际上就为他们自己的薪水支付费用，这对我们来说确实非常有用。

6) Finally, last but not least, the community. You have an opportunity to talk to real developers like yourself. You can learn from them, you can share thoughts and pick up some interesting ideas yourself, and let’s be honest, not so many of us invent things nowadays.

6)最后，最后但并非最不重要的是，社区。 您有机会与像您这样的真正的开发人员交谈。 您可以向他们学习，可以分享想法并自己提出一些有趣的想法，老实说，如今我们中没有多少人发明了东西。

On one hand Envato has become a big copying machine that has lots of authors of “the second and third waves” as we call them. Those who see a prosperous business idea and quickly adopt it for themselves. But again, it seems like the market has enough room for everyone so far, it is just harder to get to the first place spots.

一方面，Envato已成为一台大型复印机，有许多我们称之为“第二波和第三波”的作者。 那些看到一个繁荣的商业构想并Swift为自己所接受的人。 但是，到目前为止，似乎市场已经为每个人提供了足够的空间，要到达首位更困难。

I am not sure whether we have suffered from this significantly. But the mere fact that I don’t know this for sure actually proves that the impact isn’t that big. I think it is mostly due to the fact that we’ve concentrated on the success of our business in general, not any specific product. Quantity vs. versatility (multipurpose-ness) sort of thing.

我不确定我们是否遭受了很大的痛苦。 但是我不知道这一点的事实实际上证明了影响并不大。 我认为这主要是由于我们专注于整体业务的成功，而不是任何特定产品。 数量与多功能性(多用途性)之类的东西。

ThemeForest的缺点： (Disadvantages of ThemeForest:)

I guess, that we are slowly coming to these points that could be referred as disadvantages. A one should always keep in mind that some might actually find diametrically the opposite. Especially if you ask a developer’s web studio or marketing agency. Not even talking about vendors that use different strategies on selling their themes. I can’t claim this is the one and only approach towards reading the situation, this is just ThemeRex story and our insider’s opinion based on 5 years of working with Envato every day. And trust me, we love ThemeForest, we understand it clearly that we have to thank Envato for making good money and making our life easier. Regardless, there are certain points that should be mentioned in this section.

我猜想，我们正在慢慢地谈到这些可以称为缺点的点。 一个人应该始终牢记，有些人实际上可能发现截然相反的事实。 特别是如果您询问开发人员的网络工作室或营销机构。 甚至没有谈论在销售主题时使用不同策略的供应商。 我不能说这是阅读情况的唯一方法，这只是ThemeRex的故事，也是我们与Envato一起工作5年的基础上我们内部人士的观点。 相信我，我们爱ThemeForest，我们清楚地了解到，我们必须感谢Envato赚了很多钱，使我们的生活更轻松。 无论如何，本节中应提及某些要点。

1) High Standards. This seems a little complicated at first, even frustrating at times, especially after a few hard and soft rejects, but what does not kill us, does in fact make us stronger. Like it or not, Envato has to have these high standards to maintain their level of quality and avoid condescending looks from the WP community.

1)高标准。 起初这似乎有点复杂，有时甚至令人沮丧，尤其是在几次硬碰硬的拒绝之后，但是不能杀死我们的实际上却使我们变得更强大。 无论喜欢与否，Envato必须拥有这些高标准才能保持其质量水平并避免WP社区的外观低调。

I think everyone knows about the standards. It is necessary and good, there is no arguing here. People have to love Envato, thus people have to love the products that Envato authors. Sometimes, I get the feeling like ThemeForest has this temptation to press the “red button” and kick out everyone who somehow does not meet the profile. But that is just a conjecture, nothing more.

我想每个人都知道标准。 这是必要且良好的，这里没有争论。 人们必须爱Envato，因此人们必须爱Envato作者的产品。 有时，我会感觉到ThemeForest有这样一种诱惑：按下“红色按钮”，踢出所有不知何故不符合个人资料的人。 但这只是一个推测，仅此而已。

I’ve seen how these guys work every day to improve the quality of their products and pour enormous sums of money into marketing. Just get it once and for all, the world has changed already. There is no room for talk like “devaluing the product” by getting 50 themes in one for the same price. The standards are getting higher and higher (I think that Envato might come up with new standards really soon) and vendors have to learn to adopt. The strongest will survive.

我已经看到这些人每天如何工作，以提高他们的产品质量，并在营销中投入大量资金。 一劳永逸，世界已经改变。 通过以相同的价格将50个主题组合成一个主题，就没有说话的余地，例如“贬值产品”。 这些标准越来越高(我认为Envato可能很快就会提出新的标准)，供应商必须学会采用。 最强者将生存。

2) Here comes a real “disadvantage” everyone has voluntarily sign up for – the faceless factor. This does not have such dramatic effect as it did in the old days, but still is a significant factor. Customers buy from Envato, not from your brand. We used to have hundreds of support tickets addressing us as the Envato support team, which does not help the brand-building, not at all. Especially for the new vendors.

2)每个人都自愿报名参加的真正“劣势”是一个不为人知的因素。 它没有以前那样显着的效果，但是仍然是一个重要因素。 客户从Envato购买，而不是从您的品牌购买。 作为Envato支持团队，我们以前有数百张支持票，向我们致辞，这完全没有帮助建立品牌。 特别是对于新的供应商。

However, we fully understand that it is the price we have to pay for all the opportunities Envato has given us. We have to learn how to stand out from the crowd on our own. Start doing some marketing at some point!

但是，我们完全理解，这是我们必须为Envato提供的所有机会付出的代价。 我们必须学习如何独自在人群中脱颖而出。 从某个时候开始做一些营销！

3) This corresponds with the previous statement, but it is seldom very pleasant to understand that you are just a cog in the machine.

3)这与前面的陈述相对应，但了解到您只是机器中的一副齿轮，这很少让人感到高兴。

The factor that does bug me here is actually not being just a link in the big chain, but the fact that you can’t actually influence the big picture. You just come to the community forum, which by the way seems rather abandoned and see vendors complain about the drop of sales and other recent topics with no reaction from Envato whatsoever. Not even some forum moderator. And I honestly feel sorry for these people. ThemeForest used to care more about its authors, not just the top authors, and it might be a big problem. Authors are the engine of Envato. With this part I agree.

在这里困扰我的因素实际上并不只是大链条中的一个链接，而是您实际上无法影响大图景这一事实。 您只是来到社区论坛，这个社区论坛似乎很荒废，看到供应商抱怨销售下降以及其他最近的话题，而Envato却没有任何React。 甚至没有论坛主持人。 老实说，我为这些人感到抱歉。 ThemeForest过去常常更关心其作者，而不仅仅是主要作者，这可能是一个大问题。 作者是Envato的引擎。 我同意这一部分。

4) This leads to another big issue — the prices. It seems fair that everyone gets to set their own prices on their own products. However, this made things very complicated. Some authors abused the system to get their products listed as the most expensive items, listing them at simply ludicrous prices. Or the themes that are being sold with almost 0% revenue for the author, just for marketing purposes. And that’s not even talking about the multi-skin templates that in fact could be used for building lots of websites for the price of a one.

4)这导致了另一个大问题-价格。 每个人都可以在自己的产品上设置自己的价格，这似乎很公平。 但是，这使事情变得非常复杂。 一些作者滥用了该系统，使他们的产品列为最昂贵的商品，以简直荒唐的价格将它们列出。 或仅出于营销目的就出售给作者的收益几乎为0％的主题。 而且，这甚至没有在讨论实际上可以用于以一个价格构建许多网站的多皮肤模板。

I have an ambiguous opinion about this. From one point of view, I am deeply convinced that everyone is responsible for their own actions and decisions. No one stands in your way of doing the same and succeeding. You could be been their first to win the market over in your favor, so you should not not claim somebody else’s win as your personal loss. However, the “game of thrones” (prices) teaches us one simple thing. Lots of people die! Well, in this case they don’t literally die, of course, but they do end up left out, cheated, and disappointed. Price chaos has never resulted in something good.

我对此有an昧的意见。 从一种观点来看，我深信每个人都应对自己的行为和决定负责。 没有人会阻碍您的成功与成功。 您可能是他们第一个以您的利益赢得市场的人，因此您不应该将别人的胜利当作您的个人损失。 但是，“权力游戏”(价格)告诉我们一件事。 很多人死了！ 好吧，在这种情况下，它们当然并没有死，但是最终却被排除在外，被骗了，失望了。 价格混乱从来没有带来好的结果。

5). Another huge thing that should not be overlooked is the starting point. It is incredibly hard to enter ThemeForest right now. It is the time when big players are starting to really feel some shoulder shoving in the ranks. Starting a new business at this point seems like it could be difficult.

5)。 另一个不容忽视的重大事情是起点。 现在很难进入ThemeForest。 这是大型球员开始真正感受到行列中的推shoulder的时候。 此时开始新业务似乎很困难。

We felt it when we started two our partner projects (power elite AncoraThemes and elite author AxiomThemes). It wasn’t that easy to jump into a fresh start in 2015 , I can’t even imagine how it is to start right now. Especially when Avada alone made more sales in April 2017 than all our three accounts with 300+ themes overall.

当我们开始两个合作伙伴项目时，我们就感受到了这一点(实力精英AncoraThemes和精英作家AxiomThemes )。 想要在2015年重新开始并不是那么容易，我什至无法想象现在是如何开始的。 尤其是当仅Avada在2017年4月的销售额就超过了我们三个总主题超过300个的帐户。

With the price markdown tactics and the overflowing market of quality products, adding an extra value seems rather challenging to me. And don’t imagine you can get some answer from Envato. Even Power Elite authors have to stand in line to get their questions answered. Sometimes it takes up to three days to get a simple yes-or-no email answered.

随着降价策略和优质产品市场的泛滥，增加额外的价值似乎对我来说具有挑战性。 而且不要以为您可以从Envato那里得到一些答案。 甚至Power Elite的作者也必须排队才能回答他们的问题。 有时最多需要三天才能收到简单的是或否电子邮件答复。

6). The last but not least. Or perhaps the main “con”. You can’t survive without marketing now. Like or not, you are going to lose your positions on Envato without making extra efforts to get your themes exposed. The numbers don’t lie, ThemeForest needs to get at least 2 extra million people buy their WP products in order to keep the same level of the market it is right now. Let me say that again for you. Two million people a year just to keep it the same! And who knows how large the demand could grow. WordPress usage is only growing, and people are dependent more and more on the internet and websites, but that still seems like a huge number to think about, anyway.

6)。 最后但同样重要的是。 或主要的“骗局”。 现在没有营销就无法生存。 不管您是否喜欢，您都将失去在Envato的职位，而无需付出额外的努力来展示您的主题。 这个数字并不在话下，ThemeForest需要至少让另外2百万人购买他们的WP产品，以保持目前的市场水平。 我再为你说一遍。 仅仅为了保持不变，每年就有200万人 ！ 谁知道需求会增长多少。 WordPress的使用仅在增长，人们越来越依赖Internet和网站，但是无论如何，这似乎仍然是一个庞大的数字。

包装全部。 (Wrapping it all up.)

I can summarize that we we’ve been glad to be a part of such great community of Envato vendors and build our business around it. There are certainly some drawbacks and minor disadvantages, just like in any other business that involves a lot of people. We are happy with all the decisions we’ve made concerning ThemeForest, and I hope that it is going to continue like that!

我可以总结一下，我们很高兴成为如此庞大的Envato供应商社区的一员，并以此为基础开展业务。 当然，还有一些缺点和不足未成年人，就像在涉及很多人的任何其他业务。 我们对我们已经完成的有关ThemeForest的所有决定感到满意，我希望它会像这样继续下去！

If you feel like telling your story, whether you agree with what we’ve experienced, or disagree, please go for it in the comment section!

如果您想讲自己的故事，无论您同意我们的经历还是不同意，请在评论部分中继续进行！

翻译自: https://www.sitepoint.com/pros-cons-selling-themeforest/