Offering bonuses for a purchase

So, I just saw someone here offering a bonus item if you purchase one of their themes. The bonus in question is not an Envato marketplace item.

I thought this is not allowed (?) Should I report it, or has anything changed recently?

Note: posted in All Marketplaces, as it is clearly related to all of them…

digitalimpact said
So, I just saw someone here offering a bonus item if you purchase one of their themes. The bonus in question is not an Envato marketplace item.

I thought this is not allowed (?) Should I report it, or has anything changed recently?

Note: posted in All Marketplaces, as it is clearly related to all of them…

I saw the same thing the other day on an item offering something for free once purchased that was not available for sale – I agree with you – I dunno but lately a lot of things seem to of been allowed on the marketplaces I find astonishing….

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Jonathan

What about offering “free” plugins with a theme. The plugins are mine, they’re not sold anywhere else, it’s just a bonus you get when purchasing a theme. In my opinion that sort of “free extra” is fine.

In my opinion free extras should (and I think they are) be forbidden. It can start with small thingies like free image or free plugin and then everything can go to hell with “buy all my items and get a free kiss from my beautiful sister. Locals only”. Really, all kidding aside, there are many good reasons not to have this option and the first one is that this should be a fair market. If selfpromoting is forbidden why offering free items (which is a selfpromotion in a way) should be allowed? What free items should be allowed? How about “buy my item and I will return you 5 dollars”.

The problem is that once you start offering freebies with purchases it essentially becomes a bundle which is against the rules. If it is not included in the download file and isn’t something used in the theme as a feature or extension then I do not think it should be allowed.

Buy my wordpress theme and get my landing page / email free – or how about a free wordpress theme with the purchase of my wordpress theme… urgh.. gonna get ugly if we don’t sort this out.

I agree guys, gonna report it. This stuff can quickly degenerate and unbalance the marketplaces. Not good at all.

Thanks for the replies

I bought a couple of items that came with free bonus themes. Didn’t affect my decision to buy but I used one of free themes for a client’s site at a reduced price (yes I actually did)) so it actually did affect another author’s sales as I didn’t have to purchase a new theme.

CLINE123 said
[...] so it actually did affect another author’s sales as I didn’t have to purchase a new theme.

See? Right there…

Hope someone from staff read this already and is preparing an official answer…

I saw one such file, reported it to support a couple of weeks back, Support said thanks we will look at it, but that item is still there, and the author is offering ‘something extra for free’ “only if purchased without the prepaid credit”