Poor sales

I’m a bit disapointed in how things went so far on ThemeForest, we only had 6 sales in 2.5 wks with 6 decently good items for sale. I’m a bit afraid of the direction things seam to be going on TF, I hope it will not be a site filled only with artist/photographer/web designer portfolio sites or admins, those are the only ones that seam to make some sales. Anyway, just my frustrations on paper, I “held the presses” for a while before posting some more templates since there’s a lot of work put into these and seeing how things are going, we either start doing what the top sellers do or wait a couple months untill there’s a decent market out there.

Cheers and I hope you guys get more sales than we do

Oxy,

I think your expectations were a bit high…I can see why you were thinking higher sales…based off your success at Flashden. Basically FD is VERY established…where as Themeforest is doing very well…but I think still very far from being as great as it can be.

FD is the premier spot for stock Flash…and the web template niche is very large, and has been dominated by other sites for a while. I guess TF is still just finding its place…I am fairly confident that with time TF will grow to have a good market for all types of themes.

OXYLUSDESIGN – I took a look at your ThemeForest portfolio and my opinion on the matter would be your choice of complexity and target audience. The two templates that have turned a profit have been the simple, least complicated ones.

At this stage in ThemeForest.net’s life, I would guess that the majority of purchasers do not have a need for such complicated themes nor do they have the skills required to modify/manage such complicated themes. They are probably individuals looking to setup their own personal website or small businesses (like restaurants) that just need something simple.

I would stick with the simple and easy to customize themes for the time being. Those are also faster to produce.

Anyway, that’s just my thoughts.

In the last 2.5 weeks my template sold 58 times so its not TF’s fault. Yes the site is still getting off the ground but there is definitely still money to be made here. Plus, just think, as the site gets bigger, your templates will already be here, ready to be sold.

Hey guys, thanks for the responses, if you read carefully you might have noticed that I share your opinion, it seams very simple items, design portfolios and admins are the only ones that sell, that is a pitty. That is why I said we have the choice of either doing stuff like the top sellers or wait a while Too bad though, we could have uploaded tons of content (had ~120 templates in mind for starters) but now we need to re-think this strategy and probably go slow and with items that will surely sell.

Just as with anything, the market determines what sells. I don’t necessarily think that it’s sad that certain themes don’t perform as well. It simply means that there isn’t as much of a demand.

Just as pop stars cater to the demographic that will actually buy their cds, we should conform to the demand of our buyers if we want to make the big bucks.

That’s not to say that variety isn’t a great thing – it is.

I think that themeforest will only grow. I just hope that they clean things up a bit in terms of quality. I don’t mean to bash any authors or say that there aren’t good themes on this site, but I think now is a good point to start using the “quality” vs. “quantity” method. I know this has been brought up and Jeffrey has been aware of it, so basically what I’m saying is that the site will likely become much more popular if there are some really great templates on here. Hang in there, I believe things will get better!

Hi Guys,

I am the costumer and l think you guys doing very well and you will grove more and more everyday.

However looking every theme, a lot of them has been created for same category, l have been looking for bar, restaurant, travel and marina themes (wordpress sadly) for 2 weeks now and not found anythink.

My point is everyone should create themes with not just plain business , blog should be able to change style little and will change your sale.

Good luck anyway but you are all doing very well and you should sell more than FD because wordpress, html more common in this world.

@reidknorr – Agreed. The issue has been addressed. We should see some major improvements over this next month.

@JeffreyWay – I totally agree with you and that is why I think it’s sad, we will all be doing the same thing over and over again just because it’s what sells. It’s a buyers world and what gets demanded gets supplied. I’m not saying I don’t understand the dynamics, I’m just saying that in my opinion (at least for now) this is not a good thing. For instance, as altinkum said, if there is no variety, many buyers will go elsewhere, and how can there be variety if less common themes will not sell ? Who will make them ? Anyway, I think things are clear, all I wanted was to express a bit of concern over the direction things are going. We will adapt (or take a long break)