The Thorny Way to Sales at Themeforest.net — Part 2
Before September last year, there was no Sketch Templates on Themeforest.net. Initially, this section was experimental and closed for the majority of the authors, because Envato was not sure of the need for sketch templates. They sent letters to worthy authors (in their opinion) with a proposal to develop templates for this category. Thus, they filled a catalogue with high quality products. Even though Sketch.app is relatively young, the steadily growing army of multi-million users, most of whom are UI / UX designers, has created a demand for this type of product.
There is no reason not to be on the top
By the time the Sketch Templates category appeared, there were no approved templates on our themeforest account. We were actively working on the first HTML template. I decided that the creation of Sketch Template was a good opportunity to showcase the account, as there was some weak competition and the increasing demand for templates. I even wrote a supporting letter with a request to fill in a template in this category. However, the answer was clear: ‘Unfortunately, the Sketch Templates category is in beta stage.’ This means that templates can be added in the category only subject to invitation.
It made us a bit sad. However, in early January, we received the long-awaited Approval for our first HTML template (I wrote about it in my article “The thorny way to sales on Themeforest.net — Part 1”). Once the beginning was made, things got a little easier: we re-filled the form in order to add the product in the beta category (http://envato.formstack.com/forms/beta_categories) and almost immediately received Soft Reject, which meant the finalization of the Sketch template by increasing layouts.
The contents of the first Soft Reject:
The first soft was followed by three more ones. The critical feedback concerned ‘larger screens.’ As a result, a file of several art boards grew to the following state:
It is hard to escape a conclusion that this category exists primarily in order to buy the extensive UI kits, and only thereafter — to buy designed layouts. We did not count upon some special sales of the template in this category. We considered the sketch template solely as an opportunity to approve the design of the future WordPress. This is almost a third of the path as the whole review process is quite extensive. The algorithm of the template review process by the Themeforest’s moderators is shown below:
Brief excursus on rejections, their types and reasons:
What is the “Soft Rejected”?
When you get “Soft Rejected” it means that your product is almost ready for sale at marketplace, but minor improvements are needed. And the list of these improvements on the items described in the letter or in the user panel in Hidden Items section in the History tab.
You just need to read them carefully and correct or modify your theme.
“Soft Rejected” letter:
What is the “Hard Rejected”?
“Hard Rejected” — the rejection of your template without a description of the reasons for the fact. But do not lose heart and continue to improve. We received Hard Rejection dozens of times. And each time without explanation. Each time after “HR” the thought came to us “that’s it, forget about ThemeForest”. But we still went to work again.
“Hard Rejected” letter:
But in any case, do not despair. Yes, of course, it is difficult to continue to work with template, if you have no idea what is the cause of the Hard Rejection.
Where to get “nice” pictures?
Long ago, our company realized that beautiful pictures were sold much easily. Most people are visuals and they largely make purchases under the influence of emotions. So, where can one get these “nice” pictures for the website, especially, in such a narrow category? It is always a huge challenge for any designer and content manager. I believe the selection of free photo stocks will come in handy:
- unsplash.com
- stocksnap.io
- littlevisuals.co
- deathtothestockphoto.com
- lifeofpix.com
- imcreator.com
- nos.twnsnd.co
- tumblr.com
- jaymantri.com
- freestocks.org
- mmtstock.com
- flickr.com
We cannot do without plug-ins for Sketch.app. We recommend to use Invision Craft and Content Generator to generate text messages and pictures in set parameters. It’s hard to decide which one is better in order to choose one, as they work in different ways. For example, one pulls content from unsplash.com, the other — from flickr.com. Therefore, it is better to use them in conjunction.
Here are some useful resources to select colour palette for the website:
As for the icons, you will always get the individual pack at the output. This is probably the best situation. However, fontawesome.io is fine for prompt decisions. In case of large libraries of icons, it is convenient to use Icon Jar plug-in.
As regards the fonts, it is better to use solutions from Google. skyfonts.com is the best utility to work with them.
Here are some interesting resources with a wealth of useful things:
How we chose the theme for our second template
Once our first template Profi Theme hit the Corporate category, we decided that our next template should be sector-specific. We conducted a small research and decided that the category of Real Estate was quite suitable: up to 100 wordpress templates and sales of the most successful ones exceeded thousands of items. As I wrote earlier, we decided to start with a new category of Sketch Templates. We had some stuff on the theme of rent of premises, so the only things we left to do was to promote a theme and prepare Sketch file for release. After soft processing, which consisted of the template volume increase, we finally uploaded our template on the market.
Based on our previous experience, we decided not to pay extra attention to the HTML version, and immediately started the development of the WordPress template. After a month of productive work, the first build was ready for the review. We were aware that it was not perfect, but we decided to try hoping to get Soft Reject. During the review, which lasted about two weeks at that time, we were going to elaborate the remaining nuances.
We believed we entered the home stretch, but the Themeforest.net’s reviewers thought differently. The review of our template lasted more than two months — 63 days to be exact. Fortunately, this was not a subjective attitude towards us, but the general trend on the market. This topic was actively discussed and debated at the forum, as the review of the WordPress template did not last more than 35 days for a long time.
63 day review! What should we do?
During the review of our template, we almost completely rethought its direction and increased its size and functionality threefold. To begin with, we decided that it would be nice to create a Brooks Theme-based online store using the WooCommerce plug-in.
Then we remembered that initially sites on WordPress were used as blogs, and it would be foolish to create a template without optimizing all blog pages and widgets.
I should agree that 63 days is long enough. During this period, we managed to develop a portfolio of architectural offices and interior design studio. Moreover, this folio can be easily optimized for photographers, artists, web designers, graphic designers and other creative professionals.
Having made all the modifications, we understood that such extensive template should not be place in the Real Estate section. It was necessary to change the category and try to enter Creative, which was a highly competitive niche. We had to receive the Review from themeforest and upload the template with the request to transfer it to another category.
Our plan began to come into effect on June 29th when we got the Soft Reject. However, we even did not assume that it would take as long as 2 months and 5 softs before our template finally hit the market.
Our five Soft Rejects
In our each letter, apart from fixing bugs we asked the reviewer to transfer our template to another category. Reviewers were changed, and we received no answer. They sent us just another list of bugs and improvements. Sometimes they were ridiculous, for example, ‘please check everything again’ or ‘WordPress is written with a capital W and P.” They were similar in essence, but different each time. Why can’t one send all the comments in one letter? What’s the point of delaying a process? Sometimes you may get the impression that reviewers are pay for delaying the review process. However, our concerns on the fact that template will remain in the originally indicated category proved groundless. After the long-awaited approval, our wordpress template “Brooks WP — Creative Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme” was automatically moved to the desired category.
