A great many of people are surely thinking of trying to sell their templates at the famous Envato.com marketplace, and some people are already succeeding in doing so. In this article I would like to share my experience in developing and selling templates at Themeforest.net.
There is quite a lot of information about so much sacred Envato.com, but one can rarely come across a detailed process for preparing projects. I have many times turned for advice and assistance to successful authors selling at Themeforest.net. Fortunately, there are people ready to help without any compensation. I hope my article will also be of use to the beginning authors or to those intending to become authors. Or, at least, I expect it throw some light on theme producing.
How it all got started
My small studio has been engaged in digital production (developing web sites and mobile applications) for several years already. We started develop template upon advice given by my friend. He once said that it was a great way for a small studio to make some extra income and that very few efforts would be required for this. I liked the idea of having some extra income by using my studio resources who are not engaged in current projects. But, at that time I had no idea how much time would have to spend by the moment our first template will be available at Themeforest.net. It took us nearly one year and a half to start selling. However, this particular case is absolutely individual and is not worth being targeted. I know examples of a more rapid success. But let me talk in more detail why we have been striving for this and what difficulties we have encountered in the process.
Research and Strategy Generation
As is right and proper, having started a new project, we proceeded with the research. We have examined all the categories at Themeforest.net. The Entertainment category and Restaurant & Cafe subcategory seemed to be the most attractive for us at that time. They featured with a low competition and rather high sales.
Restaurant & Cafe subcategory now:
As for the product, we have focused on the WordPress themes because WP templates gave much higher earnings than the HTML, let alone the PSD. So we decided to concentrate on developing WP templates rather than doing site layouts in Photoshop, though the latter is one of the processes required for creating a website. Also, we did not try to fill in the HTML template, though coding is also one of the stages. But many resources state that the approved PSD template is a green light for developing HTML (since the question of design is excluded), and after that is better to start developing the WordPress template. But we were anyway committed to starting selling our templates straight off the WordPress. The more so we had received the data from a range of blogs about template design, the PSD templates category had a tougher moderation. Moderators in this category increase the aesthetic requirements for themes quality almost every day.
But if you still decide to fill in a template into this category, you may be inspired by the resources below:
- www.siteinspire.com
- flatinspire.com
- www.awwwards.com
- www.webdesign-inspiration.com
- www.thebestdesigns.com
- thedesigninspiration.com/category/websites
- onepagelove.com
We started designing templates for restaurants, cafes and bars. The process was as follows: we determined the amount of blocks required for this type of templates and the amount of variations for each particular block.
Having examined popular templates, we opted for the following website structure:
- Main Page
- Blog: Left Sidebar Without sidebar
- About us
- Dish Fullpage
- Event: Events Fullpage Events List 2 Columns Events List 3 Columns Events List
- Menu: Menu 1 Menu 2 Menu 3 Menu 4 Menu 5 Menu 6
- Contacts
- Dish Page
- Page 404
- Reservation
In our opinion, this had to be enough for approval. Later on, we were planning to evolve the theme and add more and more new pages. The design was prepared quickly enough — for three-four weeks. The project was being worked over by one designer only. We were making the project in the background because the main activity has always remained our priority. After that, we started PSD-to-HTML developing, which took us three to four weeks and the same amount of labor (one performer). Then, there was a more complex and time-consuming process — WordPress elaboration. Again, one developer, but this time back-end, managed to do the job in his free of work time within two-three months.
Then the time for release has come. We have prepared all files according to the envato requirements, at least we thought we had prepared everything properly. Usually, the review takes approximately 5–8 days. But in our practice, we faced with cases when it took more than two weeks.
Physical appearance of our first template:
Nothing could depend on us now, we had to go through the moderation. It turned out to be quite complicated, especially for beginners. Below is the algorithm for the process of considering templates by Themeforest moderators.
We have got Hard Rejection.
Let me depart somewhat from the subject of this article and tell about “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.
According to our experience, reasons for Hard Rejections may be as follows:
- Your template does not conform to the minimum aesthetic standards of the marketplace or it is not unique (for templates of PSD, HTML, WordPress categories)
- Various design problems (for templates of PSD, HTML, WordPress categories): Unequal shifts, Imperfect typo-graphics (This is a common problem and moderators always pay special attention to it, attention to details is the main principle for creating a PSD template, other)
- Lack of documentation or deficient documentation. The documentation may be prepared by hand, but it would be better to use external services such as documenter
- Problems with the code. This is a very broad part. I will go through the problems we have encountered in the case with our template. Anyway, validators need to be used to check the code: HTML validator, CSSvalidator, WordPress Theme validator.
- Use of unlicensed content. Free of payment drains are best to be used, but they must be listed both in the template description and documentation:Unsplash, Designerspics, Picjumbo and other.
- Use of unoptimized images. Images compressor
Tearing around
After the first Hard Rejection we have had five more. So we decided to try a step-by-step strategy: PSD at first, then HTML and only after that WordPress.
Throughout the whole period, we have experienced failures with the restaurant theme and our template has become morally old. Which is why we have brought some freshness into it by examining modern tendencies. In order for all our efforts with the first version not to go in vain, we have prepared a free of payment PSD template, we gave it another name and posted it at Behance.net. And voila, it has not gone unnoticed: the template appeared in the list of popular free of charge templates at Fusionplate.com and CSSauthor.com.
After that, we have prepared an updated PSD file to be downloaded: we have arranged layers and gave each layer its own name. An important thing to remember is that it is people who are going to use your template and this is the main principle followed by Envato. All things must be structured and highly convenient.
But our efforts with the PSD template was not much more successful than the WP. A range of Hard Rejections and we, being in despair, throw all our efforts to the HTML template. We thought the moderation was too strict and we wouldn’t be able to break through. But the HTML case was not an instant success: more than six Hard Rejections. And we make a tricky move here — we decide to switch into another theme and start everything from the scratch.
A year has passed with a range of failures in filling in at least some item at Themeforest and we start from the very beginning. This time we have decided to choose a competitive category — Corporate. And our decision was firm — accent on HTML version. We were going to spend no time for PSD, and decided to prepare the WordPress only after the HTML has been filled in.
Such strategy seemed to be optimal after a year of unsuccessful efforts.
The new template turned out to be strict and severe. It was customized exclusively for a business theme.
But modifications into this HTML template took us nearly 5 months and resulted in 7 Hard and 8 Soft Rejections. The first “Soft” may be considered as victory.
Here are reasons for all eight Rejections:
On January 7, our HTML template was finally Approved.
On the very first day of selling, I received a dozen of messages from different authors with the same content “we want to make a WordPress template based on your HTML”. That is a common situation for the newest templates. Many authors work by following this scheme — they make WP based on the new HTML themes. Our template was even rated for being in trend. However, unfortunately, we lost this position in two weeks.
Having reached the first small target in HTML theme, we immediately started developing the WordPress template. The project was still worked over by one back-end developer. A front-end developer helped him and significantly changed the HTML for it to fit the WP. And, of course, a designer was hanging about as there was a constant need in bringing some new elements appearing with the WP widgets such as blog elements, calendar and other items.
As soon as our account already had a successfully selling theme, each of our new products received Soft Rejection from the first time. Perhaps, we have gained some experience and were aware of the themeforest requirements, or the envato experts had a better attitude towards us than to the beginners. The WP template based on the approved HTML template got Soft Rejection immediately, if to be more precise, with the first effort. And the reweaving period took 16 days! Then, there were 6 more Soft Rejections with lots of technical corrections. Some of them were related to coding and CSS, the other ones meant that we had to update demo data to the WordPress, but most of the corrections were related to the code only.
The list of Soft Rejections for our WP template
It took us two months and a half to work over the WordPress template. Half of that time was spent for waiting for replies from reviewers. Of course, we were not sitting still and waiting for a reply; we were working over a new template. But you must always expect n days to pass for the reviews. Do not forget about it when planning your deadlines.
There is still a lot of work to be done over new templates, besides, new tasks are added on promoting and supporting the sales of filled in templates. But that is another subject for an article.
