Envato Notes |
- Envato Marketplaces—Search, Connecting The Marketplaces, Growth & A New Community Manager
- 5 Ways to Get More Out of the Envato Marketplace Community
- Top 10 Tips for Providing Item Support
| Envato Marketplaces—Search, Connecting The Marketplaces, Growth & A New Community Manager Posted: 13 Oct 2013 06:36 PM PDT What’s been happening behind the scenes over the last few months? We’ve completely rebuilt our Envato Marketplaces search platform, analysed buyer behaviour, started work on a new hub, and launched an Inspirations newsletter to give our awesome items the attention they deserve. Click play (or read on) for the details. We’ve been talking to buyers, and looking at data to analyse buyer behaviour, and found that commonly a buyer on the Marketplaces requires more than one item for their creative projects. For example, a buyer might require a WordPress theme from ThemeForest, as well as a code plugin from CodeCanyon. Also, by improving our navigation for buyers, in terms of Marketplace visibility, we believe that authors who sell on the Marketplaces will also win. This is why, soon we’ll be a testing a new header that makes it much easier to see and navigate to all eight Marketplaces with just one click. We’ve also started work on a new hub that brings all eight Marketplaces closer together. EnvatoMarketplaces.com will start out as a simple landing page that…
Having a central site like this also paves the way to really important features like cross-site search, so we’re really excited about making this available—especially to new buyers. We have so many great items on our sites and we really want to give them the attention they deserve. You may have noticed our new Inspirations emails where we hand-pick some of the best items on the Envato Marketplaces. We love the work our authors are doing and we want to make sure that we are showcasing them to the world. We’re experiencing a lot of growth and we have a core team making sure we’re doing it right for our community One of our longest participating members of the Envato community has recently become the community manager and we’re really excited with all he has planned for the community!         |
| 5 Ways to Get More Out of the Envato Marketplace Community Posted: 13 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT As we recently celebrated a mammoth milestone of three million members, I thought it might be nice to share some ways both authors and buyers can get more out of being part of such a massive and unique community. The beauty of the Envato Marketplaces is that, despite our size and our growth, the voice of an individual can always be heard and any one person can make a huge impact and difference to not only their own life, but to the lives of others. 1. People
Mattie Stepanek The most important element of any community is its people. And we have a lot of people in our particular community! Authors, buyers, male, female, young, old (hey, why is everyone looking at me right now?), geographical location, belief, experience and culture. We are all different in so many ways. Yet, despite our many differences and different backgrounds and cultures, we all have one thing in common: We are united in wanting to make our Marketplace platform the best it can possibly be. Every single member of our community benefits from a Marketplace that continues to improve, and everyone has a vested interest in its success. This is really important, because, no matter what our purpose, stature or agenda might be in the community, we all have commonality, and we are all striving for the same thing—a better Marketplace for ourselves and for others. When we stand back and realize that we are all on the same page with the same common goal, it tends to make our community goals much more clear and help puts things in better perspective. If we are all united with the same goal, there's even more reason to stick together. The best communities get along well with one another, and can disagree with one another from time to time yet still get along. It’s very healthy for different opinions to be aired, and we have always encouraged and permitted open communication and constructive feedback. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this of course, but as long as everyone adheres to our community guidelines, which exist to bring some structure and order to community life, disruption shall only ever be temporary. Our journey towards our common goal will always be there and will always continue to unite us and help strengthen our community bond. 2. Contribute
Henrik Ibsen I’m a firm believer in the notion that, the best way to get something out of something, is by putting something back in. Have you ever been in a situation where someone you’re with complains all the time? They might say, “I’m bored!”, or “This sucks!” It can be really draining to be around people who suck the life out of a situation. The best and easiest way to make a difference is to take responsibility and contribute and make a difference yourself. There are so many ways you can contribute to the Marketplace community. The easiest way is to post a comment in our forums. If you’ve never posted a comment before, don’t be afraid! Simply introducing yourself is a great way to connect with our existing community, and you’ll be surprised by the positive response you will get. There are many that will not need to read this article because they are already leading the way and giving something back to our community. That leads nicely to the next point which is to respond and help out your fellow community members! It used to amaze me how kind and generous members of community were with their help, feedback and time to encourage and help fellow community members. But it no longer surprises me because I know what a great community we have. And this really speaks volumes about where our community is currently at. There are so many nice people already giving their time and sharing good advice and supporting new Marketplace members. Here's how anyone can quickly and easily help a fellow member feel part of our community:
Envato values positive and proactive community members so much that we honor a special member each month and make them a Community Superstar! Positive contributions never go unnoticed by staff or fellow community members, and a friendly, positive attitude is a great way to make you look professional in front of prospective customers. We’d love more of our buyers to drop-by our forums! Tell us new content or category ideas you’d like to see on our Marketplaces, or perhaps let authors know what you’re looking for. We have a dedicated forum category within each Marketplace called Item Requests. (Be sure you're in the correct Marketplace before posting!) These categories allow you to get suggestions from authors about either brand new items you’d like to see, or recommendations for existing items that fit your new project. Another way to contribute to the community is by creating tools and services that help other Marketplace members. We'll take a look at this in more detail in the next section! 3. Tools
Steve Jobs If something isn't quite working the way you would like, or you have an idea of how to improve upon an existing system or process, the Envato API could be your new best friend! Our API allows you to build external tools and applications that can access data and services from our Marketplaces. We frequently see skillful authors embrace our API to produce some killer results. Take a look at all the Envato Apps, Tools and Resources our talented community have made so far to get an idea of what's possible. There are currently 65+ extra tools to choose from! Not only are there some great ways for authors to check their sales data via their desktop computer, but there are also several mobile apps with notification features that play the sweet sound of clinking coins or a ringing cash register whenever a sale is made. For buyers, especially those that purchase a lot of items, you can keep up-to-date on all your items and find out when your purchased items are updated by using UpdateAtoll, which keeps track of all updates, on all your items, across all Marketplaces! A great way to help with forum posts is the Embedded Envatitor user script that adds formatting options to our forums to make it super easy to make formatting changes to your posts. If you’re not sure about how to install user scripts, you can always use an online version here. Perhaps some of these tools might inspire you to create a brand new tool or app of your own? 4. Interact & Collaborate
Henry Ford Our community members interact with one another on a daily basis primarily within our busy, bustling forums. As well as communicating publicly, our members also have an opportunity to interact with one another privately, which can often lead to not only developing good personal relationships, but it can also help build great business relationships. This can lead to collaboration opportunities where authors with different skill sets can combine their efforts to produce brand new Marketplace items. A developer on CodeCanyon with basic design skills for example could collaborate with a PSD template designer on ThemeForest, or a Graphic/Web Designer from GraphicRiver, and together they could produce a Web site Template and upload and sell it via ThemeForest. When two talented people with different skillets meet this way it can be a hugely powerful partnership. It allows each person in the partnership to remain an expert in what they know and do best, and it also means that together as a team they can complete projects much more quickly compared to doing everything by oneself. Take a look at Avada, the biggest-selling item on ThemeForest right now. It has aggregated an incredible $2 million in gross revenue to date and is presently the biggest selling WordPress theme of all time on ThemeForest. It was created by two Marketplace members, Luke and Mohammed, who combined their talents to create one of, if not the biggest, success stories on our Marketplaces.
Luke Beck, ThemeFusion You also don’t have to restrict yourself to collaborating with people with different skillsets, you can collaborate with experts within the same field of expertise. Here’s a recent example of author teamwork that I absolutely loved hearing about. AudioJungle author PinkZebra collaborated with a fellow AudioJungle author, BenjiJackson to create a track called Larger then Life. The track was composed and produced masterfully by PinkZebra, and features the stunning vocals of Benji Jackson. The two authors worked together and combined talents and entered the track into a Most Wanted contest on AudioJungle… which they ended-up winning, taking home a cool $1,000 prize in the process! Interaction and collaboration is not solely for authors, buyers can take advantage of this too. Buyers can check an author’s profile page, such as the one shown below, to see if an author is available for freelance work. If they are, the buyer can contact an author via the author’s profile page to inquire if they would like to work on or take on a particular freelance project. Last but not least, another great way, and the simplest way to interact, is to simply write to someone! Perhaps there's someone you admire on the Marketplace you are most active on, or perhaps there's a portfolio on another Marketplace you stumbled across that you were simply blown away by—write to the author with a quick, friendly note! Alternatively, perhaps an author has created a new unofficial Marketplace tool based on our API – help them test it! Whatever you do, get involved! This is your community and it's full of opportunities! 5. Meetups
Nelson Mandela Each year we hold official Marketplace meetups for our community around the world. We pick out a great location and bring in the food and drinks and all you have to do is RSVP and show up. I’ve had the pleasure of attending two meetups to date. My first was in Chicago in 2010, followed by a meetup a little closer to where I live, in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2012. On each occasion, I've had such an amazing experience getting to know the real people behind the 80×80 pixel avatars we see day-in, day out, on our Marketplaces. Getting to smile and talk and shake their hand, it has always been an honor to meet so many of you! I’ll also be attending both meetups in California this year in October 2013, so be sure to come say “Hi!” to me if you’ll be there, so we can talk more about our community and our Marketplaces! If you’ve not yet been to a meetup, here’s why they’re awesome: You get to meet and talk to Envato staff, and find out that we’re just as normal and just as passionate about the Marketplaces as you guys! And not only can you talk about everything Marketplace-related with staff, you can talk to fellow authors and all the customers that purchase Marketplace content—maybe even customers that have purchased your own items! The latter is very interesting because it’s a great opportunity to ask customers what they like, what they want, and maybe you can even plug your new items coming up! As well as the opportunity of meeting your fellow community members there are a couple of other perks to our meetups of course. Firstly, you’ll typically receive an awesome goodie bag full of rare and exclusive Envato-branded merchandise! Secondly, you’ll be awarded a special ‘Attended an Envato Meetup’ badge to proudly ‘wear’ and display on your Marketplace profile! I’ve actually heard community members say that this is the sole reason they wanted to attend a meetup—just to get the badge! We hope you'll get the chance to meet us one day in a nearby city. Keep an eye out for brand new meetup announcements in our Marketplace forums. I've already heard some rumors where the next two or three meetups will be so there's going to be plenty of opportunities to get together in the near future! Success
Authors are solving problems and providing creative inspiration to individuals and businesses all around the world each and every day. Customers are helping finance the lives of individuals and fuel national economies throughout every corner of the globe. We're truly thankful for both crucial elements of our community—our authors and our buyers. Our community are our priority because, let's face it, without them our Marketplaces would not exist. As we go about our busy lives, lock ourselves away in our homes and offices, and work hard on microstock and royalty-free projects we hope others will enjoy, it’s when we take a step back and start thinking about the people that it really starts to hit home how much of a difference we can make as a community. No matter where in the world we are, and no matter which Marketplace we are predominantly affiliated with, we are always connected to one another within our like-minded community that strives for the same end result. And we want each individual within our community to succeed and excel at what they do, whether it's creating content or purchasing and using content from our Marketplaces.
Rollo May       |
| Top 10 Tips for Providing Item Support Posted: 13 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT We’ve collected 10 Top Tips to to help you deliver better support for your items. Although it’s not mandatory, some of our most successful authors do an awesome job at providing support for their buyers, and we want to share their techniques. For some buyers, the difference between items is based on the professionalism of the support offered. So read on to find out how Envato’s top authors deliver fantastic support. 1. Be DetailedGive as much detail as possible in your support documentation and item descriptions. When buyers know what to expect in terms of support, they will be less likely to make unrealistic demands. 2. Be TransparentBe transparent—tell your buyers what you are prepared to provide them, and what you are not. Letting them know when you will not be available due to travel or illness is good as well. 3. Be PromptResolve issues quickly and professionally. If someone wants a refund and is having issues with their purchase that they cannot solve with your help, direct them through to Envato support. 4. Be OpenTake on feedback about your support process. Your customers will tell you if they think your support documentation needs work. 5. Be PatientDon’t lose your patience. The way you conduct yourself on any public forum represents the way you run your business. 6. Don’t CensorDon’t try and censor fair feedback in the item comments. Buyers have a right to comment on their purchases. By censoring fair comments, you may enrage your buyers and risk missing out on valuable feedback. 7. Be ResponsiveUse the item comments system to your advantage. If anyone posts with fair but negative feedback, make sure you answer them and address their concerns. You can’t please everyone, but you can make an effort to help them, or at very least take their feedback on board. 8. Create a FAQCreate a list of predefined responses to common questions. You’ll save yourself loads of time, and by adding personal touches will still give great support. 9. Create a ProcessHave a clear process for dealing with difficult customers, like “three strikes, you’re out.” There are some people you will never please, and it’s best to realise this early on. By having a clear process, you make the confrontation less personal, which means you will deal with the matter professionally and promptly. 10. Hire Support StaffHire people trained in customer service. If you are an Elite author and find that your support requests are working you around the clock, you may want to hire someone to focus on it. Make sure that person is someone you would want to deal with if you walked into a store. Support is basic customer service, and the people who work for you should represent the tone and values of your company. It is always up to you whether you wish to provide support for your items. Image credit withGod.       |
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