Is Envato A Sacred Cow In The Design Community?

Posted on August 29, 2011 by John MacMenamin

I can remember when PSDTuts first came out. It was amazing! A great site with all the very best Photoshop tutorials. I lot of us wanted to be them and with good reason.

Envato now currently had launched 6 main website category’s and does a fantastic job maintaining all of them. While it’s hard to argue with Envato’s ability to nail the design market there have been some whispering in the design community about seller treatment. With many people fed up with corporatism websites like ebay/paypal and how they great the buyer like gold but the seller like trash Envoto sometimes can seem like they are on the same road.

Does Envato need a shift of course? If so you’ll probably very hear about it from the design community. Why are designers and theme builders so hush hush on the subject? Perhaps it has something to do with designers with a weak ego thinking that to ascend to the heights of featured author on theme forest is the best and perhaps only way to make a descent living making themes?

Tonight in the dark corner of a random dark ally a designer in his late 20′s cry’s because he put his heart and soul into a theme to make a measly 100 bucks. Maybe this designer is you. I want to hear your praise or rants about Envoto. Go!

About John MacMenamin

John MacMenamin is the driving force behind alteredadvice.com a WP Development Magazine. If you'd like to keep in touch you can follow Altered on twitter or become a friend on facebook.

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http://Website Michelle

When I first started freelancing full-time, they had a book that really helped me out. Overall though, I think all of their sites are lack-luster anymore. They tried to build too many and now they are all just kinda “eh”. The FreelanceSwitch forum is full of people giving really bad advice. I don’t think they really offer anything to the design community.
http://www.lauraearley.com Laura

I don’t think the review process is 100% subjective. There’s probably a level of favoritism going on among reviewers, but I think they do a good job of featuring new authors that deserve it. I set up a Graphic River account and hope to start selling a few items in the future, but believe me, I expect some rejection before I learn their strict review curve.
http://alteredstudio.com John MacMenamin

Thanks for the comment Laura. I agree about the subjective issue. I checked out your site. I love your logo. Nice and clean UI!
Anonymous

I have friends that love FreelanceSwitch. I think it’s really helpful for someone who just quit their job or got fired and want to start out on their own. They really reach out to new comers which is awesome.
http://profiles.google.com/usnidorg us nid

Envato is a criminal enterprise. They are just like most businesses — taking advantage of the stupid and the desperate.

Less than 10% of the community does well and the rest just promotes Envato’s business unknowingly. Never any real talk on their forums. Complete void of intellect, substance and serious discussions. Authors don’t have a voice. It is impossible to bring up any serious concern because the fan-boys will immediately bite your had off or your post will be locked or deleted. The only post you can see on their forums are what Envato thinks is beneficial to promote their business – mostly fluff and mind-numbingly boring.

The products are incredibly under-priced, which really hurts the industry as a whole, and forces even more jobs to countries that are willing to work for slave wages. It also creates an incredibly ignorant consumer base that knows nothing but how to negotiate the price even farther south.

The community is like a bunch of religious fundamentalists, not to mention the majority of the demographics are 16-22 old kids. People who can’t tie their shoes and couldn’t find their country on the map without help, but think they are brilliant.

Envato membership comes with a license that rips you from just about all your rights. As soon as your product is approved, Envato owns it and can do whatever they want with it. If you ever raise a concern to support, they will just ignore you. If you keep insisting, they will close your account, if you post about it on the forum they will lock your post or delete it but not before a bunch of clerics bite your head off.

Then there is concern of warez. Just about any product you can find on any Envato site can be downloaded free from an endless multitude of warez sites. Many people aren’t even willing to pay a few bucks for the product. There is no evidence that Envato does anything about it except deleting your forum post if you dare to mention it. After all, warez is just another form of free advertisement for them.

They are a despicable bunch…