ThemeForest – Site Templates and CMS Themes Marketplace
Hey folks, today we’re launching our most recent Envato site – ThemeForest – a marketplace for HTML/CSS Templates and CMS Themes. It’s been in Beta for a couple of weeks and now we’re opening it up to the world.
Along with HTML/CSS Site Templates, the site also sells Themes for CMS’ like WordPress and Joomla. Files sell for between $10 and $75 and as of the time of writing we have an early library of about 70 files, which I’m sure will grow fast!
ThemeForest runs off the same system as our other marketplaces FlashDen and AudioJungle, so any of the 70,000 odd current members are free to use their accounts across the three sites and everything will work as if you are logged into the same site thanks to some ruby magic from our crack dev team. If you’re new to the marketplaces, signup only takes a minute or two, so come on down!
If you’re planning on becoming an author, you’ll be interested to see our Launch Competition to win 1 of 3 Apple HD Displays.
Authors Earn 25-50%
Authors earn a base rate of 25%, which quickly jumps to 35% if you agree to keep the items you place on ThemeForest exclusively on ThemeForest, and then climbs up to 50%. Because we do a lot of marketing, these percentages can yield a very significant amount. However if you’re able to do our job for us and bring in the traffic as well as provide the files, then we’ll give up our half as well, because referrers earn 50%…
Referrers Earn 50%
We have a very strong referral program in place where affiliates take half of a new buyers first deposit. Moreover a new referral clicking on your link has 3 months to signup and purchase. What all that means is it’s a good time to be a referrer, because nobody has visited the new site yet, so early referrers will wind up with lots of new visitors with their cookies in place. 
Buyers, visit our Top Sellers List
Although it’s early days for our file library, buyers can check out our Popular Files list to see some of the items that have been selling well during the Beta. I strongly encourage you to bookmark the site or subscribe to the new file RSS feeds, because the library is going to get a whole lot more extensive!
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Good. I was waiting for this site to come to life
Hey Colis… any news on this you said earlier on psdtuts ??
Colis : “…And if you’re more of a graphic person than a web one, well stay tuned because we’ve got another site coming just for you!”
Honestly, adding this to the network doesn’t seem to fit. Everything else seems to spark creativity and originality and this seems to take away from that. The other parts of the network seem to be geared for designers to designers, it would seem templates are more designers to consumers? Maybe not, I don’t know. I guess using stock/template design isn’t really that much different than using stock illustration or photography though.
Great work guys!
Why no love for Textpattern?
(Actually, being that Textpattern doesn’t have a simple theme implementation, I think I know why)
Also, the FAQ section doesn’t seem to be there
It’s going to be huge!
@Rene: It’s on its way! I’m theming up the next two marketplaces now and one of them is for graphics
More news coming soon!
Sweetness- Collis & Cyan, you are amazing!
and teh awesomeness continue
SWEET! You guys are teh roxxors!
Congrats on launching the new website.
Hey Banago! This is a good question and one I get asked quite a bit, so here’s my response from the ThemeForest forums
— begin copy —
Some people raised the % question, we get asked this a lot, so here’s my response via the ThemeForest forums:
So the question is “Why is the initial split 25% / 75%? and why does it take so long to get to 50/50?”
*Why the Rates are this way … *
We believe that we have created a rates system here that compensates authors AND enables FlashDen (and now ThemeForest) to build and grow the site to then provide even more returns.
Sure we could give a larger percentage, but then we wouldn’t be able to grow and market the site, to improve the site, to keep it quick, secure and stable. And the more people who are buying here the better the returns.
You have to remember that percentages are only one half of an equation. A larger percentage of nothing is still nothing while a smaller percentage of something can be significant! Currently on FlashDen there are authors earning in excess of $10,000 a month, which by anyone’s standard is a lot of money.
Another thing to remember is that there is always more to a business than meets the eye. It’s a little like when you go into a restaurant, look at a menu, look at the prices and go ‘wow I know how much potatos cost and meat costs, these guys are making a huge amount of money’. Whereas in reality there is equipment, rent, staff, etc etc. And as we know restauranting is one of the hardest businesses around!
Likewise on ThemeForest there is actually quite a lot of expenses that go under the hood. Where does the money go?
* Marketing – We spend a lot on marketing in different ways, through ads, promotional campaigns, and building other sites in our network. By pushing marketing, we bring in a lot of traffic and visitors which thereby increases sales.
* Development – This is our most significant cost as we build more features, make the site more usable, and develop it so that we can expand into new areas – e.g. From FlashDen to ThemeForest. Again by developing more, we bring in more buyers and more happy buyers, thereby indirectly creating more revenue.
* Legals & Support – This is our biggest growth cost. As the site gets larger, we’re putting more money into making sure there are proper license agreements, solid support for buyers, refunds on faulty products and so on.
*Expansion …*
ThemeForest is of course a business, but profits are not our only goal at all. We are all about growth. That’s why for example none of the founders took a single pay check for the first year. We put everything back in, to build, build, build!
You see we believe that by building FlashDen, ThemeForest, AudioJungle and all the other Envato sites, that we can create markets where authors can buy and sell things they couldn’t before. Where creatives like us and like all of you can create an extra income stream that wasn’t there before. And that buyers can build on other people’s work to deliver better results for clients, build better portfolios and generally be awesome!
Of course it’s easy to talk, but its much harder to back it up with actions, and that is exactly what we have been and will continue to do.
*Exciting Plans for the Future*
We actually have some really big plans for the future. As many of you know, at Envato we LOVE doing new things. Not only are we working on more sites, but also figuring out ways to cross link them and merge features to make for a better experience for buyers and authors. Since ThemeForest has just launched, I won’t mention any other expansion plans specifically, because I’m meant to be focusing on growing this site first!!
ONE exciting Plan for the future OK OK OK , here’s one exciting plan for the future. I can say that after we get out of beta and have a decent sized pool of files on the site (which will probably be a few weeks after that) we are going to run a huge promotion where we give away $50,000 worth of ThemeForest money to new buyers. Authors with files will still get paid, but the buyers won’t actually be doing the paying. This promotion should bring us a huge pool of buyers!
*In the End … Try It and See*
I guess at the end of the day though, every author needs to make a choice. I highly recommend you investigate your options and figure out the best plan for you, where you get the most benefits. I’m totally confident that you will find though the initial percentage is low, anyone serious about authoring will soon find themselves moving closer to 50%.
And additionally in terms of the work it takes to sell themes and templates, it’s SOO much easier to list on a site like ThemeForest than to do it all yourself.
Happily the only way for ThemeForest to win, is for her authors to win, so we’ll be doing everything we can to make that happen.
– end copy —
Hope that helps!
This seems a great platform to find and sell web templates. I hope it will be a great success!
This seems to be the best chice by far, speaking as a designer, it’s thew only time I am tempted to create a publicly available template ! Thumbs up from me too, of I go to create an account