Increase Sales on Themeforest

How to Increase Sales on ThemeForest and the Envato Marketplace

Envato’s ThemeForest platform is an online marketplace where users can buy or sell themes, templates, or other digital products from other users around the world. Most authors on ThemeForest aim for the Envato Elite Author badge, and the exposure and perks that it comes with. Awarded when an author reaches $75,000 in sales, this badge reduces the commission rate deducted by Envato by 25%, and gives authors an Evnato Elite status. ThemeForest does a pretty good job of marketing themes for authors, but if you would like to increase or even double the number of your sales, there are plenty of ways to promote your product on this platform. We’re going to over ways in which you can increase your sales on ThemeForest, using direct and indirect methods to make the most out of the platform’s flexibility and increase your account’s exposure.

Tips to Indirectly Increase Sales

1. Interesting and Informative Profile Page
2. Leverage Envato Markets
3. Portfolio Page
4. Product Landing Page (Item Page)
5. Product (Downloadable File)

Tips to Directly Increase Sales

1. Blogging
2. Social Media Optimization (SMO)
3. Advanced Marketing Methods
4. Digital Advertising
5. Email Marketing
6. Blend in the Community
7. Growth Hacks

Indirect Tips to Increase Sales

ThemeForest’s platform is flexible in that you can add pretty much anything you want on your profile page. Many authors make the mistake of leaving this page almost completely blank, or with a standard image and virtually no information about the author. This is a big no-no, because serious authors are putting in the time and the effort to showcase their work and get customers interested in their other services. Your profile page should contain information that will make potential customers trust you, and your product.

Profile Page

Always put in the effort to enhance your profile page and make it look good. Your profile page reflects the quality of your work in general.

1. Add useful links to your profile page
2. Write a clear description in your profile, be creative while staying professional
3. Include links to your social media pages
4. Turn your availability for hire to “On” (customers feel more secure when they know that they can hire the person who worked on the project)
5. Feature your best item(s)
6. Qualify to as many badges as you can accumulate on your profile. Badges reflect how active you are in the market and how involved you are in your business
7. Add a catchy featured profile image
8. Maintain a 4.5 – 5 star rating, because lower ratings mean lower sales by default

Leverage Envato Markets

Don’t be afraid to penetrate new markets on ThemeForest, and leverage the traffic between them to increase your own profile’s traffic rate. To do that, you can

1. Start a new product in a new market
2. Add a catalog of all your products in the downloadable file
3. Participate in Free file nomination
4. Leverage the filtering system on ThemeForest to have your theme featured in several categories

Portfolio page

Think of your profile page as your own personal app. Presenting it a creative way will positively affect your click-through rate for each product

1. Maintain a brand identify in your product thumbnails, and be creative in the design
2. Increase the number of your profile followers
3. Design your thumbnails in a way that will distinguish your work from other authors
4. Utilize ThemeForest’s Collection section as mentioned by katehunter “Collections are another opportunity to attract an audience through thematic targeting. Not all users in search engines know what they’re looking for so a collection can be less specific to cater for those audiences.”

Product Landing Page (Item Page)

This page is where your products are presented, and first impressions make as much of an impact when it comes to products as it does to people

1. Optimize your product’s landing page
2. Host your images with an SSL image hosting platform
3. It’s worth going the extra mile and paying attention to details when it comes to the presentation of your product. Be different in your product Preview image and test different approaches
4. Add a clear, catchy description about your product and make sure to use the right keywords
5. Add testimonials from clients
6. Highlight your theme’s best features
7. Use the right tags
8. Add a killer product display image but keep in mind that Content is King
9. Make sure to address performance and SEO, and present data on results
10. Add information about the team behind the product
11. Add related product images that compliment your main product
12. Emphasize and genuinely provide excellent support, this will pay back once your clients renew their sales
13. Maintain a 4.5+ star rating for your product
14. Work on reducing your bounce rate
15. To ensure that your product ranks on Google, include the terms you want to rank for at the start of your product’s title

Product (Downloadable file)

You may have a few or several products to sell. Regardless of the quantity, each theme should be quality-made and built for a genuine purpose other than making money. The more value your product has for the client, the more people will want to buy it regardless of the price.

1. Include a special note for your clients in your product
2. Include links to your related products and other products on your profile
3. Add verification keys to your product. Many 3^rd party sites provide a null version of the product, so adding verification key encourages the user to buy the theme to receive regular updates
4. Share your product link wherever you can
5. Add useful information in the invoice footer

Note: Keep your products light in size for a faster download.

Direct Tips to Increase Sales

So far, we’ve covered some indirect that can help you increase sales on ThemeForest. Direct marketing for your product and profile are different, more targeted and take a bit more work. As you may already have guessed however, they tend to make a real difference when done right.

Blogging

Blogging isn’t dead – it’s alive and well and still used extensively by all types of businesses. Influential bloggers can help sell a product, and a theme is no different. When you write a blog ppst about your product, try to cover the following points:

1. Write a story about your product
2. Explain how your theme can benefit a business
3. Work closely with one client to conduct a case study of how your product helped their business
4. Ask other bloggers in the niche of the theme to help you spread the word
5. Write guest posting on related niche blogs
6. Compare your theme to other themes in the market and highlight what makes yours better and sets it apart
7. Advertise your product in article comments, but make sure that it’s actually relevant to what is being discussed and not spammy
8. Help others find solutions to their problems by highlighting your product on sites like Quora, Reddit, and others.
9. Submit your product to websites that give legitimate awards if they qualify

Social Media Optimization

Social media is now one of the top ways in which companies around the world advertise their products, share your articles, videos, images, info-graphics, presentation to increase brand awareness.

1. Facebook

Facebook is a great portal to increase organic traffic onto your portfolio page

• Share your products in Facebook groups
• Reach out to an influencer to spread the word and share your product
• Create a group for your ThemeForest profile

2. Instagram

Post images through Instagram to increase traffic to your profile, make sure you include your profile link in the description and use the right hashtags.

3. Pinterest

Add all your product Preview images onto a Pinterest account, and make sure that each link goes back to your profile

4. YouTube

YouTube is a great platform to use when you have the means to create tutorials about your products.

• Adding video tutorials for each product is a great way to get subscribers.
• Include a catchy description with a link to redirect visitors to your product
• Leverage YouTube keywords to drive traffic to your profile

5. SlideShare

Add a 10 to 15 slide PowerPoint presentation highlighting the features of your product on SlideShare.

6. Twitter

• Follow the audience you would like to target
• Search for users who are looking for advice and help them if possible.

7. Dribble

• Invite followers, share, get feedback and discuss  your work on Dribble to get more exposure from a portal designed for creatives.

Advanced Marketing Methods

If you want to take a more advanced approach to market your profile or theme, there are several ways you can do this.

1. Use Codeconyon to automate your marketing process, here are some products to help you get started

• Sms marketing plugin
• Nimble classified ads script
• Twilio calls & sms scheduler

1. Utilize the API to build in-depth insights
2. Create a null website and emphasize your products
3. Develop user-friendly web services for your product niche and advertise your products on it drive traffic to your themeforest profile. Services such as Whois, IP locator, page speed test, attract high volume of traffic on daily basis by users who might be interested in your products.
4. Hub-spot CRM

Digital Advertising

• Free Advertising

1. Create an exciting video about your product
2. Create an infographic

• Paid Advertising

1. Buy ads from Buysellads.com
2. Run an AdWords campaign
3. Start a brand awareness campaign on Facebook
4. Boost your Posts on Instagram & Pinterest
5. Publish a press release about your product

Paid advertising can be challenging, especially for new authors. Elite Authors have an advantage feature, which is access at TF market place for tracking their items. An Adword profit ratio of 25:100 or higher is just about right. If you can afford paid advertising, here are some pointers to help you find the right target audience for your theme:

• Search for the right audience by using the Adword keyword Planner.
• Write a perfect pitch to describe your theme in ads
• Use high-quality images (keep in mind that your ad image is the first impression)
• Run A/B testing ads

Email Marketing

1. Build your email list
2. Setup automated triggered campaigns
3. Look after your current clients from time to time, and especially on holidays
4. Blast an offer newsletter
5. Invite your clients to test your new product

As the Author Themerex in his article How to beat competitors on Envato mentions, “You need to use your traffic, not just have it. It was a big mistake for us not to use the traffic to convert some sales and offer some themes of our own.”

Blend In The Community

The Envato community is very helpful, and although they compete, authors are friendly, generally willing to help and often discuss aspects about the marketplace that can give you some great insights as to how to approach your campaign.

1. Participate in the community to put your name out
2. Get inspired by the community ideas
3. Share your product with the community
4. Ask for help, and offer it when needed. This serves you well in the long-run.

Growth Hacks

1. Build your own website around your products. As mentioned by Kate Hunter, having a separate domain name may have been devalued by Google, but it is a form of Best Practice because it prevents others from using that name to sell their own products. Additionally you can use it as another marketing funnel to promote your products.
2. Keep updating your theme on a bi-weekly or monthly basis
3. Re-target users with ads. Here’s A beginners guide to re-targeting
4. Run a contest around your theme
5. Explore popular categories that bring exposure
6. Upload plugins to WordPress.org
7. Upload a product rollback to wordpress.org
8. Look into affiliate marketing
9. Use the BHW black-hat method
10. Setup a promotion calendar to launch a discount based on event and time of year

Conclusion

ThemeForest has several incentives and opportunities to grow, but you need to set yourself apart from your competition. Starting marketing campaigns and developing a brand while maintaining a long-term relationship with your clients are important factors in becoming a successful author on Envato. As an author, I plan, develop, track, and adjust accordingly, and you should too if you’d like to stay on top of your game. Always keep an eye on what established authors are doing to promote their themes. Utilizing the API to your advantage is an opportunity that no author should miss. I hope this article was helpful, and good luck on your journey with the Envato marketplace. I’d love to hear out about your marketing ideas and experience with ThemeForest! Feel free to share your experience in the comments.