How To Combat Shrinking Front Page Exposure

Guys, lets be frank here. The Envato network is growing at an amazing rate, especially the marketplaces. There’s always a period of time for a recently launched marketplace, where front page exposure is so vital and lucrative. There is no denying that when file submissions are fewer,  a file can sit on the front page for a few days, after being approved. This is fantastic, buyers come to the site, click new files, and bam! There’s your file, right in the beginning of the list. Because file sales tend to be greater when this is still happening, authors grow to rely on the sales their file receive within the first few days of their upload.

I’ve been around since the early days of FlashDen, and have seen all of the other marketplace doors open up. This is not a situation unique to the one you frequent most. It happens on each site, at some point down the line. Once the author base grows, and submissions become more regular front page exposure becomes less and less. It’s imperative to each author’s success to not ever depend on the front page for sales. As authors we must evolve with the site and not against it.

Throughout the course of my travels with Envato, I’ve realized there are 4 very important parts to becoming successful. All of them help kick the front page addiction new authors grow so accustom to.

Tagging

The tagging system has been live now for a short period of time. But it’s already evident that it’s a huge step forward in the search system. Tags are there for a reason…to help people find your files. So its extremely important that your process includes tagging. Don’t skimp on this, you want your tags to be as accurate as possible.

As a reviewer, I see many files come in each day that have no tags at all. Other times I see files coming in with color tags in the subject field, or vice versa. When inputting tags, each field has a few suggestion tags in parenthesis to give you a better idea of what types of tags belong in those fields. Pay attention to this and try to describe as much as you can about your file in 15 tags or less .

Description & Categorization

File descriptions are another very important thing that can very easily be neglected. Of course every type of file on each of the 5 marketplaces have previews. But there’s things that descriptions can show that previews cannot. Description text, and attributes can all lend to explaining the inner workings of your file. They can take a lot of the guess work out of your files, and make the buying/customizing process much easier for potential customers.

Be sure to fill in your description body. If your file is called “Balloon Flying” and your preview shows a balloon flying, typing in “A balloon flying into the sky” is not good enough. Describe the shot, the camera used, the exposure settings. If its a motion graphic describe the file, if it includes extra clips or animations. Tell people whether or not it has an alpha channel. Describe a few of its potential uses. Hold the hand of the reader and tell them all there is to know about this file. This can be achieved in a few sentences. But even then its better than 4 words that explain little more than the title does already.

Categorization is also very often overlooked. Make sure you place your files in the most accurate bottom sub-category you possible can! If you are submitting a Motion Graphic, do not leave the category choice to “Backgrounds”. You want, no I’m sorry, you NEED to dig deeper. If your animation is rough and edgy, it probably belongs in “Backgrounds > Grunge”. That little bit makes a big difference. Buyers do view files by category, and if you leave your grungy file in the top level, and buyers go deep into the grunge category. There is a chance your fantastic file will go completely unnoticed.

Repeat Customers

From your first day as an author on any one of the marketplaces, you want to build your brand. You want buyers to know about you, be on the look out for new files from you, and follow you religiously. For some buyers, this means nothing more than making great files. For others, it may take some support. Of course, support is not required from authors. But doing so really makes a happy buyer. And a happy buyer has a much higher chance at becoming a happy REPEAT buyer, than an unhappy one.

Another thing you could do, is tag your thumbnails. Many already do this. Either keep a consistent and similar design for all of your thumbnails. Overtime it will be distinctly yours. I’m sure most of you FlashDenners know a DigitalScience file as soon as you see the thumbnail, or Lance’s trademark Chili Pepper that he slaps onto every thumbnail he makes. It’s all about building a brand here. Something that people can familiarize themselves with.

Last small thing that’s already a well known fact but some who neglect the descriptions above, usually tend to fall short on this as well. Provide some links to your other files within each file’s description. Why not show a buyer some of your other work while you already have them looking at your page? This can be a double edged sword here, because this can be overdone really with very little effort. I think I can safely assume most reading this will have some knowledge or sense of design. So don’t go ruining the design of the page, or make it impractical by loading your description with a thumbnail for every one of your 300 files. Find a few that pair well with the file in question. I’m not talking about wine here. If your selling a 3D Soccer ball, you may want to also include a few thumbs from other 3D sports renderings you sell, and maybe the project file you have that is themed to sports. Keep your thumbs relevant and keep them targeted.

Marketing

Ahh, the age old debate. Marketing tends to be a soft spot on the forums. I cringe when I see a thread that talks about it because I just know its going to go two ways. One group saying you should market outside of the Marketplaces, and the other group saying Envato should market for you. While both make valid points, I tend to side with the first group I mentioned. Envato DOES market for you, quite extensively actually. But that marketing is general and less targeted. Yes, they get people that want HTML templates onto ThemeForest, but once they’re there, they could go with any one of the files TF has to offer. Once a buyer is at this point, this is where your tagging and description come into play.

Settling for the marketing that is provided is a bad decision. You’ll never hear one of the larger retailers saying “Ehh, we have enough marketing”. It’s just not a smart move to make. You want to get your files in front of as many people as possible. Of course there are TONS of potentially easy ways to market your files outside of Envato. Three quick, and fairly common ones are Blogging, Linking, and Cross-Promoting.

Blogging is of course something that needs no description. If you have a blog, every once in a while drop a line about a new file you’re working on. If you don’t have a blog, you may want to consider creating a simple blog. Make it relevant to the field you create files for. Every once in a while post an informative article about that field. Maybe just use your blog for ranting, or sharing pictures, and occasionally throw up some info about your files. It does not take much work and could lead to very great sales.

By linking, I am not referring to visiting another sites forums and carpet-bombing them with links to your files. This is NOT nice and nobody like this! We spend a lot of time preventing this on our forums, so please Envato lovers, respect other people’s communities. What I did mean was through avenue’s like Adobe Exchange. The Exchange is nothing more than a list of files. Most of them not being hosted by Adobe at all. You submit your files there, Adobe lists them to their general public, and once clicked, it brings the user back to your file’s page on Envato’s site. You still get the sale here, but its listed in both places. I wrote a tutorial back in April on how to submit your files which you can check out here: Market Your Files Using Adobe Exchange

Last thing is cross promotion. While it’s quite primitive, it can be a very helpful tool in your marketing arsenal, and benefit you while helping out some friends in the meantime. Contact a few people you have grown close to on your marketplace. Ask them if they’d be interested in cross promoting. Offer to post a link to a few of their files if they do the same for a few of your files. Similar to posting some thumbs to files of yours that are similar, maybe post a link to a friends file, that would pair well with your file. All of these methods will help push traffic to your friends, and their traffic will get pushed your way.

Last but not least, is referrals. Any one of these venues, outside of the marketplaces, can all have the referral program worked in. It’s no secret, and a few key presses at the end of any Marketplace link can really turn into a business in its own. It’s been covered a lot, and I’m not going to get into the referral program in this article. If you don’t already know about it, and would like to learn more, be sure to check out Topher’s article on how to use it here: Setting Up Affiliation Links With VideoHive

I hope through all of this rambling, you were able to pull out 1 or 2 tricks that will help you beat your front page addiction. And trust me, you’ll be much happier once you get over it. Like I said earlier, it happens on every marketplace. It’s going to be pretty funny when the next marketplace opens, and within a few months, you look and see similar posts appearing within its forum.

If you have any other useful suggestions, please comment below!