Officially a Themeforest author1

I have alot of life time goals, some small, some massive, some important, some daft, but some are just self obsessed challenges. Becoming an author on ThemeFroest is one of those little challenges I’ve always thought – yeah, I’d like to be one.

The Envato Group

Ya see, as a web developer, I’m addicted to reading up on tutorials, learning from other developers and most of all trying news things out, so in my opinion, there is no better source that of Nettuts. Although, if your a web designer you might prefer, PSDtuts and if your into Mobile development you might want to check out MobileTuts.

The list doesn’t stop there, Envato are growing at a crazy rate and there are new ‘tut’ sites showing up everywhere. The content on these sites are truly inspirational and a huge chuck of these tutorials are completely free, a very small proportion are known as premium tuts, but if your a premium member like me, then you can access all tutorials on all the sites! You can become a premium member here.

Code Canyon

Often when you need a small piece of code, you have a choice, you can code it yourself, or (the less fun option), you can browse through another of Envatos market places CodeCanyon and no doubt, someone somewhere has coded it for you, took the time to apply some nifty features and of course styled it too. The catch – you have to pay for it.

It was then and there that I realised that I had to earn my money before spending it. – Me

Months ago, I was coding a site and I needed an AJAX contact form. Simple to code, but when your in a rush and someone offers you a beautiful coded form which is styled, in HTML5 and in full working order for $3 – you take it! Only problem was, I didn’t have $3 in my Envato account, so I was forced to go down the good old PayPal route.

I deposited $20 and before I knew it, I had bought about 6 different files, and was $20 poorer. It was just too easy. It was then and there that I realised that I had to earn my money before spending it.

I could see that small code snippets fetched anywhere between $3-$15 dollars, so I thought, I’ll build a file of my own, sell it on CodeCanyon and then with the proceeds I can buy the scripts I need – problem solved.

A week later I had built my first script. A small piece of code that helps you generate easy notification messages. I called it ‘Notify’ and submitted it CodeCanyon where thankfully it was accepted. You can see it here. I was really happy with it, it’s simple, useful and it works. The problem was that it was too simple and Envato valued it at $5. Almost all users of Envato receive a $2 discount and so the file sells at $3, meaning I took only 40%, which equates to a measly $1.20 per sale. Not exactly enough to send my kids to University, although I wont lie, I was delighted to have my fist file up and running.

Sadly, the sales don’t exactly pour in and I recently noticed that someone bought my script, added some cool extra features and now my script is old news. Someone call the tutspolice. I did however, make a few bucks, although very little is was enough to get me thinking “I need a better script, something that will generate more income” – plus I like a challenge.

Introducing Theme Forest

That is when I set myself the task to sell a file on Themeforest – Envato’s most popular market place. A web heaven for most web developers and often designers. A place where websites are coded up, feature rich, documented to the hills and sold on.

It’s not easy to sell a file on Themeforest, the competition is tough and those reviewing your file before it is accepted are relentless. Your file (or theme as they’re called) must meet all their standards and the standards are so high, there are even forums set up to consolidate all the folks that are bewildered by their rejections.

A good theme will sell much better than any PHP script on CodeCanyon. There are various types of themes, the most popular seems to be WordPress and generally sells around $30 for a decent one, then there are bog standard website templates for around $20 and specialty themes which sell for less.

The ThemeForest Challenge

After reading some of the rants from rejected authors, I decided to start with something simple. I noticed that one of the online CV’s cost $12, but more importantly it had sold a few hundred times. This got me thinking… Online Cv’s are becoming more and more popular and maybe this isn’t a bad place to start.

A Sunday morning not so long ago, I began sketching away on my note pad, before long I was fiddling away in Photoshop and my midday I had started coding up my CV / Resume. I spent the entire day building my CV theme to perfection, using HTML5, the newest and coolest jQuery techniques and even a few hours documenting it, by midnight, it was ready to submit. I uploaded the files and that night I dreampt code (as I often do). I really wanted to know how it would compete in the market place.

It was rejected.

Everybody falls the first time, right, Trin? – Matrix

I was thanked for my submission and given some pointers were I could improve my theme. It was the design that didn’t meet the Themeforest criteria and well, since I’m not a designer, I didnt take this to heart, after all my code must have passed!

I picked my self up and last weekend I went at it again. I spent hours researching design techniques, photoshop tutorials, corporate styles, subtlety, line spacing, alignment, it was a long educational day, and again by midnight I had uploaded my new CV theme.

Six anxious days later and this morning I woke up to this email:

Congratulations, your item ProCV – Professional Online Resume / CV has been approved for sale on the Envato Marketplaces. You can view it online here:

ProCV

Thanks so much for submitting this template. I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Brilliant! I don’t really mind if it only sells once or even none at all, I am just relishing the fact that a month ago I wanted to become a Themeforest author and today I achieved it.

Mission Accomplished. Now for the next challenge? A WordPress theme maybe?

Need an online CV / Resume? Check out Pro CV?