Do you remove your old items?

The first thing that needs to be considered is possible disappointment the buyers feel when their download page shows many items removed. I wonder how Envato manages to answer and keep buyers confident – when items are allowed to remove – so easily.

i update them and make them look like a brand new item

VF said
The first thing that needs to be considered is possible disappointment the buyers feel when their download page shows many items removed. I wonder how Envato manages to answer and keep buyers confident – when items are allowed to remove – so easily.

..but would it be fair to sell very outdated items to the customers? Think how many functions will be depreciated in the WordPress after 1 year, and how many new features of the WordPress will be unsupported by that theme? So I think if you can not keep updating the themes, its unfair to keep them just with the hope that you will get 1-2 sales in couple of months.

Do you think an author with 70+ WordPress themes would be interested to upgrade all of his themes all the time?

crossroad said

VF said
The first thing that needs to be considered is possible disappointment the buyers feel when their download page shows many items removed. I wonder how Envato manages to answer and keep buyers confident – when items are allowed to remove – so easily.

..but would it be fair to sell very outdated items to the customers? Think how many functions will be depreciated in the WordPress after 1 year, and how many new features of the WordPress will be unsupported by that theme? So I think if you can not keep updating the themes, its unfair to keep them just with the hope that you will get 1-2 sales in couple of months.

Do you think an author with 70+ WordPress themes would be interested to upgrade all of his themes all the time?

If you code them to the wp standards, it’s highly unprobably that they go outdated from a version to another. And in time, if you keep a close eye on them and update them on time, they won’t be hard to manage.

The point is, nobody forces buyers to buy “old” items.
If an item is good , it is good.

ThemeForest is not easy , and our old items can also play a positive role for exposure, which is very hard to gain and very important.

FinalDestiny said
If you code them to the wp standards, it’s highly unprobably that they go outdated from a version to another. And in time, if you keep a close eye on them and update them on time, they won’t be hard to manage.

You have to code them to the wp standards, cos otherwise TF won’t accept them, so that’s not the question. Try purchasing some of the WP theme which is over 1 year old, and enable the WordPress debug mode on, and count the deprecated functions and other warnings you get.

VF said
The first thing that needs to be considered is possible disappointment the buyers feel when their download page shows many items removed. I wonder how Envato manages to answer and keep buyers confident – when items are allowed to remove – so easily.

this could be fixed by allowing items to be removed from sales but still available to who purchased them. This should be made as an option, not mandatory, so if an author want them deleted for good then he can do it.

doru said

VF said
The first thing that needs to be considered is possible disappointment the buyers feel when their download page shows many items removed. I wonder how Envato manages to answer and keep buyers confident – when items are allowed to remove – so easily.

this could be fixed by allowing items to be removed from sales but still available to who purchased them. This should be made as an option, not mandatory, so if an author want them deleted for good then he can do it.

The problem I guess would be if the item was removed by Envato for whatever reason. If it was a copyright issue, they can’t really continue to distribute it.

Generally I’m against removing items. Because the more items, the more chances you have of people finding your work. But I recently sold some AD items off to someone. Did the math and even though I sold them for almost nothing, it was still worth the money.

My first item got his first sale after a month only! Meanwhile we did more template to sell, in next 3 months first item got more 4 sales, we didn’t even expected.

Yes, i do.. Because:

1. In time i will improve his coding/design(it’s not my case but could be the case for others) skills and some older items might not have the same quality as fresh ones. This will only get you bad reviews. I want a good portfolio.

2. When talking about WordPress themes, these need to be constantly update, stripped out of deprecated tags, etc.. To spend time on a theme which is not selling is bad time management..

3. You guys talk about buyers coming back for the item.. I don’t want any buyer to buy old files from me because they will definitely be unmaintained if i keep them here, so this will just make them disappointed. They are better without a broken product then with my old file which you will consume both my time and theirs in support..