Outsourced Theme Support?

fillerspace said
There are many types of crowdsourcing. You have described one (the design contest), and I have described another. Envato is definitely crowdsourcing in that many authors design on spec and submit with many being rejected. Crowdsourcing is the reason there are 1000+ themes here and only 100 on ElegantThemes.

From Wikipedia: Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call.

I dont think that this applies to the marketplaces, since there is no single contractor outsourcing a task to a crowd There is no mission brief to the work we do here. we simply try to make educated guesses on what will sell and build that stuff.

fillerspace said
Envato crowdsources the creation of themes, graphics, code, etc. instead of building them in-house. Envato is definitely crowdsourcing in that many authors design on spec and submit with many being rejected. Crowdsourcing is the reason there are 1000+ themes here and only 100 on ElegantThemes.

Negatory on both counts. I think the problem is that you’re bunching up TF/Envato into the wrong category/section. Think of TF as eBay instead—it functions merely to let you sell your stuff online. It’s just that TF has reviewers, people like me, to make sure that only good items are approved to keep the SNR optimal.

tl;dr—TF ~ eBay. TF !== ElegantThemes.

Siddharth said

fillerspace said
Envato crowdsources the creation of themes, graphics, code, etc. instead of building them in-house. Envato is definitely crowdsourcing in that many authors design on spec and submit with many being rejected. Crowdsourcing is the reason there are 1000+ themes here and only 100 on ElegantThemes.

Negatory on both counts. I think the problem is that you’re bunching up TF/Envato into the wrong category/section. Think of TF as eBay instead—it functions merely to let you sell your stuff online. It’s just that TF has reviewers, people like me, to make sure that only good items are approved to keep the SNR optimal.

tl;dr—TF ~ eBay. TF !== ElegantThemes.

I think you misread…my point was that Themeforest is the opposite of ElegantThemes. Themeforest crowdsources the design work to many authors instead of designing everything in-house like ElegantThemea. To use your eBay example, eBay crowdsources pricing, sales, and distribution to individual buyers and sellers instead of warehousing and selling its own inventory.

It is the very definition given by Jeff Howe in Wired: taking advantage of the talent of the public. In TF’s case that is the many authors designing on spec instead of staff designers.

Kriesi said
I dont think that this applies to the marketplaces, since there is no single contractor outsourcing a task to a crowd There is no mission brief to the work we do here. we simply try to make educated guesses on what will sell and build that stuff.

In a way, the contractor is Envato, who instead of hiring dozens of designers and developers, put out an open call to independent authors (the crowd) to provide (source) their themes. They have guidelines for the themes (must have documentation, pass review, have thumbnail, etc). The only difference here is that they use a marketplace format and revenue sharing to sell them instead of paying a flat rate to the author and then selling the work as their own.

Kriesi said
Honestly? I would love to put support in other peoples hands and never again care about it (...)

I think that this kind of utopia would break the connection between the theme creator and the real world buyer.

cmt said

Kriesi said
Honestly? I would love to put support in other peoples hands and never again care about it (...)

I think that this kind of utopia would break the connection between the theme creator and the real world buyer.

Sometimes you’ll find that foster parents are more loving than biological ones.

fillerspace said
For the authors out there, how much would you pay if my company offered outsourced support for your themes? I have a staff of developers and designers who could answer support emails and forum postings, even make design tweaks or customizations for your buyers. What would this service be worth to you? Would a percentage of sales, flat fee per ticket/request, or hourly rate work best?

Hi. Please drop me an email.