Welcome to the sixth “Week in Review” on Post Status, where I hope to offer up some of the things you may have missed in the last week or so. Unfortunately, I haven’t posted since the last week in review. Trust me, that’ll change this week. There are already a lot of posts lined up for some upcoming news.
Fortunately, others in our community have been busy bees, writing away. Let’s dive into the news:
Themeforest adds a $3 hike to items and author team support
Themeforest is in the process of making some subtle, but overall significant, changes to their marketplaces. Last week they announced new support for author teams on Themeforest items.
Even more significant is a price hike, effectively immediately, that looks to be basically a $3 hike across all, or at least most, items. That ends up being 5 or 6% for most stuff, and for top sellers will mean tens of thousands of dollars of new revenue for their items.
I don’t think we’re seeing the end of changes for Themeforest. Keep on the lookout for more here — especially in regard to renewable licensing, which I think is on the way.
Jetpack 3.1 includes custom content types
Jetpack released version 3.1, which officially includes the custom content types module I’ve already talked about before. Phillip Arthur Moore also added some good notes on that topic.
They also unleashed a new snazzy logo, and some developer friendly features.
Jetpack is a big focus for Automattic, and as it matures, I’m quite interested to see how they further open up monetization opportunities with it. They already do small things, like some recent VaultPress trials, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing much more over coming months and years.
New to me: Polar polls
Polar seems to have launched in 2012, but they have what I think is a new WordPress plugin that enables poll embedding on WordPress sites.
If you are looking for Polldaddy or Gravity Forms Polls alternatives, you may want to check out the Polar WordPress plugin. The design of these polls is super visual and seems quite nice.
According to Crunchbase, they’ve gotten a couple million in funding, with their latest round this year, and the app looks quite nice.
Steps to becoming a world-class programmer, in a lifetime
Tom McFarlin continues to drop knowledge, this time telling you how to be a world class programmer. But be prepared, it takes some time!
Sucuri and Yoast partner
Yoast and Sucuri are partnering for a trade swap, if you will. Sucuri will provide regular security audits for Yoast’s enormously popular plugins, and Yoast will provide online marketing services for Sucuri, as well as regular SEO audits.
Partnerships between companies shouldn’t surprise us at this point, and this one seems to make sense all around. You can see Yoast’s announcement, as well as Sucuri’s, for more information.
Alright, this is the short version of the week in review, but I think the most interesting stories I’ve seen the last week. Right now, it’s time for me to hop on a plane and get back to good ‘ole Alabama. I’ll have a lot from my experience here at WordCamp NYC, which was fantastic. I hope you all have an excellent week.
Handy stuff from Envato. I sure hope they add support renewal options and another price hike within a year.
A price hike won’t necessarily mean an automatic increase in revenue. As price goes up, sales typically go down (otherwise I’d make my themes $10,000 each and retire later this year). What I like about the increase is that it means more revenue per customer. That goes some way in providing better support and better products in general.
I like these week in reviews. 🙂
Hi Brian.
Just a quick comment to confirm that it’s a $3 price increase across the board for WordPress themes on ThemeForest. There are price increases amongst most categories across all Marketplaces. On CodeCanyon the increase will be between $2 and $4.
Cheers,
Stephen