There’s nothing better than a big family and today the Envato family just got a whole lot bigger. We’re welcoming in two new marketplaces and a brand new Marketplace Manager to take over from Cyan! Read on to learn more!
The last 9 months we’ve been working hard on the financial parts of our system. During this time we’ve been building a better, more bulletproof accounting system into the app. It’s the kind of super important work that for the most part nobody notices, but ensures everything is working as it should. Along the way we’ve also been working on some other aspects which WILL be noticeable, and I’d like to tell you about three of them:
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For just over three fantastic years FlashDen has been the jewel in Envato’s crown. It is our longest running and most active community, and thanks to the amazing authors who showcase their work here, has become the largest Flash marketplace in the world.
This week Adobe asked us to change our name and URL so that it would no longer contain the term ‘Flash’, which is a registered trademark of Adobe. And so here at Envato HQ we’ve been busy thinking up new names and we think we’ve found a great new home for our community.
As of Monday 19th October, FlashDen.net will be changing its name to ActiveDen.net.
The new name amends the use of the word Flash, and it also opens up the marketplace for the future. In the last year we have added a budding Flex library and we now look forward to listing other interactive products like Adobe Air and maybe even Microsoft Silverlight! 
We realize some members may have concerns about this decision, and to be honest I know I am always going to feel a little wistful about our old name, but we feel strongly it’s the right choice for FlashDen and will serve us in good stead for the future, allowing us to focus on what we do best – providing the very best marketplace for selling digital goods online.
As of Monday, the URL FlashDen.net will redirect to the new ActiveDen.net site. Everything will stay just as it always has been – we’ll just have a nifty new name!
I am sure the community will get behind us during this period of transition, and we’ll do everything possible to ensure it’s a smooth one with plenty of redirects in place to make sure no traffic, links, and especially buyers, are lost.
Thanks to everyone at FlashDen for three years of amazing growth and community, and here’s to many more as ActiveDen!
It’s been a hectic 3 days for us here at Envato. We’ve had a massively successful Birthday Bundle (over 5,000 sales in 3 days), lots of giveaways, a fantastic Tuts+ tutorial set up for free download and our first video interview. Here in the office we’ve also been celebrating today with a big lunch and lots of network gaming! With the birthday all wrapped up now though I thought I’d give you a very quick preview of what’s coming up in September…
One of the best things about working here at Envato is that we have an awesome team of people building, managing, writing, reviewing and working on our sites. Yep, things have come a long way since the early days when there was just a few of us trying to do everything!
Recently our awesome Tuts+ interviewer Emil asked if I minded being video interviewed with some questions put forward by the Psdtuts+ readers. Since no-one really wants to see my enormous head on screen for too long a period of time, I asked my lovely wife and partner in crime Cyan if she’d be in on the interview and we thought we’d put up the video to help celebrate 3 years of Envato.
So without further ado, if you’ve ever wondered about how Envato started or about who we are, I hope you enjoy this little interview of us!
Don’t like Blip.tv? View the interview on
It was back in 2006 that Envato first launched with our very first site FlashDen. That means next week we’ll be turning 3 years old! Since web years are much like dog years, by my count that makes us pretty darn old. Given how we’ve grown, we’ve decided that this year it’s time we really kicked our celebrations up a notch. Next week for 3 days we’re going to have a massive sequence of birthday events, read on to find out what’s happening …
As of a few hours ago the Envato Marketplaces have their first quarter-million dollar author. DigitalScience broke through our top sales badge and we’ve quickly rushed out a new author badge – the Plutonium Paw 
for authors who have sold more than $250,000 worth of digital goods!
That authors can make as much as US$15,000 a month with the marketplaces is a very rewarding thing to see for everyone here at Envato. And while FlashDen authors are definitely leading the way, we’re seeing solid growth on all the marketplaces, particularly ThemeForest and VideoHive with authors on both earning in the four figures each month.
As always the team is working hard to make our marketplaces truly profitable places for the whole authoring community. We just recently passed 2000 authors with at least one sale and a total community size of over 150,000 people – a staggering number.
So here’s to many more records to smash in the coming years!
Looking back on last year, Envato had a pretty big 2008 by any measure. We jumped from 4 sites to 13, a million monthly visitors to 5 million, and while our team began the year numbering 12, we ended it totalling 55 talented reviewers, editors, managers, developers, writers and support staff. With such a crazy year in the rearview mirror, it is with no small excitement that I can say that 2009 is going to make 2008 pale in comparison. And today I’m here to make a huge announcement for all the authors of our marketplaces, give beta invites for a major new site, and give sneak previews for some of our Envato plans!
FlashDen has come a long way since its inception back in 2006, the site has grown huge, our membership has topped 100,000 and we’ve branched out into three more sites. Along the way we’ve had to grow the staff we have to manage the sites, to keep the forums running smoothly, support answered, reviewers hired and the sites happy. Today I’m thrilled to announce that after much deliberation and interim measures, we have ourselves a fantastic new Site Manager for FlashDen who goes by the name of Lance Snider.
Lance joins our other Site Managers, Jeffrey Way, Joel Falconer and Mark Brodhuber, as well as our Marketplace Manager the ever awesome Cyan to make a quintet of quick thinking, hard working, honest and trustworthy admins! The team is pushing forward on many fronts to make all four of our marketplaces better sites to sell on, better sites to buy on and well … just better!
So welcome Lance! He is going to bring his know-how and expertise to make FlashDen even bigger and better for 2009!
2 years ago when we launched FlashDen, one of the first things I did was go and register SoundDen and VideoDen thinking it wouldn’t be long before we expanded our Flash marketplace into these two areas. Over the years the names and branding adapted and about six months ago now we moved the music and sound files out of FlashDen into their new permanent home, AudioJungle.
Well today I’m happy to announce we’re almost ready to launch the video counterpart of our marketplaces – VideoHive! Launch date isn’t fixed yet, but will be this side of the new year. Most of the work has been done and Cyan and xDozex have been working up a new category system, upload guidelines and documentation. I’ve put together the new stylings and our crack team of developers has been polishing up the framework in preparation.
The new site will feature the 600 odd videos already available on FlashDen’s Video section as well as a new categorization system that includes footage and project files, a new flexible sized lightboxed video player for previewing, and a dedicated video community.
Stay tuned to the new VideoHive blog for updates on the launch as we draw near!
Down the Foxhole is the community blog of ActiveDen, an Envato marketplace. At ActiveDen you can buy or sell Adobe Flash and Flex files like preloaders, galleries, site templates and utilities. Files are created and sold by a huge community of authors from all over the world, helping to make it the biggest Flash library online!
You can also find ActiveDen
on Twitter and Facebook.
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