• News about all Envato Sites
• Interviews of authors and people from the community
• Case studies about Envato Authors
• Competitions
• Announcements about New Features and Categories
• News from the Envato Dev teams
• How-To articles for our sites
• Staff Interviews from the Envato team
• Polls, Discussions, Contests, Features, Photos, Plugs, Freebies, Reports, Tips, Giveaways, Guest Posts, … you name it, we’re going to have it!

So be sure to head over and check it out now at Notes.Envato.com!

3DOcean

After a quick beta to get some initial content onto the marketplace, we’re letting 3DOcean out into the wild. It’s still early days but we’re looking forward to building the site into a must-visit marketplace for 3D Models, Materials and Shaders and Textures!

Along with its sister site Cgtuts+, we hope 3DOcean will introduce a whole new group of creatives to the rapidly growing Envato community. So a warm welcome to our 3D brothers and sisters!

CodeCanyon

Since we introduced PHP and Javascript onto ThemeForest, the two categories have been racing along. With the top selling code file rapidly approaching a thousand sales, it was clear that code deserved its own marketplace.

So today we’re happy to be migrating all 176 scripts and snippets over to their new home at CodeCanyon, complete with an awesome orange motif and an angry bird mascot! We’ve thrown in two new categories – ASP.NET and Java – to get the site pumping and in 2010 we’re looking forward to building CodeCanyon into the best tech marketplace online!

Jason Ellis

Finally I’d like to also introduce a new face to the marketplaces in the form of a brand new Marketplace Manager who will be filling some big shoes when he takes over from Cyan next week. His name is Jason Ellis, he’s a super guy and he’s from New Zealand! Jason will be heading up our team of stellar site managers and working to grow and develop our marketplaces even further.

In the meantime Cyan, having hung up her "Queen of the Marketplaces" badge, is moving over to take over marketing for Envato. She’ll be applying her usual ninja-like efficiency to take our marketing to the next level of awesomeness!

… More Updates

Things have been moving pretty quickly around here lately, with Buy Now and 2 new marketplaces. Well that’s not all that’s happening either! Today we rolled out some homepage improvements including a further 10 recent items and a return to having featured authors on the homepage. We’ve also added in a showcase of three of the featured author’s recent items to bump up the exposure they get. And we’ve brought Free File of the Month officially into the marketplace codebase so that we can get more marketing mileage out of those awesome freebies!

And that’s not all, Jason will be overseeing the roll out of a very highly requested author feature in the very near future. Keep an eye out over Christmas as it comes to a marketplace near you!

27 Free Christmas Illustrations

The best thing about the holiday season is getting presents, so we asked the very talented Kai Loon to put together a special set of completely free illustrations to give away. The set includes 27 illustrations to mix and match with everything you need to make cards and promotions. Download the set for free, to use in personal or commercial projects.

Seasonal Files!

Around this time of year you often find yourself in need of some creative assets themed for Christmas, new year and the holidays! We’ve assembled some of the best seasonal files from around the Envato Marketplaces into 5 great collections:

1. Top Holiday Flash Files
2. Christmas & Holiday Music
3. Seasonal Vectors and Graphics
4. Holiday Themed Motion Graphics
5. Seasonal Email Templates

$7000 of Giveaways over 24 Days on AppStorm

Enjoy apps? Well our two App review blogs – Mac.AppStorm and Web.AppStorm – are running giveaways every single day for 24 days leading up to Christmas! It’s a total of 138 licenses worth over $7000 up for grabs, and David’s even thrown in a few free AppStorm holiday wallpapers! And if you enjoy AppStorm, look out for our third AppStorm site which is due to launch right after the giveaways, along with a redesign and a hub site at AppStorm.net!

Winter of WordPress

Selling WordPress themes has rapidly turned into a cottage industry allowing web designers and developers everywhere to earn a steady stream of income ranging from hundreds to many thousands of dollars a month. Because the quiet winter months are one of the best times to invest some time theming we’ve put together a little showcase site called Winter of WordPress to tell you all about the opportunities in WP theming!

96 Tuts+ Giveaways + Wallpaper + Caricatures

For 12 days starting on December 21st, Tuts+ is going to be hosting a massive set of 96 giveaways across all 8 Tuts+ sites including pillows, books, Amazon vouchers and Plus memberships. On New Year’s Day there will also be a special 2010 wallpaper by James White and our very own Ian Yates is putting together caricatures of the entire Tuts+ team

Special Edition Comics Plus ThinkGeek Giveaways

Over on our work blogs FreelanceSwitch and WorkAwesome we’re celebrating the holiday season with ThinkGeek and Marketcircle giveaways along with our annual NC Winter’s FreelanceFreedom and Memo:random special comic strips!

Happy New Year from Envato!

So keep an eye out for it all happening across the Envato network throughout December! And from all of us here at Envato, have a lovely holiday season and a happy new year!

What’s an “API”? A Pink Igloo? A Pig Itching? Not quite.

The Marketplace’s Application Programming Interface (API) allows the development of applications with access to a range of data from all the marketplaces such as the most popular and latest files. More sensitive data such as your account balance, recent sales, and monthly statements can also be accessed securely using your individual API key!

So what? I’m a designer – why should I be interested in geeky code interface stuff? Well, using the API you can develop apps/sites for your mobile, your desktop, or even your blog. Did I mention you can even design and style your applications however you want? Now that’s pretty cool, right?!

Since the Marketplace API was released about 6 months ago, several authors have jumped in feet first to develop some outstanding contributions for the community.

Let’s see what’s been going on…

Envato Marketplace Mobile

by: hagdesigns
link:http://www.hagportfolio.com/envato/

The Envato Marketplace Mobile is a gorgeous site that displays recent & popular files, popular authors, and the most recent blog posts for each Envato marketplace. As well as looking super stylish from the word go, when browsing each of the 5 available marketplaces the site is re-skinned for that marketplace, making you feel right at home.

In addition to browsing the marketplaces’ files and blog posts in such stylish fashion, using your username & API Key, you can securely access your most recent sales, account balance, commission rate, and monthly sales statements. There is even an upcoming feature where you can have your statements emailed to you! How could you top all of this? Well, you can view all of this whilst skinning the site to the Marketplace of your choice! Seriously cool.

Designed specifically for the iPhone, this site works great on most mobile phones and although I will soon be stroking a shiny new iPhone, it even looks great on my old Sony Ericsson K800i!

This site is definitely the top contender right now. Superb work by

Envato Marketplace Items WordPress Plugin

by: Derek Herman (Valen Designs)
link: Down the Foxhole: Working with the new Envato Marketplace Items Wordpress Plugin

For those of you with blogs and/or sites powered by WordPress, this plugin is a MUST have. In less than 5 minutes, you can have a neatly formed grid displaying a marketplace’s popular files or the recently uploaded files from a specific category (i.e. music-players on Activeden, wordpress on ThemeForest or icons on GraphicRiver). You can also display a specific user’s latest files (i.e. Bitfade). You can use the plugin multiple times per page so if you’re torn between two categories of files, you can display both!

As well as being able to promote files, this plugin also provides the opportunity to earn referral money by adding your referral id to the hyperlinks!

Awesome work by The WordPress Ninja

iEnvato AIR Application

by: mpc
link: http://www.blog.mpcreation.pl/ienvato-1-0-released/

iEnvato is a gorgeous little app made with Adobe AIR allowing installation on both MAC and PC! *applause*

This gorgeously-skinned, resizable app, which supports skinning and shortcuts for all 5 marketplaces, displays your 50 most recent sales, which can then be sorted by file name, amount made, or time and date of purchase. There is also a page devoted to statistics, showing your last 50 sales and the income made from each of those sales – a really nice touch for those of us who don’t make 50+ sales a day!

As well as having a slick design, this app also features shortcuts to your author dashboard and chosen marketplace forums, and notifies you of new sales! There is also a very worthy donate button.

Great work mpc, looking forward to more.

Envato Product Sales Web Report

by: jernigani
link: http://www.israeljernigan.com/themeforest/iphone_api_report/

Another really cool site that’s been targeted for iPhone users is Jernigani’s Envato Product Sales Web Report App that focuses more on your account details and sales than on browsing the marketplaces.

With recent sales statistics, monthly sales, earnings statistics, your current commission rate, balance, and total earnings, this site provides a lot of information for you.

But wait, there’s more! All the files you have for sale on the marketplaces are displayed along with all the comments for each file so you can easily check your comments whilst checking your sales stats and balance! Awesome!

This app will soon be for sale on the ThemeForest MarketPlace and there is a considerable list of future plans so keep a sharp eye out for it!

Envato App

by: Emroni
link: http://emroni.com/EnvatoApp

This slick Envato app not only shows your balance and number of sales but also your rating, your referral/file earnings, AND all your badges! Love it! Super smooth page transitions will also reveal a list of your last 50 sales and the most recent comments made on your items whilst also providing a link to that item comment from the app. Gorgeous and exceptionally clever work from Emroni!

NB: Due to the awesomeness of this app, you have to be logged into your account in either Safari or Internet Explorer whilst using it to provide the extra information not provided by the marketplace API.

Nvator iPhone App

by: DenonStudio
link: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/nvator/id337047746?mt=8

Nvator is a very sleek native iPhone app that allows you to keep a tab on your Envato account wherever you are. Although it’s a relatively new app, Nvator has already got a slick feel to it and boasts several cool features with the promise of more to come! The current version (v1.1) displays your balance, commission rate, recent sales, and monthly sales in tabular and graphical formats! Upcoming features include viewing buyers’ comments, popular items, and more stats! Awesome work by DenonStudio – definitely keep an eye on this one!

Mac OS X Sales Notification App

by: uDesignStudios
linkhttp://salesdonkey.udesign.sk

SalesDonkey is an app for those MAC users out there who want a better way of finding out our account balance than hitting ⌘R in Safari over and over again.

When minimized, you can decide whether to display your total earnings or account balance alongside the Super Sexy SalesDonkey system tray icon! Once maximized, the app shows your recent sales and, most importantly, how much you’ve made. You can also browse recent comments as well as opening the comment for replying in your browser straight from the app!

Great Little App, Heeee Hawwww!

Envato Sales, Twitter Notification Service

by: danharper
link: http://danharper.me/salesnotifier/

For those of you who user Twitter, which is almost everyone, the Envato Sales Twitter Notification service is a great little app that will send you a message on Twitter every hour on the hour if your balance has changed, keeping you up to date without the need for any other program. For those who don’t use Twitter, what are you waiting for?! This makes it worth signing up for!

Make sure you remember to follow @salesnotifier once you’ve signed up!

Conclusion

There’s some really impressive work beginning to emerge with the use of the Marketplace API, so hats off to all the authors mentioned and those who have apps in the making! For those of you who want to get your hands dirty with the API, here are some links to get you started.

Introduction to the Marketplace API
API Official Documentation
Make An iPhone App Using the Envato API – Nettuts+
Display Anything You Want From The Envato MarketPlace API Using PHP

• Author name: iamdok | View Portfolio
• Member since: March of 09
• Location: Budapest, Hungary

Here are some highlights from iamdok’s portfolio:

Click here for more featured files and authors.

We have amazing authors regularly uploading outstanding files to ActiveDen. With almost 9,000 files already on ActiveDen at the time of writing, it’s important to not only make your items stand out amongst the competition, but it’s also important to make yourself stand out amongst the crowd. Why not check to see if you’re doing everything you can to maximize your opportunities to make profit, contribute to the marketplace in a positive way and lead the way? Here’s our guide to becoming an even more successful ActiveDen author, no matter if you’re a brand-new author, or an author that has been around for years.

1. Update your profile page

Add an image to your profile page. It shows you care and it shows you mean business. Although the default graphic looks awesome, don’t just leave the default graphic there. Your profile page should be your identity. Your personal brand. Make it look good. Add a little information to it to add a little personality and to tell customers and fellow authors who you are and what your passions are. Think of it like the author bio at the back of a book. By using it, you step a little closer to your audience and make them feel welcome. Also consider adding links to your best-selling files from this page. You don’t want potential customers to overlook your best content and the profile page is an ideal way to promote your strongest files.

2. Brand your Files/Thumbnails

Who would ever have thought how important an 80×80 pixel thumbnail would ever be?! The thumbnails you use for your items are very important! Aim for consistency so that when you release a new file, everyone will know it’s one of your files by the branding you’ve applied to your thumbnail. It should be a visual representation that somehow ties into the branded graphic you added to your profile page.

3. Say “Thank You”

When someone leaves you a positive comment on one of your files, respond with a “thank you!”. It’s simple, it’s positive, and it shows appreciation. Good manners still go a long way in today’s world, particularly in business.

4. Follow your comments via RSS

Respond to comments politely and respond to comments quickly. Although support is optional, customers tend to buy files again in the future from authors who treat them well. One easy way to treat customers with respect (you know, the people who purchase your files and put money in your account each month) is to answer the questions they ask. You can keep on top of all the questions customers ask by following your own RSS feed! It looks like this:

http://activeden.net/feeds/user_item_comments/YOUR-USERNAME-HERE.atom

For example:

http://activeden.net/feeds/user_item_comments/digitalscience.atom

5. Become Exclusive!

Exclusivity offers you significantly greater commission rates and also encourages you to upload content more regularly. Did you realize that 19 out of the top 20 authors on envato are all exclusive…? Why sell files for 25% profit when you can attain between 40% – 70% as an exclusive author? The math should be fairly obvious.

6. Be Positive!

Be positive and stay positive, particularly in the forums! Help someone out, say something nice. And if you don’t have anything nice to say, consider not saying anything at all. And if you have something constructive to say to someone, send the comment privately. Remember: Reputation, reputation, reputation! Once you lose a reputation, it is tarnished forever. It takes the same amount of effort to be nice as it does to be bad.

7. Quality Over Quantity

Spend your time producing quality files. This has many benefits such as getting yourself listed in the ActiveDen Files of the Week roundup, the Top Authors list each month, as well as having the honor of the Featured Author or File of the Week selected by the site manager. Always remember that the tortoise always beats the hare. Sure, it’s a race, but it’s a slow race, and you should be focusing on the highest quality attainable content you can produce.

8. Write Simple yet Effective Documentation

Helpful documentation not only helps your customers, but it saves you time in the long run. Instead of continually answering the same questions over and over and over, make sure all frequently asked questions are answered in your help documentation and then simply refer any questions customers may have to your help file! A well written help file should reduce the number of questions you get asked by e-mail or via item comments. In turn, this then frees up valuable time you can better use producing brand-new, top-quality files!

9. Embrace ALL Promotional Opportunities

If ActiveDen ever contact you for an interview for the blog, or for a quote for a newsletter perhaps, respond! We have thousands upon thousands of visitors to our blog each day, and we have thousands upon thousands of customers visiting ActiveDen each and every day: That kind of exposure is priceless, so get your name and files out there at every opportunity!

10. Effective Tagging

Think about your tags/keywords in each of your files and use them effectively. They help SEO which means, when search engines index ActiveDen files, your tags/keywords will help your files be indexed in the right way. When someone searches for something they are looking for within ActiveDen or via Google, you want your own file(s) to be ranked as high as possible. Do not underestimate the power of effective tags!

Read How to Correctly Tag your ActiveDen Files

11. Home Page Exposure is NOT the Holy Grail

Don’t rely on the home page for all your exposure! You are putting all your eggs in one basket if you do that. A smart author will produce an awesome file and not give home page exposure a second thought. If a file is good, it will sell no matter how much time it spends on the home page. Sure, home page exposure is fantastic! But do not ever think it is the key to huge sales, it is not. Create the best file(s) you can. Do everything you can to let people know your file is out there, and sell your file to as many customers as possible.

12. Become a Top Author of the Month

Easily said than done, sure! But with the right dedication, it can be done! Save a bunch of your new files for the same month for example, skip a couple of months of uploading content, and blitz the marketplace during one month. This will maximize your opportunity of high sales and increase the likelihood of achieving enough sales to catapult you into the best-selling author list for the month when the stats get updated!

13. Be Aware of Strategies

There are certain strategies you can aim for and experiment with, but come with no guarantees. But it’s worth being aware of them. For example, did you know that most files are sold on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, or the “middle” of the week? Analyze your own stats alongside what you observe in the marketplace. What day are most sales made? What time are most sales made? Try hard to time your uploads to get approved during the most popular time periods, but do not rely on these times. There are a whole host of reasons out of your control and out of the file reviewers control why your file might not get published on the day you want. But be aware of these strategies and try to use them as much as you can.

14. Get Featured in the Files of the Week Roundup

Again, easier said than done. But increase the chances of getting your file chosen by concentrating on a file that looks good, is useful, offers something new, or is simply better than anyone else’s file that week. The extra free promotion that your file gets will be worth it! Blog posts stay around on the Web forever, not just for a day, don’t forget that!

15. Twitter

Hate it or love it, you’ve got to use Twitter. It’s probably the quickest and most easiest way you will ever market your files, and it is the cheapest publicity you will ever get. It’s so cheap it’s actually free. And any free publicity you can get is a very good thing.

Announce your new files on Twitter using bit.ly, a service that shrinks the URL of your file so you don’t waste valuable space in your Tweet.

Be careful not to oversell your files, people may get tired of your constant promotions, so use it wisely, frequently, but do not oversell an item.

Also, be sure to follow Envato employees on Twitter, particularly Collis Ta’eed. Sometimes you hear breaking news such as an invitation to beta sign-ups for new sites (such as the imminent 3DOcean for example). This gives you an opportunity to be one of the first people to prepare files for the new site giving you a competitive advantage. Take every advantage you can!

16. Facebook

Join all of the Envato Facebook groups. Join all the Flash Facebook groups you are interested in joining. Even consider starting your own Facebook group! That extra exposure will pay dividends when you start announcing the release of your new files. Your Facebook announcements about your new ActiveDen files will be instantaneously broadcasted to hundreds and hundreds of potential customers.

17. Upload your files to Adobe Exchange

Adobe Exchange allows Flash developers to list their Flash projects, free or commercial on the Adobe Web site. And Adobe allow you to do this totally for free! And part of becoming a successful author is marketing your files. Market them for free on Adobe Exchange, get your file listed, and you’re opening more ways for new audiences to see your file on ActiveDen.

Read How to Promote Your ActiveDen Files on HotScripts

18. Upload your files to HotScripts

What I just said about Adobe Exchange also applies to HotScripts. Make it part of your process to list your file at Adobe Exchange and HotScripts every time you upload a new ActiveDen file.

Read How to Promote Your ActiveDen Files on HotScripts

19. Make the Most of your Referral Link

Make the most of your referral link. It’s an opportunity to make even more money! If you append your Envato marketplace username to any marketplace URL, you can make commission from any new customer that makes a subsequent deposit to any marketplace. So always get into the habit of appending any marketplace URL you use with your own username.

20. Stay Informed with Latest Trends

Stay informed of Flash trends by going to sites such as thefwa and other Flash design resources, by reading Flash blogs, particularly those by Adobe employees, and reading Flash-related articles both online and in print. While you should never directly copy a latest trend or design in any submission to ActiveDen, you will become a more successful author if you are aware of emerging trends and functionality and implement them in an original way in your own future files.

21. Learn ActionScript 3

While AS2 files still sell pretty well on ActiveDen, a day will come when AS3 will rule the industry. Most authors are already very fluent and comfortable with AS3, and there’s no time like the present to convert if you have hesitated up until now. Buy a book, teach yourself, watch free online tutorials like those found on ActiveTuts+, do what you need to do to teach yourself the current and future scripting language of Flash. When the day comes that ActiveDen files are predominantly AS3 based, you will have a huge advantage if your current library contains killer AS3 files. While dealing with “today”, always keep a careful eye on tomorrow and what the future may hold.

22. Stay Ahead of the Game

Tap into the latest techniques and innovations that only Flash Player 10 can utilize. Those files you create today that tap into those new features will be the hot, wanted files of tomorrow (if they are not popular already). Being aware of innovative new features and utilizing those techniques in your files will get extra attention and publicity to your files and put you in a good position down the line in the future too. Be an innovator and lead the way.

23. Use an API

Google, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter all have APIs that you can use in your Flash files that you can sell on ActiveDen. Realize that as social media becomes even more prevalent in our daily lives, the need to embed, use and mash this date up inside of Flash becomes more desirable. Once something becomes desirable, you’ve got an instant market and audience already looking for a file like yours that you’ve hopefully already uploaded to ActiveDen…

Read Be Inspired with Flash Twitter APIs

24. Update your Old Files

While it’s great to sit back and enjoy the residual income coming in from your existing files, top-selling and successful authors also realize that there’s money to be earned in updating existing files. Adding new features to existing ActiveDen files not only impresses and rewards existing customers (who are then more likely to purchase other files from you) also reaches out to brand new customers. Let’s say you created an image gallery that sold pretty well. If you updated this to add new video functionality for example, you’re now opening up your file to a potential new audience. Someone overlooking your file originally because there was no video functionality may now be interested in your file because of the new features.

Think about what Apple frequently do with their products. They re-invent them. Same product, just a new skin and some new features. It’s a philosophy and paradigm that transcends well to stock Flash files too.

25. Listen to your Customers

The feedback you get, even if it sometimes can be negative, should be listened to carefully. This is a great way to find out cool new ideas or things that customers want to see in files. Think of feedback as a way of interacting with your audience and learning what they are looking for in a file. Don’t be afraid to take time to read what customers are saying about other author’s files too! That could also help you improve your own work.

Turn a negative into a positive. If a customer comment really angers you, even if it is an unnecessary comment, try to think about the extra mile you could have gone to have avoided that comment. There is a lot of truth to the saying, “the customer is always right.” Even when they’re wrong.

26. Diversify into Other Envato Marketplaces!

Chances are, if you are a creative Flash producer, you also have a talent for music, HTML/CSS, graphic design or video production. Diversify your portfolios and reach out to other envato audiences. Don’t assume that all Graphic River or ThemeForest users come and visit your portfolio over at ActiveDen. They probably don’t. They probably dont even know about you! So change this by putting your high quality work into other envato marketplaces.

27. Use Collections to your Advantage!

Create collections that contain outstanding files and put some of your files in there too! It adds exposure to your work and increases the chances of more people seeing your work!

Read Collections: What are they and why should I care?

28. Take File Rejections on the Chin

Don’t be dismayed by rejection. Be determined! If your file gets rejected either through your own fault or because ActiveDen concludes that your file does not meet our criteria, do not give up. Don’t ever give up! Take it on the chin and learn from it. Let’s say you get your file rejected for a design reason. Analyze those weaknesses. Identify ways to improve. Come back to your file in a day or two when you can look at your design more objectively and not fueled by the anger you felt when your file was rejected. Realize file rejection is never personal. Ask the site manager politely (via a support ticket) if they could give some help or more specific reasons why your file was rejected. And then resolve all those issues with your design and upload again. Never give up and never stop improving.

29. Collaborate

Collaborate with someone! If you are a developer, team-up with a designer, and vice versa! This allows authors to specialize in the niche they are an expert in, and also speeds-up development time!

30. Blog Post Comments

Leave relevant and/or encouraging comments on blog posts! This applies not only to Envato blogs, but to other relevant blogs in the Flash industry. Link back to your ActiveDen portfolio, and why not add a referral link while you’re at it?! (Note: Referral links only work outside of the envato marketplaces.)

31. Create your own Web Site or Blog

Use your own blog or Web site to self-promote your own work and uploads to ActiveDen. You’ll be surprised about the extra traffic that reaches your ActiveDen portfolio or individual files via your own personal blog. Your file or blog post may get linked to by another blog and before you know it, a whole new audience have been drawn into your amazing ActiveDen work.

32. Use the WordPress Referral Widget on your Blog

Envato really make it easy for you to make money, don’t they?! Make money on your own blog by installing a WordPress widget that pulls in your own content and automatically adds your very own referral link!

Read Referral widget for showcasing items on your website.

33. Support Your Files

Although support is not required for anyone uploading files to any of the envato marketplaces, go the extra mile and support your files! Customers who purchase files from authors who support their files are more likely to purchase from you again.

34. Create something with the Envato API

Create either a free tool for fellow customers and/or authors using the Envato Marketplace API, or better still, create a tool in Flash based on the API and sell it on ActiveDen! Either way, tap into an immediate audience that is staring you in the face – the audience of 0.25 million (and growing…) Envato marketplace members. That’s nothing to be sniffed at!

35. Beta Test Someone Else’s Application

If you don’t have time or don’t know how to use the envato API, then what about demonstrating good community spirit by beta testing someone else’s application? The marketplace forums are the best place to find out news about new applications based on the envato API, and your feedback could be worthwhile to a fellow marketplace member! Enhancing your community contributions and demonstrating your ability to share and interact with your peers is extremely good for the development of your brand and persona.

36. Use Envato API Tools

Use tools that have been created with the Envato Marketplace API to track your work! Track sales via ThemeForest plugins/Javascript, Mac OSX widgets and tools such Sales Donkey. These tools will provide statistics about sales and will also encourage you to make and sell more files as you see and hear the cash from residual sales come rolling in!

37. E-Mail Signatures

Add a link to your ActiveDen portfolio in your e-mail signature. It’s so simple it hurts! Wheher it’s friends, family or clients, they’re nosy by nature and love to click on e-mail signature links to find out more about you and what you’re selling.

38. Create Packs of your Files

Create a pack of existing files and sell them at a discounted rate (rate determined by Envato.) This not only promotes your original work, but it gives customers the opportunity of purchasing a collection of your files for a discounted rate. Important: There are certain rules to this to prevent gaming the system. But basically, any one of your files can only appear in one of your packs. So if you have Files A B C D E and F, you can put files A B C in one pack, but you can’t put C D E F in another pack, because C is already in another pack. Packs can only contain a restricted number of files and must all be from the same category. All-in-all, it’s another great tactic that you can explore to maximizing and ensuring continued success.

39. Asset Library Contributions

Consider creating assets for the free asset library! Contact the site manager first before doing so, but if your files are accepted and they’re useful, you’ll get a lot of credibility and appreciation from your peers!

40. Enjoy Being an Author

The most important tip has been saved for last. Enjoy what you do. Immerse yourself and dedicate yourself to being a positive contributor to a successful marketplace. Surround yourself with positive people and be thankful for the customers and success you have achieved. But do all of this while enjoying the experience.

Creating and selling stock is not a sprint. It’s a long-term marathon that needs dedication, patience, and a smile. Make a file. Upload it. Let it generate money for you short-term and long term. What can be more financially rewarding than by continually selling something you created a long, long time ago? That’s your ultimate goal. But be sure you enjoy the ride.

The music template competition was a tough one. It required a lot of hours and even more creativity. The result is a budding music template category filled with fantastic new files. The race for the top three was a close one, but we’ve got our winners. Congrats everyone!

First Prize:

PunkerPop XML Template by WebMarbles

Runner Up:

SOLO – Music Website Template – with deeplinking by iamdok

Third Place:

Dream Music XML Website by louros

Other great submissions:

It’s time for another round-up of Flash-related news from around the globe in another edition of News Flash!

When to Flash and when to Flex

Derrick Grigg asks the question “When to Flash and when to Flex?”, citing a perfect example of a company that developed a promotion entirely in Flex whereas Flash would have been the more obvious choice. Read more

Creating a Flash Facebook Application with the Facebook AS API

Self-professed Italian geek and programmer Emanuele Feronato provides a useful tutorial on how to create a Flash applicaiton for Facebook using the Facebook ActionScript API. Read more

GTween v2

Grant Skinner has announced the release of GTween v2. It’s a total rewrite of the GTween library focusing on size, speed, extensibility, and improving the readability of the code. Skinner declares that that the core library is “now just 3.5kb, and it’s 2-5X faster than beta 5 was.” Read more

ActionScript 3 Performance Optimization

Prompted by some of the work from Grant Skinner (in particular his FOTB 2009 session) and Thibault Imbert, Mike Chambers has been doing a lot of research lately into optimizing ActionScript 3 content. Not just how to make it run faster, but how to approach the process of optimization. Read more

Hype Update

We featured Joshua Davis’ HYPE Framework back in September on the ActiveDen blog, and today saw the release of a new, updated version. HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program. Read more

Sorenson Media Launches Sorenson Squeeze 6

Squeeze, the professional Flash video encoding leader since 2001 is now even better. Features a new, streamlined interface with notifications, automated review and approval workflow & automatic syndication and publishing options. Sorenson are also claiming performance speeds of up to 5x faster. Read more

The 20 Best Internet Flash Games

British newspaper The Telegraph have compiled a list of what they feel are the top 20 Flash games on the Web. I’m not sure they tried very hard with their list, but there are a couple of nuggets in there. Read more
]]> http://blog.activeden.net/general/news-flash-3/feed/ 0 http://blog.activeden.net/general/stardust-as3-particle-engine/ http://blog.activeden.net/general/stardust-as3-particle-engine/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:10:56 +0000 Scott http://blog.activeden.net/?p=6136

The Stardust Particle Engine allows Flash developers to quickly create particle effects using an ActionScript 3 API. Particle effects such as smoke, water, fire and starfields can all be created efficiently and effectively using Stardust.

Developed by Allen Chou and released under an MIT license, this engine will allow you to create both 2D and 3D particles systems. Here are just some of the awesome features of StarDust:

• Easy to extend for custom initializers, actions, fields, deflectors, clocks, and 2D/3D renderers.
• Includes 3D extensions for ZedBox, Papervision3D, and ND3D.
• Includes a native 3D renderer.
• Supports masking (particles can be masked out for actions).
• Supports gravity and deflector simulation.
• Supports action triggers (for creating complex particle behaviors).
• Supports XML serialization.

Examples

See for yourself how effective StarDust is by clicking on the examples below to see what can be achieved:

More Information

For full details and to download and start using StarDust, check out the official project home page on Google Code. We’d love to hear from you in the comments to this post if you have previously used StarDust or think that you might use it in a future ActiveDen submission!

It took a little while before I fully understood the concept and value of collections as a buyer and as an author. They’re there to help buyers more easily find what they’re looking for and couldn’t find using the search bar. They can also be used to drive traffic to your files.

Private collections

Private collections probably make more sense if you just think of them as bookmarks. Once you create one, you’re the only one who can see it. To find it, just click the bookmarks link at the top of the page and scroll down to private collections. A private collection is a group of files you want to remember, but it’s really only valuable to you. For example, let’s says you’ve got a freelance project coming up for ABC Cleaners and you’re going to need the dancing rat, EKG line, and a map of Alaska. Let’s be honest, as great as those files are, there’s no one else on this planet who’s going to benefit from having them grouped together. In this case, it’s definitely better to leave this as a private collection. As the name would imply, private is just for you.

Public collections

Public collections work just like the private ones except they can be viewed by anyone. Public collections have become an integral part of the way buyers find files. They show up on your profile page, the public collections page, and most importantly on every single file page.

Public collections do what a computer could never do. The search function works well, but can’t think creatively. Let’s say you’re building a website for a Halloween haunted house. When you type in the keyword “Halloween,” you’ll only receive the results with the word “Halloween” in the tags or title. That may leave out half the spiders, skeletons, ghosts, or ghouls you were actually looking for. Best case scenario, you use several different search terms to find what you were looking for. Worst case scenario, you never find the file you were actually looking for. That’s where user-created public collections come in. Someone’s already created a Halloween collection with everything you could possibly want all in one place.

What makes a good public collection?

Collections are great for grouping  concepts. Let’s say you haven’t settled on a perfect design, but the theme is heat. Rather than searching every single word that could possibly be related to high temperatures,  you find a collection called hot. In there you find jalapenos, fire, lava, and steaming coffee. These are files that are related, but would never show up all together in a single search or category.

Another thing the search is unable to give you is a “best of” list. Search results can tell you how many times a file’s been downloaded, who created it, and when it was uploaded, but it will give you little indication of the file’s quality. That’s when something like top ten clocks or best photo galleries on FlashDen comes in handy. Best of collections are most useful when they’re the best files within a specific category.

Public collections can also be useful for grouping together cross-marketplace items. If a buyer is looking on GraphicRiver for a real estate business card, it’s highly likely that he’ll also be needing a real estate website, and maybe even video clips for a commercial. In this case public collections are being used to show the buyer things they weren’t specifically looking for, but might still need.

Less valuable collections

There are a multitude of public collections filled with unrelated items strung together because they’re files the collection creator liked. That makes for a great private collection, but doesn’t really help the buyer. For example, the buyer needs a photo gallery, goes to the first one in the search, doesn’t quite like it, clicks the “files I like” collection, and is taken to an eclectic list of animations, utilities, and  Wordpress templates. That doesn’t help help the buyer and most likely won’t result in a sale. All that does is create a dead end, forcing the buyer to go two clicks back to the search where he started. Buyers leave sites when they hit dead ends. When buyers leave, no one makes money.

How collection benefit authors

Being a successful author is all about creating great and useful files. That being said, if people can’t find your files, it doesn’t matter how good they are. Having your file in a public collection is just another way to give it that necessary exposure. Let’s say your file is in the programmer’s dream collection. That’s great news for you because now there are 29 other files in the marketplace that can now lead directly to you.

So, how can you create create collections that’ll bring people to your file? First, look in your portfolio, find a file, and think of a way that it could be grouped with other files that would be valuable to a buyer. Then just create the collection, put in at least one of your files, and start adding other related items.

You can also create a collection with just your own files. Buyers can’t see how items are built before they buy them so when they find an author they trust, they’re likely to buy from them again. If they’re looking for a gallery, know they like your files, and see a collection called “fakeuser1’s galleries,” they’ll probably click. If they do, all of a sudden, rather than searching through the normal search, they’re only looking at files you’ve built. When every file they’re looking at is yours, the probability of you making a sale drastically increases.

Just remember, make sure the collections are valuable to the buyer. Having your file in a useless collection won’t help you or them.

Collection titles, descriptions, and images

Just like your file preview, the presentation of your collection is everything. Buyers will click what looks nice and what seems relevant. That’s why using good titles, descriptions, and images is so important. I’m a visual person. If there are 3 collections to choose from and one has an image that implies it has what I need, I’ll click it without even glancing at the other two. The titles are equally important. A title should be as descriptive as possible. Buyers don’t want to guess whether or not your collection has what they need. Eco-Friendly Collection – web & print is a perfect example. It explains exactly what it is and even tells you the file types you will find.

Here are some examples of great collections:

COOL CRITTERS

All the most realistic birds, insects, fish, and other creatures to inhabit your natural Flash world.

Top 10 Photo Galleries

Here are my picks for the best photo galleries on all of FlashDen.

Halloween

I know it’s scary, but please refrain from screaming. It’s just a Halloween collection.

The Eco-Friendly Collection – Web and Print

The Eco-Friendly Collection (Web and Print) is a compilation of items across the Envato Marketplaces that relate to going green and being environmentally friendly. Templates can be used as a base for websites and printed material that promote recycling, preserving nature, and anything that has to do with being eco-friendly. Sounds and flash animations can be used to accompany work created on the web.

Let the games begin…!

From the youngest kid to the oldest man, games are always welcome. In this collection, you’ll find games which can be used for killing your time, beating high-scores or even adding them to your website to give visitors a good time. Go play and have fun!

On Fire!

A collection of images relating to the element of fire and images with a warm feel or color scheme.

DS Galleries

XML driven Galleries for use in your Flash Projects. Various galleries available for displaying all types of media such as Image, Video, Audio and SWF files. All content is easily up-datable via XML.

Under Construction

So your site isn’t finished yet, but you don’t want to show off godaddy’s default landing page? Check out these great files that make a site that’s under construction look pretty nice.