Cross Promotions on Nettuts+

Cross Promotions on Nettuts+

on Feb 3rd 2011 with 37 comments

Hello Nettuts+ Readers! As some of you will have seen, I put up a post a couple of days ago which featured a Slideshare presentation about our sister site ThemeForest. The post sent over lots of traffic, but the comments gave a lot of negative feedback and our new ratings plugin showed an impressive 1.5/5 stars!

As most of you know, we’ve never been shy about posting about other Envato products and cross promoting using the Tuts+ sites and our other properties. We’re very proud of all the Tuts+ sites as a very high quality educational resource that is for the most part free. And to pay for it, we use a combination of our premium program, advertising and cross promotion to the Envato Marketplaces.

However I think with my recent post, it seems clear that the title was too misleading, and readers felt deceived. So I wanted to give my apologies, and reassure you that in future we’ll be clearer about cross promotional posts, and continue our more traditional posts which usually serve to showcase particularly impressive items from the marketplaces (like this one), or to provide news about Envato launches and big changes (like this one). If you want to support Nettuts+ and its sister sites, then by all means continue to browse and maybe even click through on those. We do always try to make our cross promotional posts useful and informative, and I hope they come across that way.

As always, I appreciate the feedback you guys leave in the comments. I particularly enjoyed the commenter who asked whether I was paid for the post :-)

If you have any further thoughts, feel free to comment them in! Otherwise get back to enjoying Nettuts+!

 
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Hello! I'm a web and graphic designer who loves blogging, startups and everything about the web. You can find me on Twitter and I blog at The Netsetter  

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  • http://www.sz-media.org Sz-Media

    thats the right way ;)

  • http://www.arvag.net/ GaVrA

    Are you paid for this post? ;D

  • http://outro.lt raveren

    I actually enjoyed that post as there indeed *are* great dirt-cheap designs I’m going to use. IT people can be overprotective with their free internets content.

  • Mv

    Bravo, Tutsplus! Good Karma points.

  • http://www.jeffadams.co.uk Jeff Adams

    As an Admin Author I loved the promotion :-)

    Seriously though, I kind of like the round ups from other tutorials I think the issue here was that it was a clumsey looking slideshow that wasn’t really associated with the normal kick ass article that’d come with it.

    I did notice some comments about folks wishing to know the sorts of uses for an admin panel so if that’s a tutorial people want then I’d be happy to do one…

    • Anton

      This would certainly be useful =)

  • Amel Almgdmi

    well i’m a big fan for all tuts sites , so i think a post like that one wasn’t so bad for people who needed it
    but in the same time we really don’t like ad articles ,but our rating was because we really care about this site
    and we want to be the best

  • http://www.ferdychristant.com Ferdy

    Nothing wrong with crossposting as long as you clearly indicate it and it delivers value to the readers. If you push it too far, readers will lose trust in your judgement. I don’t remember exactly which article it was, but recently I saw something like “Don’t use just any plugins, they are dangerous, instead use these [link to afilliated site selling commercial plugins]“.

    That was just lame.

  • http://www.mediatakt.de Wieland

    Put your visitors always in first place. Not your cross-promotion.

  • http://codeforest.net Codeforest

    That post was great and informative as it pointed to some great admin templates for little money.

    This post is even better.

  • http://www.bryanthughes.com Bryant

    It blows me away that people complain about things such as this.

    Nettuts and the whole Envato network are a business and need to make money. This site costs money to run. Nettuts provides a abundance of information and has a great community, and having sponsored posts and articles are necessary to keep the site alive and well.

    Its not hard to see when an article is “sponsored” or is promotional and if it bothers you that much, don’t read it. If it bothers you to the extent that you are personally offended or feel deceived, well then you probably shouldn’t be using the internet because I assure you there are far worse things on here.

    Be appreciative, be nice, be understanding, and if you don’t think there is enough content on here, maybe you should contribute some and help out!

    just my two cents…

    • http://www.murmp.com Jonathon

      Completely missed the point. Directly from this post “it seems clear that the title was too misleading, and readers felt deceived.” The problem was not and is not about sponsored or promotional articles, I’m all for them making money for the great content they produce. The issue was that it was (somewhat) misleading, and they’ve acknowledged that, and in my opinion, the acknowledgement alone more than makes us for any frustration I felt with the original article.

      So, thanks nettuts and keep the great content coming…

  • http://www.razerdesign.com Kevin

    I’m never a fan of the cross promotions but I understand 100% why you do them. What I want to see though, is tutorials on how to incorporate things you advertise. Example being: Admin panels. Ok, that’s all well and good, but I’d love to learn how to use these in MY projects. As of now they are worthless to me since I don’t know what to do with them. This would make your cross posts much more effective if you showed users HOW to use what you advertise there.

    • JohnBoy

      My thoughts exactly.

    • lilwiki

      I second your suggestion. The panel creators could write those tuts or better still another writer.

  • http://www.drivvedwebbyra.se Fredrik

    well i might suggest a crossover ;p

  • edwinholl

    This is very noble of you, Collis. Thank you for understanding, for the benefit of one of the most helpful and robust tutorial sites on the world wide web.

  • Matt

    You all need to get over yourselves. Visiting a site doesn’t give you control of it. The only thing you can control is yourselves so grow up.

  • Johan

    Good reaction! For me, there’s no fault in promoting your sister-sites. Hell, I use them all the time buying stuff (which I usually end up happy with).

    It’s just that me (and alot of other people obviously) get excited when a new post arrives and feel “tricked” when the only reason for the post is to sell themes. We all see the banner in the right bar all the time.

    Anyway, it’s good taking the critique the “right” way…

  • Marty

    Hi, do I need to know to how to work with Photoshop if I want to be web developer? I like programming but I am not good at design and graphics (I don´t have ideas and sense for colors). Can I find job about only PHP a JS development without knowledge of Photoshop or only with PS basics?

    Sorry about this “offtopic” but I wanted to know it. And sorry about my english, it isn´t my native language.

  • http://www.thedevelopertuts.com Bratu Sebastian

    I don’t understand why people would react so badly about cross promotions. If Yahoo does it, or Google, it’s ok for them.
    I believe it all goes down to the frustration the whole advertising industry is experiencing. Advertising needs to evolve. It’s definitely better that years ago when you were forced to click trough a few pages to download a simple file.

    And it paid the bills.

    Great move, Envato!

  • Ashen

    I rather enjoyed the article as I am embarking on a new web app that is form intensive and the designs over at Themeforest gave me some great ideas, I may even purchase one.

    I didn’t mind the cross site promotion much.

    But what has been irking me as of late is my perception that a lot of cross site linking has been going on, this gives me the impression that Envato is not chruning out new, quality content like it has in the past.

    Again, this is just a perception and I don’t have any numbers to back up that perception. Just seems like ever third article is a link off to another site to an article that was written three months ago.

  • Jason

    Readers need to stop whining about promotion. It is not like the slideshow was the post of the day.. as usually there was some great content that day and the promotional post was something extra. People should stop moaning, it isn’t like it is a daily or weekly thing…

  • Thecodingdude

    Hey, I am an author on codecanyon.

    Whilst it’s nice to get cross promotion, and get your items featured, I think it needs to be labelled as such.

    As an author, you really get to understand that advertising helps, a lot, because this site must get lots of traffic. However, that said, I believe Envato shouldn’t abuse it as such.

    I have never been a fan of cross promotion, simply because I feel then don’t need it, they are big enough, I feel it’s a bit ‘greedy’, but it benefits the authors, so we can simply ignore it.

    Thanks for the apology, yes, the title was mis-leading, but hey, never mind :)

  • Christophor S. Wilson

    For me personally I love the posts promoting new and hot items from the Envato stores, it’s a great way to get informed about new goodies to buy that I may have missed otherwise. So Thanks.

  • http://filcp.com Filipe Carrano Pacheco

    I admire your humbleness to create this article and explain the miss-understanding.
    Way to go.

  • Dennis

    I don’t think the title was that misleading, actually when I first saw it I knew it was a promotion. Additionally, if someone got mislead, it takes you no more than one minute to understand that this is a promotion.

    So, I don’t think that post deserved so many negative comments and a low rating :)

  • Steve

    LoL – this article gave me a good laugh. “Sorry for the spam post eailer, but Hey did you see This Spam Post or This Other Spam Post?”.

    Really… you create a post to apologize about how misleading the spam was only to further supply us links of more spam. You guys rock! LOL

  • Steve

    LoL – this article gave me a good laugh. “Sorry for the spam post eariler, but Hey did you see This Spam Post or This Other Spam Post?”.

    Really… you create a post to apologize about how misleading the spam was only to further supply us links of more spam. You guys rock! LOL

  • http:/ Steve

    LoL – this article gave me a good laugh. “Sorry for the spam post earlier, but Hey did you see This Spam Post or This Other Spam Post?”.

    Really… you create a post to apologize about how misleading the spam was only to further supply us links of more spam. You guys rock! LOL

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  • http://www.urbanbricks.com Urban Bricks

    Unfortunately it’s the arrogance in the comments section that tend to turn me off, much more so than the purported arrogance of publishing misleading article titles (which in this case, is debatable). Would it really have been -that- much better if the article were titled, “Admin Panels For Sale On ThemeForest That Don’t Suck”?

    Ultimately, it’s great to see Collis own up to the opinions of the Envato audience, it takes humility and integrity, and shows that he is more than aware of the fact that the readers fuel each and every one of the Envato marketplaces.

    What isn’t debatable, is the fact that Envato provides a plethora of invaluable resources that helps us grow our skills, connect with each other, and even make money. Keep up the good work Envato et al.

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