Eventify is a small gem that we had in plans for a long time! The firs theme that has, In a nutshell,  some of our unique features

Manage events and sell tickets on your own terms

Remove the middleman and sell an unlimited number of custom branded tickets from your own WordPress website without having to pay any ticket fees or commission. Get full control over your ticket sales process and customer data with the safest and most flexible event and ticketing solution available.

List events, online and offline

Create a big listing, with events that are either online or offline. Use it to create directories, rank higher on generating passive income through sales of tickets or advertising through the directory.

Make informed decisions based on event and ticket reports

Good decisions are based on good data. FooEvents provides real-time event and ticket reports which integrate seamlessly with your WooCommerce sales reports so you always know how your events are performing and can make informed business decisions based on this data.

And all this – inside WordPress. Eventify for WordPress is the first Events WordPress Theme that allows you to have all the management on your hands, easy and quick. 

You can build websites for Conferences or Events both online and offline. After the Post – Covid era, we need to adapt and prepare for our users. Check Eventify Now!

But – this is not all!
This is the first version! We really want to keep pushing and we have created a backlog of features that wait for you to vote!

Please – vote for them and help us build the best event and conferences theme build!

The post Eventify – Organize events on a Post Covid Era appeared first on Astoundify.

As you may have noticed, Vendify is not anymore at Envato Marketplace.

Let’s just explain some things about it so our customers do not be worried!

Vendify is still Active!
We are continuing to develop it! And not only we do develop & do bug fixes but we are also working on new skins! You do not believe us? Take a look at Tasti Demo & Crafty! We hope you love those new demos as much as we do! If you find any problems with them, please feel free to create a Support Ticket for us and we will be happy to solve it as quickly as possible! Vendify is a priority for us!

If you want to migrate from envato to our own license system, please read our KB!

Vendify is now sold from at Astoundify.com
Yes! We are now “ self serving “ our Vendify. Vendify will be available for download through our own portal. 

What are we working on?
Vendify now gets a priority for us! Together with some more themes we are releasing, for Virtual Events, Crowdfunding and Deals Portal ( do you have more idea, please email us! ). Back to Vendify although, one of our major concerns is the Vendors Dashboard! We want to enhance it and create a plugin that will actually help users to build better marketplaces and profit on top of them.

Why no support of Elementify yet?
YES! We also want this 🙂
And we will start working on it as soon as we can. We want to start providing new demos & skins on top of Elementor for all of you.

We would love to hear your feedback. Anything you want to add, feel free to contact us and we will be more than happy to check it out! 

Help us build a Better Astoundify company, focused on your needs.

The post Vendify is now a Personal Bet! appeared first on Astoundify.

The post How to Make Money from a Listing Directory? appeared first on Astoundify.

What does it take to grow your online marketplace? What makes a thriving marketplace? How do you scale your online marketplace? You already have the business plan laid out. You may also have gotten off on a brilliant start, with a suitable WordPress marketplace theme like Vendify.

Now it is time to grow your marketplace. Where do you start? How do you minimize risks,  mistakes, and kick-off, with an unrestricted view of the future? This article will discuss seven critical marketplace growth strategies that can guarantee profits and long-term success.

Step One: Gain traction within your niche

What is your chosen niche? Even if you are building a global marketplace, you need to start small. This is what traction is all about. It is the rate at which your business model can gain monetizable value from your users.  In terms of marketplaces, it is what happens when your platform can attract both people in need of services (buyers) and service providers (sellers)

It is also called a “network effect” and is achieved by narrowing your focus. Take a cue from history. Poshmark’s first traction focused on urban female professionals. eBay focused on Beanie Babies.

Create that network effect by finding the activities your users do now.  Finding those activities depends on narrowing your reach. That’s how you identify a repeatable, profitable, and scalable way to sell to them.

Finding that small niche will also help you face less competition. It will also help you refine your brand’s identity and unique value proposition while reducing your risks. Still, you shouldn’t focus on a tiny niche. If your niche is too small, your sellers won’t have any need for a marketplace. They already know their customers personally. There are off-course exceptions, especially you can offer a unique feature; they won’t get anywhere else. To determine what works best for you, do a thorough market analysis and study your ideal seller’s behavior. Remember to consider your ideal distribution model, commission strategy, and market size alongside. It will help you stay focused on the right metrics when assessing the performance of your marketplace in the future.

Step Two: Optimize On Mobile

Research shows that over half of e-commerce sales today happen on smartphones. Therefore, to remain competitive, your marketplace must adopt a mobile-first strategy.

Revamp your online marketplace to meet mobile users’ needs. That way, you can gain subscriptions, sign-ups, sales, and retention. It is the surefire way to gain relevance and exposure, which, grows your user base.

Consider implementing a mobile ad- strategy, and off-course. Don’t forget to integrate mobile payment options, such as Apple Pay or Android Pay. You also need a mobile-first model powered by AMP plugins on a suitable WordPress theme. That way you can achieve a super-fast, intuitive, and seamless mobile experience.

On the flip side, your sellers need a robust mobile strategy that lets them manage their businesses while on the go. You can take a cue from Fiverr, which provides a seamless app for sellers and buyers to ensure they can manage interactions and tasks via mobile apps. Airbnb even takes it deeper by offering SMS for managing bookings, alongside their seller apps.

Step Three: Guard Your Reputation

What we don’t mean is eliminating room for criticism, but encouraging it. As your marketplace grows, you need to help buyers and sellers build trust in your platform. Remember, sellers and buyers on your platform may never meet, and so rely on your platform for transparency and dependability.Here is how you can build that trust and grow your reputation:

Secure transaction

Use robust encryption and security plugins to assure sellers and buyers that your platform provides secure transactions. Also, consider facilitating communication between sellers and buyers on the platform, while keeping their email-addresses and phone numbers anonymous. That way, they build absolute trust and reliability on your platform.

Verify Users

Create standards for the sellers in your marketplace. You shouldn’t attract and allow just about anyone out there. You can verify using social network accounts, ID verification, email, phone number validation, or background checks. You can also use tiered selling strategies to checkmate your sellers and ensure that quality does not deteriorate over time.

Reviews

Encourage buyers and sellers to write reviews about their experiences on your platform, seller’s service, and product. Research shows that reviews can inspire more customers to your platform and add more weight to your reputation.

Returns and Refunds

Include detailed information on refunds and returns to ensure that sellers and buyers understand their obligations. Good returns and refund policy will also give all users confidence about the legitimacy of your marketplace.

Step Four: Make It Seamless For Your Sellers

Naturally, marketplaces have two primary users -sellers and buyers. However, you must balance your priorities, and that begins with how you focus your resources. It makes sense to focus on the demand, which is attracting buyers. Nevertheless, research shows that concentrating on buyers is not a viable approach. According to these studies, higher seller retention rates equal higher revenue. Stripe’s data particularly points out that one seller retention equals ten times of growth for your marketplace. Therefore, it is the win-win partnership you create with your sellers that will help your marketplace grow. Forrester Research equally suggests that the most profitable marketplaces provide revenue-generating opportunities and value-added services to keep their sellers coming back. It includes more in-depth security features, fast and reliable payouts, flawless onboarding, and lots more. You can also help your sellers offer vital services to their customers. For instance, Rover, a dog-sitting marketplace, found that buyers usually asked sitters (sellers) for other services such as grooming, doggy daycare, drop-in visits, and lots more. By providing more ways for these sitters to make money, they increased seller retention and generated conversions and growth.

Step Five: Promote Your Online Marketplace

Marketing your online marketplace is vital. While word of mouth, referral programs, and affiliate marketing are rumored as the best, test different channels to figure out what works best for you. This doesn’t mean you should try all of them at once, but follow the Bullseye framework; brainstorm potential marketing ideas that are relevant to your niche, test the most promising ones for at least a month, at once or in parallel, until you find the most effective for your unique brand. To help you get started, here are some ways to promote your marketplace:

• Affiliate marketing
• Offline Ads
• Offline Events
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Email Marketing
• Public Relations
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Speaking Engagements
• Engineering as Marketing
• Trade shows
• Community building
• Content marketing
• Target market blogs
• Social and Display Ads
• Unconventional PR
• Viral marketing
• Business Development
• Existing platforms

Step Six: Scaling Your Marketplace

It is easy to consider scaling and growing your marketplace as the same thing. However, scaling is more about ensuring that your business can handle your growth. While it takes an average marketplace three years to see actual profits, experts say you should monitor your traction and measure your performance every six months. What most people don’t consider is being able to handle growth. Scaling is all about being able to handle the increase in work, sales, and output at most cost-effectively and reasonably. If your company is cannot handle heavier workloads, it might affect your reputation considerably. Here are five sub-tips to scale your digital marketplace effectively.

Identify milestones

You need to understand each phase of your business growth. Begin by evaluating when you will run out of cash to run your marketplace. This reverse analysis will help you deal with your lean months and turnovers and provide a fully budgeted roadmap of your future.

Focus on your risks

Be sure you know what risks you are taking with each step forward, and focus on reducing them further. For instance, using robust security solutions is a risk-reducing method that safeguards your reputation and helps your business gain all your users’ trust.

Don’t hire too many people too early.

Increase your team at the right time, without limiting your business efficiency. Too many people increase their team early on. Such practice will only increase your overhead and reduce your profit margin. Once you have identified a predictable, repeatable activity, as we talked about earlier, it can help you understand the number of people you need on your team right now.

Invest in technology

The number of functionalities you have on your website will make things easy for your sellers and you. Vendify allows you to choose from a robust list of third-party integrations and vendors, scaling with your business growth. That way, you can build a scalable and powerful marketplace that is cost-effective and guaranteed to maximize your investment returns.

Step Seven: Build a Community

One excellent to boost your marketplace’s exposure is by building a dedicated community around it. This off-course depends on your promotions to become a success, but also focus on building around your sellers. Like eBay and Etsy, many marketplaces achieved this by creating forums, where sellers could gain knowledge from each other. You can also consider detailed guides on how to build a viral online store within your marketplace.

Another effective strategy is to interview community members and influencers. You can post stories about how people grow their revenue using your marketplace, especially by focusing on your most active users. One of the promotions we talked about – organizing offline events is equally an effective way to build that dedicated community. Airbnb organizes offline events to unite hosts from different countries, which boosts their reputation on both offline and digital space.

Final Thoughts on 7 Steps To Scale and Grow Your Online Marketplace

Building a thriving marketplace begins with understanding your target niche, customers’ preferences, and crafting a smart strategy.

However, your marketplace’s design is the first step to make the best impression and jumpstart your growth. If you bear in mind that your sellers are the first people you need to achieve scale for your business, you must make the best impression.

The right way is a reliable WordPress theme that offers everything they need to build a powerful store-front with robust functionalities.  Vendify is designed to deliver all of this and more. It is an excellent solution that will help you attract high-quality providers, who will, in turn, attract more customers, and these customers, awed by the ease of your marketplace, will attract more providers.

References

https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/scaling-your-business

https://www.sgsme.sg/news/how-build-and-scale-online-marketplace/

http://www.apptha.com/blog/how-to-build-a-viral-online-marketplace-like-etsy-ebay/

https://medium.com/@startuppaisaofficial/7-steps-to-grow-your-p2p-marketplace-dc60362b22d2

https://www.reforge.com/brief/on-shutting-down

The post 7 Steps To Scale and Grow Your Online Marketplace appeared first on Astoundify.

You can follow any of the thousands of online tutorials that can help you create a WordPress website from scratch using different page builders, themes, and other tools.

But when it comes to generating traffic and conversions, it all boils down to your efforts and decision making. One of the most crucial decisions that will determine the success (or failure) of your website is the choice of the fastest WordPress hosting. 

In this article, I will take you through some of the common types of web hosting solutions for your WordPress website. Next, I will discuss the features of Cloudways, a fully managed WordPress hosting provider, along with a short walkthrough of the platform. 

Types of Web Hosting Providers 

• Shared hosting 
• Dedicated hosting 
• VPS 
• Cloud hosting 
  • Managed Cloud hosting

Cloudways – A Managed Cloud Hosting Platform

• Flexibility and Freedom 
• Pricing 
• Platform Overview

What makes selecting the hosting providers so difficult is the fact that there isn’t a single type of web host that everyone can choose. To make a better decision, you must carefully analyze your requirements and then understand the benefits of each type of hosting solution. 

Let’s have a look at the most common hosting types. 

Shared Hosting

As the name suggests, shared hosting has multiple user accounts on a single server. All the hosted websites under those accounts share server resources. This means that if your website is on a shared server, you wouldn’t get pre-allocated RAM or storage, rather you would be sharing these critical resources with other applications on that server. 

This makes shared hosting highly vulnerable to crashes and attacks because vulnerabilities in one application will expose all the other applications hosted on that server. As you can imagine, shared servers are not ideal for websites that are looking to grow in terms of traffic and conversion because of server resource limitations. Applications hosted on a shared server rarely get the optimized speed and load time required to grow beyond the initial stages. 

Dedicated Hosting 

Dedicated hosting is a solution where the entire server belongs to you. As such, you have complete control over how you use the server resources for your business websites. In case the server resources are running low, you can also connect additional machines or hardware components to the machine. 

While shared hosting is cheaper, dedicated hosting is arguably the least cost-effective hosting solution. A dedicated server that belongs to you and no one else might seem tempting but it’s rare to have workloads that actually exhaust server resources. Thus, hitting the ROI could be a real challenge for the business.

VPS

VPS or Virtual Private Servers is a hybrid of shared and dedicated hosting. It provides you with the experience of dedicated hosting with an underlying sharing of server resources. A VPS provider separates the applications by building a virtual server (with dedicated resources) for the website.  

VPS offers the security and performance that is usually available at a dedicated server but with a price tag similar to shared hosting. You also have complete control over your “container” as you can install your own OS and other software to build the hosting stack that fits your project. One of the downsides of VPS is the requirement for technical knowledge of managing your server (or access to professional assistance). 

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is a hosting solution that uses a cluster of physical servers that are interconnected to provide seamless optimized performance and uptime. As opposed to traditional hosting types that use a centralized approach, cloud hosting uses a distributed approach where your website can be hosted on a cloud server with dedicated resources like RAM, bandwidth, and storage. 

With cloud hosting, not only do you get dedicated resources, but you also get a secure environment due to an architecture that incorporates various end-to-end encryption components. Since it is virtual, you can easily scale server resources at your convenience. 

There are two ways you can host WordPress applications on cloud servers; you can either get a cloud server from providers like AWS or Google Cloud and then configure and optimize the servers yourself or you can save yourself the hassle and let a managed cloud hosting provider do it for you. 

Managed Cloud Hosting 

Managed cloud hosting is a great hosting solution where a third party manages all your cloud hosting issues including server and application deployment, server management, and server security.

This class of hosting solutions is rapidly becoming popular because manually setting up a cloud server and launching a WordPress application is not a straightforward task. Even if you know your way around development, you may still encounter a number of roadblocks and may eventually require professional help. 

Managed cloud hosting providers take care of all such hassles, letting you focus on running your website and making it a success. 

To further explain how this particular type of hosting is beneficial for your business, let’s take a look at Cloudways – a managed cloud hosting platform. 

Cloudways – Simplifying Cloud Hosting 

Cloudways manages all your server related requirements and enables you to deploy cloud servers on any of the five infrastructure providers along with the latest WordPress version. Cloudways not only supports WordPress but also Magento, PHP, Drupal, Joomla, and PrestaShop. 

The power of Cloudways lies in the Cloudways Stack, a combination of server and caching technologies that work together to deliver optimized performance and better load time. Varnish cache is an important component of the stack that is an ideal solution for media-rich websites. Redis is another technology that compliments the Cloudways stack where it acts as virtual memory for datasets. 

Cloudways Offers Flexibility and Freedom

As mentioned earlier, Cloudways allows you to launch your WordPress application on five best-in-class cloud hosting providers: 

• AWS 
• Google Cloud
• DigitalOcean
• Vultr
• Linode

Cloudways offers these five cloud providers so that users with not-so-deeper pockets can have a managed cloud hosting experience. AWS and Google Cloud are expensive cloud servers whereas DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr are more affordable and are ideal for startups and medium businesses. 

This is one of the many features that make Cloudways stand out from its competitors because no other hosting provider offers such levels of freedom and flexibility.

But it doesn’t end here. 

Cloudways not only allows you to choose a cloud server of your choice but also gives you the freedom to choose your preferred server specifications. As such, Cloudways doesn’t put you on a leash when it comes to choosing your server specifications. 

With Cloudways, you have the power to build your server the way you want, and you can’t really put a price on that, can you? 

Pricing

Cloudways gives you control over your billing if you are using AWS or Google Cloud. The Pay-as-You-Go only charges you for the number of hours your server was being utilized, not for the entire month. This means if you used a server for 8 hours per day for 15 days, you will be billed only for 8×15= 120 hours, and not for the entire hours of the month. 

Now, you may ask why would you stop a server because that would mean your visitors won’t be able to access your website. Well, this option comes in handy when a user is running multiple servers on Cloudways and decides to switch applications from one server to another. In this case, the user won’t have to pay a monthly fee for both the servers but rather an hourly rate would be charged for the number of hours each server was used. 

Another use case of this feature is for developers that deploy servers for testing purposes. Of course, they won’t be running their tests 24 hours a day so they might need to stop their servers when they are done. Cloudways only charges for the number of hours the server was tested. 

Cloudways’ basic plan starts from $10/month with the following specifications: 

• Provider: DigitalOcean 
• 1GB RAM
• 25GB SSD Hard Disk
• 1TB Transfer
• 1 Core Processor

Judging by these specifications, this server might not be ideal for any type of website but if we take things up a notch, you will notice that Cloudways is still the most affordable managed hosting provider around. 

This is what you can get for $22/month at Cloudways. 

• Provider: DigitalOcean 
• 2GB RAM
• 50GB SSD Hard Disk
• 2TB Transfer
• 1 Core Processor

Platform Overview

The essence of any managed cloud hosting is the platform that comes with it. Cloudways has invested a lot of effort in developing its platform that offers a host of features directly from the platform. 

Let’s take a tour of Cloudways platform to further explore its capabilities.

Deploy Cloud Servers 

Using the Cloudways Platform, you can launch a cloud server in minutes. This task usually takes hours even with professional help if you do it manually but with Cloudways, it’s a breeze. 

This is the area in the platform where you can select your server specifications. All you have to do is select a WordPress Application and give it a name, select your preferred cloud provider, choose your RAM size, and select the datacenter. 

Some more of the features Cloudways offer

Server Management

Vertical Scaling

Backups

Application Management

Domain Mapping

Install SSL Certificate

Backups 

Migration Tools

CloudwaysCDN

Final Words!

So there you have it, Cloudways managed cloud hosting solution has really made cloud hosting easy for everyone. Whether you are an individual blogger or a founder of a multimillion-dollar online business, Cloudways has got just the right tools for you to grow your businesses.

The post Cloudways Review: A Managed WordPress Hosting Platform appeared first on Astoundify.

Introducing Elementify, the compatibility of all Astoundify products with Elementor.

We know we do not blog a lot but let us assure you that we work around the clock to have things done!

Today, we are happy to announce that we have worked on a new plugin for our themes, which is called “ Elementify “!
Elementify will allow all of our themes to be compatible with Elementor but also allow you to build full pages, just with some drag and drop.

As we do care for our users to get the maximum compatibility, you can create now, you are now able to create:

HomePage:
You can now design your homepage, by using any of the elements we provide! Customize your homepage without the need of any extra code! We would love to see what you guys prepare, let us know when possible!

Listing Page:
Same as the homepages, you can now design unique pages. As by using the Elementor capabilities, you can create unique customized layouts, even different views per Listing Category or Location!

Dashboard Page:
We could not leave Dashboard outside of those processes. We know that you want your users to have as specific to your site and branding design, so we have also integrated the dashboard to all that process.

Why we integrated with Elementor?
We listen to our users and the top voted feature, was the option for you to be able to modify our templates and design different demos! We listen and we introduced that to you!

What is next?
New Demos! We are already planning different single pages that you will be able to import to your WordPress Installation and use those demos for creating web sites for you or your clients. We are working on a really big new library, that we hope will meet all of your needs.

Are you an Elementor Lover?
Do you love Elementor? Do you also use and love any of our Themes? We want you to help us grow! We are opening the possibilities for our users to participate in the demo library we are creating! The steps are easy!

1. Create a Demo for the following pages:
– HomePage
– Category Page
– Dashboard Page
– Single Listing or Job Profile Page
2. Create a Screenshot of all of those pages
3. Send the Exported JSON format with the Screenshots, a link of your own web site and some description text of your self.

The top 5 entries that we will decide to use, will receive a $50 either amazon gift card or instant payment to their PayPal account.

Are we missing something?
As we always if you think that we are missing something from functionality, you notice a bug or you believe we should add more things into the plugin, please contact us via our contact page, we will be more than happy to help you!

Do you want to see those two themes?
Please check them out!

The post Elementor Compatibility for our Products appeared first on Astoundify.

Hi, I am Rohit and I am the new owner of Astoundify. After 3 months of negotiations and a month of moving things around, I am happy to let you know that Astoundify has a new owner. Astoundify will be part of Xtendify from now on, a big network of WordPress businesses that includes BeTheme & Azelab ( and more companies on discussions for acquisition as we speak ).

What are our feature plans for Astoundify.
All the themes will still operate under the Xtendify umbrella and continue to be developed with more resources.

We are working hard to close any active bugs at the themes right now and then, we will start the integration of WordPress Builders inside the themes, as is Elementor. We believe that this will bring more attention to our themes and will help design more demos faster for all of you.

We are also working on creating more skins for Vendify. We are working closely with experienced designers to design some new demos and skins, but also add more pages inside with new and improved functionality! 

A thank you to all of you.
We will be introducing a couple of new add-ons in February to our already existing suite of addons. Those have already been coded and they are ready for you. Those will help you drive more revenue. We believe that there are a lot of people who build their own business on top of our themes and addons and as a thank you for this, we want to invest more on addons that not just provide new features, but they help you increase your revenue from your online properties.

The post Astoundify is now part of Xtendify appeared first on Astoundify.