are authors allowed to buy their own projects to "goose" the numbers?

quick question, being a cynic, to make a project look popular, are authors allowed to buy 1-2 of their own projects as soon as it’s released, to make it artificially look like it’s a popular project? that’s not ethical; just wanted to find out if that ever happens, or is disallowed.

eg if I’m an author and nobody buys my project, it might be tempting to “buy it” myself a couple of times for social proof to goose the numbers to make it appear popular, to try and induce others to buy it (like fake twitter followers/buying those).

on similar topic do/can authors create fake accounts to give fake positive reviews of their own projects?

IP address checking could help minimize all that… just sayin’ ... does it happen guys?

I think it is impossible to purchase your own file. However, even if you did – you will have to trade money for some positive statistics. Still don’t think it is worth it. You could always ask someone else to buy a file for you, thus getting around the “you cannot purchase your own file” thing.. and the ip scenario if it exist. It is not ethical, it is not fair. Personally – I did once buy files for someone else.. as it was an emergency. I’d rather not do it again. Truth is it is not “illegal”, it is a moral question.

I’m sure it happens… in fact there was a thread discussing it. I referred it to staff at the time for a response and never got one… I’ll check up on that.

The positive comment thing also happened last time. A certain author’s project was suddenly number one of the best-sellers list, causing immediate suspicion on the forums. It appeared that the author had been buying his own project to make it top of the pops.

Definitely very unethical, because it deprives a deserving item of the top spot. If the author wants to donate money to Envato, that’s one thing, but the fact is that it’s not fair on other authors who do play by the rules. It also deceives buyers who are using the number of sales as a potential popularity guide. They think… “cool – loads of people like this! My clients will like this too!”. When what they’re actually seeing are the actions of an unscrupulous author.

The author’s claim on that occasion was that he had accepted payment for a freelance project in sales of this item, owing to payment problems. However, we couldn’t help but notice that this client left a positive comment about the item, in which he exhibited exactly the same curious punctuation habit of never leaving a space after the comma that the author himself had exhibited in every one of his forum posts. Pretty much as good as a finger print at the scene of the crime.

I imagine that purchaser, IP address / payment account is all easily checked up on by Envato staff if push comes to shove.

But I would very much like a staff guideline about this stuff (I’m sure that it happens all the time).

@Staff: I’m flagging this for a reply from you guys.

this was this one…

...lot’s of questions, lot’s of replays in this Thread, but?

I know simple(i think so ) solution:

Imagine… Client made a purchase of a template. On the next day he needs 1,2,3..xx more licences. He presses “Buy” button and the message appears “You’ve already bought that file 1,2,3..xx times. This time it wont affect on it’s selling statistics”

And for example reset this “statistics restriction” after a week from last purchase by this client.

InlifeThrill said
I think it is impossible to purchase your own file.

I believe you can buy your projects from your account. I have the purchase button on the item page.

But for the purpose of this thread, if one has an elite account then is a win win situation if you do it like this:

click referral link that use your elite account,

make new account and deposit the amount that is need it to buy your project.

Purchase your project. -> you get 70% from the sell.

From referral program -> you get 30%

Simple math 70% + 30%

Get all your money back, create impression of popular file (buyers may trust item with sales + no complains + 5 star ratings that you give yourself)

If timed right, you can keep your file in the popular items list each week. If you need like 4 sells more or something to enter that list.

If you are not an elite account, then you lose till 20% of the money “invested”.

Enjoy the scheme.

In this “scheme” envato earns nothing, actually lose money (hosting, bandwidth, transactions fee) so the first step should be to clearly prohibit this type of behavior, then implement some clever methods to detect if this scheme is taking place. But this is difficult if the author who do this knows how to cover his tracks. To cover the tracks you need to make sure that … Want to know yeah? Nope, can’t write this on forum. This is not a lesson of how to cheat the system.

Disclaimer: I’m not approving this behavior, never did this, and I will never do this scheme. You have my boyscout word.

doru said

InlifeThrill said
I think it is impossible to purchase your own file.

I believe you can buy your projects from your account. I have the purchase button on the item page.

But for the purpose of this thread, if one has an elite account then is a win win situation if you do it like this:

click referral link that use your elite account,

make new account and deposit the amount that is need it to buy your project.

Purchase your project. -> you get 70% from the sell.

From referral program -> you get 30%

Simple math 70% + 30%

Get all your money back, create impression of popular file (buyers may trust item with sales + no complains + 5 star ratings that you give yourself)

If timed right, you can keep your file in the popular items list each week. If you need like 4 sells more or something to enter that list.

If you are not an elite account, then you lose till 20% of the money “invested”.

Enjoy the scheme.

In this “scheme” envato earns nothing, actually lose money (hosting, bandwidth, transactions fee) so the first step should be to clearly prohibit this type of behavior, then implement some clever methods to detect if this scheme is taking place. But this is difficult if the author who do this knows how to cover his tracks. To cover the tracks you need to make sure that … Want to know yeah? Nope, can’t write this on forum. This is not a lesson of how to cheat the system.

Disclaimer: I’m not approving this behavior, never did this, and I will never do this scheme. You have my boyscout word.

@Doru

why? Why post this kind of scheme. Now low moral people (who often are often a bit dumber) might use it. The only thing is that they need to get to 70%, but still.

The easiest way to get rid of most of this is simply not count more than one purchase from one user. So we will not have information on how many times file is been sold but we will have information on how many users bought it. Clean and simple.

p.s. sorry for my grammar

+1 re uniques, that’s a good idea