Creating a Landing Page and Getting Approved

Well I have some great news!

Reprise landing page is now approved. If you want to check it out you can, by going to my ThemeForest item description page.

I actually received my approval email on March 13, 2013, however due to one thing or another I was unable to publish the news until now.

The template has started off nicely, and I’ll share with you the stats in this blog post below.

Before I do, let’s recap on what we’ve gone through so far.

Recap

• Part 1 – Creating a Landing Page: Getting Inspiration Ideas
• Part 2 – Creating a Landing Page: The Concept
• Part 3 – Creating a Landing Page: Frameworks, Polish and More
• Part 4 – Creating a Landing Page: Documentation, Submission and Review

So let’s get started…

Why Rejection is a Good Thing

In one of my previous posts I spoke about rejection when submitting your item. Truth be told, when I submitted this latest template I got initially rejected.

The reasons behind the rejection where completely valid, and just an oversight from my end.

Here is the email which I received from the Review Team:

Subject: [ThemeForest] Your uploaded item Reprise Responsive Landing Page needs improvement

Unfortunately your submission Reprise Responsive Landing Page isn’t quite ready for ThemeForest.

Additionally, we have some extra feedback for you:

Some of your files contain validation errors that will need to be fixed. Please be sure that all files validate before resubmitting.

You can validate HTML at http://validator.w3.org

Delete the images from the main file and replace with placeholders. http://placehold.it

Ouch! that hurt…

When I received the news, I was a bit disappointed, but after delving deeper into the reason for the rejection it made complete sense.

I identified the exact problems and rectified them as needed before resubmitting the item.

As you can see from the review teams email there were two specific areas that needed fixing.

1. Including modified image assets versus placeholders within the main download file
2. Validation errors, due to using non semantic WAI-ARIA roles

My thought process

For point one, I actually thought there were no issues. I had in the past downloaded items within the marketplace which contained image assets that had been modified by adding filters such as “Accented Edges” through Photoshop.

If you don’t know what these are, it’s the filter that distorts your original image and pretty much renders it useless. Still, that was not considered the right way to do this for the Review Team, which I accept and completely understand.

So I included a very easy fix – one which the review team recommended. I went to placehold.it website, grabbed the dimensions I needed for my placeholder images and did the switch.

Super fast, super easy! With the added benefits that I will not get into any kind of legal issues.

Next, fixing the validation errors…

These were a complete oversight by me. I actually knew these role attributes were not part of the spec – I was using them to simply test the selector rule and left them in the main download file, rather than correcting them.

Here is the exact attribute I used to target the specific section of my markup:

<div class="row" role="features">

This markup is invalid as the role attribute does not exist. For a list of valid role attribute, check out this link.

So to make the markup valid I simply replaced the role aria attribute and created a features class as shown here:

<div class="row features">

This fix made my markup valid and I was now confident of resubmitting the template.

Like I said, an oversight from my end, which is a great thing that the review team was able to point this out.

Resubmitting My Landing Page

There is always a bit of apprehension when submitting an item – well there is at least for me. Not because I don’t think my work is up to scratch, but just because of the anticipation in learning about whether your item will begin to be listed or not, as well as how much rework could be required if you do get a rejection.

With that said, I triple checked my landing page in thorough detail and submitted it to the marketplace.

I’m happy to report that after a day or two I received the below reply from the review team:

Subject: [ThemeForest] Your updated item has been approved

Congratulations! Your submission Reprise Responsive Landing Page update has been approved. You can view it online here:

http://themeforest.net/item/reprise-responsive-landing-page/4245154

Thanks for your submission!

– The Envato Marketplaces Team

It’s always fantastic news when you receive this kind of reply.

After only a few hours of the item being listed I made my first sale! AWESOME!

My Results

The page itself is performing quite modestly. It’s not a high seller at the moment, but it still has brought in a total of 18 sales, with an added bonus of some fantastic feedback by the community.

Here are some of the great comments I’ve received.

In terms of monetary value, the template has made to date a total of $162 – Note that this is only for the first month, and now it’s out there with the possibility of adding to my passive income stream.

Where to From Here?

Now that Reprise landing page is out on the marketplace, I’ll be starting on the next item. I was thinking of going into the WordPress arena, but I think I’m going to hold off on that for now. I really enjoy the landing page category, so I will focus my next item within that there.

Perhaps it’s the kiddy pool, but I enjoy swimming there for now…. 🙂

Thank You!

I want to take this opportunity to say thank you. Thank you for sticking with me through the series – I know it has been a long one.

I really do hope these posts will serve as a guide if you are just getting started in the marketplace, as well as if you are a more experienced author. We can all learn from each other, the key is to put yourself out there and share your knowledge with others.

I wish you the best of luck and be sure to come back to stay up to date with my latest posts!

Thanks again!