We want to hear from you. Each week we give you a chance to share your thoughts, opinions and ideas. Have your say!

How do you read ebooks? Which device, app and format do you prefer? Or do you prefer books made of paper?

The Envato Marketplace has a variety of badges that are used to indicate certain attributes or accomplishments of our community members. Badges can only be provisioned by staff and are not to be used in any other way (i.e. as part of an avatar).

This post is taken from the Envato Marketplace Wiki. It’s full of interesting and useful information. Check it out!

Accomplishments

		Has won a competition
		Is an exclusive author
		Has had an item featured
		Has been featured
		Has had an item featured in an Envato Bundle
		Has helped protect the marketplaces against copyright violations (expires after 30 days)
		Super copyright sheriff!
		Has contributed a blog post
		Has contributed a tutorial
		Has contributed a Free File of the Month
		Location. We’re a Global Community!
		Mo Bro, this member grew a mustache to raise money or awareness for Movember Australia
		Gold Mo Bro, this member grew a mustache to raise money or awareness for Movember Australia, and had the best mo of the year
		Has been a beta tester for one of Envato’s new marketplaces
		Has been featured in the AudioJungle podcast or the Envato Marketplace Community podcast
		Items have been featured in a magazine
		Displays how long a member has been a part of the Marketplaces
		Elite Author
		Power Elite Author
		Halloween Competition Thread
		Has attended an Envato Meetup
		Community Ambassador

Staff

		The Marketplace Manager
		Site Manager Extraordinaire
		Our Community Manager
		One of our excellent Forum Moderators
		Item Reviewer
		Marketplace Blogger
		One of our elite developers
		Envato Support
		An Envato staff member

Community

		Community Moderator
		One of our exclusive Community Superstars (This person has done so much to help the community, they deserve a medal! Expires after 12 months)
		One of our amazing Forum Superstars (expires after 30 days)

Buyers

		Has bought between 1 and 9 items
		Has bought between 10 and 49 items
		Has bought between 50 and 99 items
		Has bought between 100 and 499 items
		Has bought between 500 and 999 items
		Has bought more than 1000 items (this person keeps our marketplaces running!)

Authors

		Has sold between $1 – $100 worth of items
		Has sold between $100 – $1,000 worth of items
		Has sold between $1,000 – $5,000 worth of items
		Has sold between $5,000 – $10,000 worth of items
		Has sold between $10,000 – $50,000 worth of items
		Has sold between $50,000 – $100,000 worth of items
		Has sold between $100,000 – $250,000 worth of items
		Has sold between $250,000 – $1,000,000 worth of items (this person should have a statue!)

Referrals

		Has referred between 1 – 9 members
		Has referred between 10 – 49 members
		Has referred between 50 – 99 members
		Has referred between 100 – 199 members
		Has referred between 200 – 499 members
		Has referred between 500 – 999 members
		Has referred between 1,000 – 1,999 members
		Has referred 2,000+ members

Congratulations to this week’s featured marketplace authors.

Featured ActiveDen Author: ravi_allam

This week’s featured author is ravi_allam, who has 6 items, including the newest from the MP3 Players category.
View ravi_allam’s Portfolio

Featured AudioJungle Author: joesacco

This week’s featured author is joesacco, who has 107 items, including the newest from the House category.
View joesacco’s Portfolio

Featured ThemeForest Author: proxdeveloper

This week’s featured author is proxdeveloper, who has 4 items, including the newest from the Portfolio category.
View proxdeveloper’s Portfolio

Featured VideoHive Author: GrandTerr

This week’s featured author is GrandTerr, who has 16 items, including the newest from the Openers category.
View GrandTerr’s Portfolio

Featured GraphicRiver Author: mKrukowski

This week’s featured author is mKrukowski, who has 832 items, including the newest from the Miscellaneous category.
View mKrukowski’s Portfolio

Featured 3DOcean Author: Luckyfox

This week’s featured author is Luckyfox, who has 10 items, including the newest from the Buildings category.
View Luckyfox’s Portfolio

Featured CodeCanyon Author: mythodeia

This week’s featured author is mythodeia, who has 9 items, including the newest from the iPhone category.
View mythodeia’s Portfolio

Featured Tutorials Author: rockablepress

This week’s featured author is rockablepress, who has 22 items, including the newest from the Workflow category.
View rockablepress’ Portfolio

Featured PhotoDune Author: ryanking999

This week’s featured author is ryanking999, who has 1338 items.
View ryanking999′s Portfolio

Belonging to the Glee Club at school, selling songs geared toward songwriters, aiming to make the majority of his money through the Envato marketplaces, and having a close family. This week we meet Jamie Graves (WriterTracks) from AudioJungle.

If you’re an Envato marketplace author and would like to be interviewed for the blog, head over to this form. We’d love to hear from you.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from, what do you do for a living?

My name is Jamie Graves. I am from the U.S. and the beautiful state of Tennessee. I am married (over 18 years) and have two children.

I grew up near Nashville and have been involved with bands since the age of 13. I began playing the piano at age 11 and moved on to keyboards and multi-track recording. I started with a Vesta-Fire 4 track Cassette recorder.

Now, I produce tracks for stage shows, songwriters, some well known artists and some up and coming artists. I am fortunate to be able to make a living from my work room in the lower part of my home.

Which marketplaces do you belong to? What types of files do you sell?

AudioJungle. I sell files geared toward songwriters. My tracks are designed to inspire the songwriter to either write or finish a song.

How did you get started? Have you had any formal training?

I started by watching a gospel quartet at an outdoor concert. I was fascinated by the piano player.

In high school I played piano for the Glee Club. The director was also a keyboard player and introduced me to drum machines and sequencing. I have had no formal training and can’t read music very well. I have had some private instruction from some great players throughout the years.

Describe your home workspace.

My workspace is in my basement. I use Cubase as my platform. My favorite pieces of gear I have are my Earthworks pre-amp and old Yamaha Motif. I record vocals through a Rhode NT-1A. I have an Earthworks M-30 that I use in conjunction with the Rhode for Acoustic instruments.

I use Ivory software for my piano sound. I have Stylus, Atmosphere, Albino and several other software pieces. I have both Mac and PC, but am gradually going all Mac.

Describe your creative process. What steps do you normally follow to create your files?

I usually start with a groove or loop and build on that. Sometimes me and the other band guys just jam with the red light on (we call it red-hearsing). A lot of times ideas are captured that way.

I have had to re-create a lot of cover songs through the years via karaoke. I have been exposed to a wide array of genres, so that helps tremendously.

What is your advice to other authors regarding how to create a successful portfolio?

1. Quality work. Spend time on your creation. Don’t skimp.
2. Consistency. Upload on a regular basis.
3. Promote. Use blogs, social networks to get your stuff heard.
4. Don’t quit. Even when sales are at a stand still, stay in the game.

What do you do to market your files?

Linking from the major social networks is the primary way, but I am about to incorporate some new ideas in 2012. My goal is to make the majority of my income from AudioJungle.

What are your three favorite files, and why do you like them?

Pop 9

I just like the groove and feel of this track. I love old wulitzer piano sounds.

Joy To The World Pop

I love Christmas music and this track just turned out really cool. My colleague, Greg, did a fantastic job on the guitar work.

Pop 5

I dig the keyboard guitar loop. I love intentional sounding key guitar. You can’t replace the real thing. Key guitar just has a sound all its own.

Apart from yourself, who is your favorite marketplace author, and why do you like them?

Tim McMorris. He is a talented guy and a very nice guy. He has been very encouraging to me.

What do you do in your spare time?

When I am not producing music I am trying to generate work, so there is very little spare time. Our family is very close and we spend it together on outings, movies, football games, the usual family stuff.

The meetup will be in the evening (exact start time to be confirmed) and will run for approximately 3-4 hours. We are looking to host the meetup at this cool centrally located venue in Kuala Lumpur (however we may change this based on requirements to a similar location): Palate Palette.

There will also be a Foosball Tournament, so be prepared to bring your game. Will you be the 2012 Meetup Foosball Champion? Only time will tell.

We are accepting RSVPs for the event so if you are serious about attending, please fill in the RSVP form.
We’re looking to have a complete guest list in around 2 weeks, so please only RSVP if you are serious about attending and do so quickly!

Although the Envato Meetup will only be for one evening, there are plenty of cool things to do in Kuala Lumpur if you are considering combining the Envato Meetup with a holiday.

We will provide further information to attendees upon final confirmation of your RSVP. If you have any questions, please ask us in the space provided on the form!

We hope to see you at the Kuala Lumpur Envato Community Meetup 2012!

Where does GraphicRiver author HP Eskobar (INDUSTRYKIDZ) sit for fifteen hours each day? Right here. It’s a good thing it’s a nice workspace with a comfy chair! And a dog for company.

Three monitors sit on top of a sturdy, expensive-looking desk. The lighting in the photo looks fantastic, by I’m not sure whether it’s always that dark when productive work is being done. Comparing this shot with the the author interview photo, I can see that HP cleaned up lots of cans of diet coke for us. Thanks!

What do you think of HP’s workspace? Let us know in the comments.

Would you like your workspace featured on Envato Notes? Upload your photo to somewhere on the Web and let us know about it on our Write a Post page. Or upload it to Flickr and tag it with #envatonotesworkspaces. Either way, add an interesting description. Each week we’ll choose and publish a new photo.

If you’ve been anywhere in the forums, you’ve probably run across this month’s Community Superstar winner. A huge congratulation goes out to CodingJack!

Who is CodingJack?

CodingJack was born Jason McElwaine, possibly some place in the United Sates. As you can see, I’ve done a lot of research into the life and times of Mr. CodingJack

Jack now makes his home in Tucson, Arizona. The English name Tucson derives from the Spanish name of the city, Tucsón which means “We’re better than Pheonix”. There is a law in Arizona that donkeys cannot sleep in bathtubs. Apparently they can splash around all they like, but if they start to get drowsy they have to come out.

Jack is also a busy author on the CodeCanyon and ActiveDen Marketplaces.

I did manage to get Jack to tell me the story behind his avatar, but you’ll have to tune into the next Community Podcast to get all the dirt.

If any of you are wondering what a CodingJack looks like, here’s a photo I managed to grab from a super-secret source:

And if you’re also wondering what the quality of work that CodingJack puts together – here are some of my favorites:

L.P. Google Friendly Premium Flash Template

BLADES Portfolio – XML Portfolio Gallery

GalleryJack Rebooted – A jQuery Fullscreen Gallery

Along with the ultra-cool gold superstar community badge (that only lasts for 12 months!), the prize this month is a 6 month Tuts+ premium subscription, a $30 Rockable ebook voucher and a $20 Marketplace credit. Congratulations CodingJack!

Last year Travis “KingDog” King ran an interesting competition. He’d send Envato logo stickers to anyone interested, and they would take photos of the sticker in interesting places from around the world. Over the next weeks we’ll bring you some of the best.

So, where in the world is the Envato logo? On a tree house in Iowa. Click the photo for a larger version on Flickr.

Photo-taker John comments:

This is on the tree house I built my kids I see outside of my office window.

That’s a great tree house, John. Are you ever tempted to move your work out of the office and into the tree?

ThemeForest is Envato’s marketplace for website themes and templates. If it’s your favorite site, give it a shout out in the comments!

You might like to browse our previous posts related to ThemeForest.

Site Summary

ThemeForest currently offers 5,038 files, and is growing. Categories include HTML, Email, WordPress, Joomla and Magento. To explore all of the sites categories, visit themeforest.net/category.

ThemeForest is an Envato Marketplace. At ThemeForest you can buy and sell HTML templates as well as themes for popular CMS products like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal with prices ranging from just $5 up to $40. Items are priced on the complexity, quality and use of the file. The site is home to a bustling community of web designers and developers and is the biggest marketplace of its kind.

Be Social

If you’d like to keep up to date with what’s happening on FreelanceSwitch, you’ll find it on most social networks.

• Follow @EnvatoWebDesign on Twitter.
• Like ThemeForest on Facebook.
• Circle ThemeForest on Google+.
• Subscribe to ThemeForest’s RSS feed.

There’s always a lot going on, so follow us in multiple places so you don’t miss out!

So how often do you visit ThemeForest? Let us know in the comments.