The Studio Owner’s Guide to Free Project

How to Offer a Free Good

You can position any of your existing projects as a Free Project in two different ways:

1. Directly from your Products page. You only need to Add a Product and select the Freebie category. (Once the promotional period is finished, our Design team will contact you and a new category will be updated to your project)
2. Contact us to propose your project to be published as a Weekly Free Project. Our Design team will check if your project is eligible for publishing and if so, will be published on the Weekly Free Project page.

Once your item is published, you will see more details about your upcoming project

You are limited to submitting 1 Free Project at one time, so make sure you pick carefully! If you want to submit a different Project and you already have 1 Project in line, please Contact us to make space for the new Project.

Read about what to expect when your project is a Free Projects below! You can also read about a few fellow Studio Owners’ experiences! 

About the Free Projects Selection Process

The Free Projects program is a very popular promotion opportunity, leading to hundreds of projects being submitted for consideration every month. However, we can only select 1 project(s) weekly.

Selection is not based on the date submitted, so we don’t guarantee if or when a specific project will be selected. We do this to ensure the highest quality projects make it into the Free Projects email. Below is a list of some of the criteria we use each week when choosing new ones:

• Does the studio have avatars/studio banners?
• Are other projects popular or highly rated?
• Are there at least four projects?
• Is there a mix of projects targeting different types of customers?
• Are the projects unique or very different from others in the same category?

Additionally, the following features will help the Stoor team give Studio Owners a timely understanding of the status of their submission.

Submission Cap

Each Studio Owner may have no more than (1) one free project(s) submitted at a given time. This cap helps keep the queue from being artificially inflated, allowing our staff to better stay on top of daily submissions. It also keeps the quality of the queue high, ensuring that studio owners are narrowing down their offerings to the one project(s) they think will work best for free projects.

Regular Queue Curation

Our Curation Team curates our Free Projects submission queue on a regular basis. If you’ve submitted a free project, you’ll know within a week if the item you’ve submitted is not a good fit for our Free Projects program.

• Not a Good Fit – With so many potential Free Projects being submitted to the queue every month and with only a few slots a week to fill, we, unfortunately, cannot use every project that Studio owners submit to the queue. If your project is not a good fit for the Free Projects program, you will get an email notification within one week of your project being submitted to the queue.
• A Good Fit – If the project you submitted seems like it could be a good fit for the Free Projects program, it will remain in the Free Projects “Pending” queue for a time, and it will be up for consideration each week as our staff puts together the weekly Free Projects offering. You will not receive an email if your project remains in the pending queue.

Scheduled Free Project Notifications

Having a project in the weekly Free Projects is a great promotion opportunity, and it’s also a really great experience. Even so, all of the new followers, likes, comments, views, and messages have the potential to put some extra work on your plate. You may even want to invest some extra time into your studio and your projects before your Free Project goes live, in order to make sure your Studio is looking as great as possible during your increased influx of traffic. For these reasons, now when your project is selected to be a Free Project, you will get an email about a week before it goes live, allowing you to prepare.

Six-Month Time Out Period

In order to ensure that the Free Projects pending queue does not become too unwieldy for our team, we’ve implemented a six-month time-out period for all projects submitted as free projects. This means that no project will ever be in the queue for longer than six months. As soon as a project you’ve submitted has been in the queue for longer than six months, you will be sent an email notifying you that while we enjoyed your item, we weren’t able to find a spot for it in our Free Projects lineup, so it was removed from the queue. You will be free to resubmit timed out items for reconsideration at any time.

Note: While this could potentially happen to any project, those that are somewhat niche or are positioned for a specific season are more susceptible to “timing out.”

What if my project didn’t get chosen as a free project?

Due to the large volume of Free Projects submissions that we receive, only a small percentage of items can be featured in our Free Projects program. Because of this we often have to be very selective when it comes to which items will be featured on a given week.

Below are some common reasons why a project may not be featured:

• The project doesn’t align with the level of quality we offer through the Free Projects program.
• The project was too niche for our broad audience.
• The project was seasonal in a way that was not currently relevant for a feature.
• The project lacked a full description or a full set of information and/or content.
• The project featured content that was deemed inappropriate for our audience.

Due to the amount of Free Projects submissions that we review on a daily basis, we’re not able to offer personalized feedback for every rejected project.

We appreciate you taking the time to participate in our Free Projects program. If you’re still interested in offering one of your projects up as a Free Project, please feel free to submit a new project that may be a better fit.

Getting your Project Ready to offer as a Free Project

Congrats! Your project has been selected for our Free Projects. Here’s what you can expect from participating. Read further for some tips on what to do to prepare for the promotion. We’ve provided links below to discussion posts where you can read about experiences other Studio owners have had while their projects are on offer in the Free Projects program.

Get ready for all the comments!

Your Free Project will receive thousands of views and downloads; with that will come comments, likes, and reviews. Most comments will consist of community members thanking you for a great project, but you should also expect a fair amount of questions regarding project specs and use. 

While your project is a Free Project you will not be able to delete it or make any changes to the project file. So, once you’re notified that your project will soon be scheduled to be a Free Project, it’s good to review the project and make any updates or changes needed to minimize confusion and questions. For example:

• Make sure your project file is well organized and the assets are clearly labeled.
• Include a ReadMe file in the download that contains any necessary instructions.
  Make sure your description includes helpful details regarding project specifications, program compatibility, used software (if a template, etc), and any other helpful tips. 
• Upload your project to a Google Drive or Dropbox account and generate a Share Link. Copy that link and Paste it in File URL in the Downloadable files section Stoor.
• Be ready to respond to messages and comments in a timely manner. Remember that the Stoor Support Team is here to help, too!

To help you address common questions, check out the articles and FAQs in our Help Center. A great place to start is the sections on Technical Support & Troubleshooting and Licensing & Use Cases.

Sales and views on your other projects may increase, too

While not guaranteed, most Studio Owners experience a general increase in activity across their studio while their Free Project is live. This includes sales on other projects, views, recommendations, and followers. For this reason, it’s a good idea to spruce up your Studio a bit before your Free Project goes live. We recommend considering the following:

• Take a minute and update your Studio banner, making sure it represents your projects and brand. 
• If you haven’t updated your Studio bio recently, consider giving it a good edit before the week of your Free Project offer. 
• Remember, you can organize the order of the projects in your Studio! Consider where your Free Project falls in your Studio and surround it with complementary projects. 

Promote your Free Project!

1. Stoor promotes the weekly Free Project via email and various social media channels. Join the party and share your Free Project with all of your followers! 
2. The Stoor Studio Updates feature becomes more effective as you gain more followers. Consider using this tool to promote your Free Project. As your follower count increases, use this tool to let your new followers know about other projects you have that may compliment the Free Project.
3. Do you have a blog on our website? Check out the new Project Embed tool and embed your Free Project right on your site. 

Read about other Studio Owners’ Experiences with Free Projects

Check out great Discussions posts by Stoor Community members!