2021 Envato Annual Public Impact Statement

Envato Announcements
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Today we release our Public Impact Statement for 2021, a document we prepare at this time every year to showcase the range of creative outputs our community contributes to. Yes, that is including each and every one of you reading this in our forums!

If we think back to this time last year in 2020, Envato was front and centre as one of the largest ever upheavals in online work played out across the globe. Our community of designers, creatives and inspired thinkers helped millions to shift their businesses online, learn new skills and bring their creative projects to life. As we said at the time, our overriding emotion was that of pride in what our creative community had achieved.

That sense of pride is no less prominent as we reflect on another 12 months of creative impact in partnership with our global community, though this time it is a story of empowerment and endurance. Our impact statement tells the story of a creative community that has moved swiftly and resoundingly to build on the success of last year and realise incredible results across numerous creative domains. It wasn’t always the smoothest journey - 2021 was full of surprises both challenging and positive - but we achieved better, together.

In our 15th birthday year, Envato has helped thousands of authors publish and earn across our ecosystem, generating a projected $150m+ in payouts along the way. We supported our authors with new insights, from customer data to creative trends, to better empower them to make the swift decisions needed to thrive.

All of this activity helped to push our monthly active community number - the impact metric we use to assess how many people are creating and earning with Envato products - up past 900,000. This is a real demonstration of how we are striving to make creative success accessible and achievable for all.

I want to thank you all for your contributions and continued support of Envato’s purpose; we continue to be humbled by your inspiration and commitment to helping deliver creative success for many around the world.

We’d love to hear from you about what you think of the Impact Statement, so please share your comments and queries below once you’ve had a chance to read it. We’ll keep the thread open for the weekend and come back to you after that!

Previous editions:

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I hoped to see the reason of -50% sales fall this year… unfortunaly

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Hi! Good to see that numbers are ok and that company is growing.

There is almost no feedback because the Community is in a bad condition…

And to be honest there is a strong feeling/experience that our feedback will do nothing and that we have no impact (except some UI design projects like EE author dashboard design).

Beside that I am still happy to be a part of the Envato even though I am not as motivated by the Community and by the selling model as before.

PS: this is an AJ/EE author perspective.

Thanks again for your work,
RedOctopus

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Hi Hicham,

The subscriber growth to 600,000 monthly subscribers is great news for you, Collis, his family, and all the employees. I am sure the bonus pool will be amazing for all of you in 2021. From a business shareholder execution, you should be proud.

However, this was all done in a manner where every market author has suffered 50 to 75% market declines in their market revenue. The banner ad clearly drove traffic away from the markets so Envato can grow it’s recurring subscription revenue base. While Envato revenue has grown year over year, it was done so in a manner where it seems that the increase in revenue is only benefitting shareholders and employees. Personally, I often wonder why Envato has not just stated that they will keep 70% of all elements revenue. What could authors do about it if you changed your policy? Most would probably keep their portfolio on elements and take the 30% piece of the pie.

For years, Music authors have asked that all license options be clearly displayed in plain view to customers. We have always felt as though we’d sell more Broadcast and Film licenses if customers did not have to click on a drop down menu to find those “higher tier” prices. Is there any chance you can consider displaying all of those prices on the market?

Envato continues to applaud $5 prices and shuns showing higher end clients the price of broadcast and film licenses. Why? What is the risk of showing those other prices in plain view?

High end licensing for large brands is still alive and kicking. Still, in 2021, it is normal to pay $3000, $5000, $10,000, even at times 15 to 20K for a music license into a worldwide flagship branding ad campaign. Can we ask why the emphasis is always on the lowest price on the planet?

The majority of music buyers (in my opinion) do not need hundreds of tracks per year, but rather 3 to 6 per year for a few projects. Some have really large special budgets for a unique track to make their ad stand out. Why does Envato never want to court that type of customer?

Also, since we all know fractions of cents earned per download is soon on the horizon, why doesn’t Envato take that grand leap right now and just let everyone on market sell in Elements if they elect to?
Wouldn’t that make Envato even more enticing to customers and therefore drive even greater subscriber growth?

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I support you,

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At the moment, it is not profitable to work exclusively, since income has fallen by 50 percent or even more, tell me how you can survive on a salary of $ 100, despite the fact that high-quality content, many authors leave Envato or become non-exclusive authors, and I would like to devote all the time to working on ENVATO, but alas, it only gets worse, it’s a pity!!!

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I agree. It is very important for buyers to see all available licenses because many of them are unaware of the other types of licenses hidden in the dropdown list and continue to use the item with a simple license, which is displayed by default on the item page.

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I am not sure who should be happy about seeing this impact statement as many/most Envato Market authors except the big/rich ones have been suffering from last few years due to very low efforts done by Envato for the market. I can see from here that everyone at Envato HQ is working for the Elements which is eating away the Market slowly. We are at the verge of closing our long term business which was completely based on the Envato Market.

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Who is this statement for as a market author who has seen revenue decline since the introduction of Elements, it certainly is not for me. It really is galling to see how a business that has “forgotten” about the survival of it’s community can congratulate itself and take pride in it’s achievements.

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