This is off topic but I totally agree here. Inheriting an account should be possible.
Closing the account does destroy the income the author has worked so hard for and which is essentially his heritage. Even if the items are uploaded to a new account, all marketing efforts, branding efforts, and reputation building was done to the main account.
This loses both the heir as well as envato money. 6 figure money in some cases…
@collis @jamesgiroux @rohanchandler
Hi Everyone, I read a forum post - Opportunities and Resources for our Authors.In that items related to COVID-19 is in demand list.does COVID-19 Items approval in one category(html) guarantee approval in other category (WordPress) in standards of design.This will help to create more items related to COVID-19 and it will helpful to create awareness
We know the current process is quite confusing and we are looking at ways to make joining Elements simpler and easier for authors.
Any author is welcome to apply to Elements using the application page
For each application, we review the portfolio provided by the author in the application. This usually includes items already available on Market, or links provided by the author. We look at the portfolio and items presented, as well as customer demands and preferences.
We also review each author’s historical behaviour on Envato. This looks at the author’s compliance history in respect of our terms and conditions, including item security reports and strict policies regarding intellectual property.
Authors are invited based on having high quality commercial portfolios, and an impeccable record operating with Envato.
We know the current process is confusing and we are looking at ways to make joining Elements simpler and easier for authors in the future
Thank you for answer. Being open here, many of those who worked in stock music industry had problems with “sound-a-like” type of music. If some of us had problems in the past (most of them were unintentional due very gray definition of “likeness”), we need period of clearing our history. All of us were affected by the court decision in case of Eminem and using “sound-a-like” of one of his top track. The world of “sound-a-like” music changed forever after this decision of judges, who decided “mood” and not chords and melody enough to decide that track is copied. So you need some sort of “grace” attitude toward those who pioneered market and inevitably made mistakes on this road, especially in the light of Eminem case. As for now it looks like me and other banned. And believe me, please, those who invited not free from making exactly the same mistake. But they are in.
P. S. Authors welcomed to apply , but there is no explanation why they were rejected in every case. You described reasons using common language, but every case of rejection is individual. Closed, gray, unfriendly attitude to many who applied
Completely agree with you. When music stars/ songwriters pass away, typically family members inherit the intellectual property and royalty stream that continues forward. The music and songs do not get renamed and re-branded under a new “author” and “publisher”. The royalties for a songwriter such as David Bowie, for example still continue to be paid to someone he most likely chose in his will for 70 years after his death. After 70 years (at least in the USA) his music will become “public domain”. Envato this Policy must be looked at very closely. All accounts should live on, and the chosen heirs must continue to collect the royalties for eternity. It should be as simple as opening a bank account. If you open a bank account or certificate of deposit, a retirement account, you have the right to assign a beneficiary in case of death. Please consider coding that into the site as soon as possible.
Add:
BENEFICIARY 1__________________
Beneficiary 2_____________________
Beneficiary 3_____________________
maybe up to 5 to be safe____________
and @jamesgiroux no I do not mean to be an emotional alarmist, but the first idea sounded so poorly thought out that I just had to speak up immediately. All of us would certainly hope that after building a business here for so many years, our loved ones could at least continue to receive the royalty revenue from these markets and the intellectual property that we, the authors own, and will assign via a “living will” to our spouse or children, parents, siblings, friends, whomever one may chose.
Please listen to this amazing theme written in 1970 “Heavy Action”…This track still generates massive amounts of money from USA football broadcasts, I’d assume for Johnny Pearson’s family, even though he passed in 2005. I am sorry but this is not at all off topic. This inheritance/ beneficiary policy needs to be addressed immediately at Envato so future royalty streams live on forever.
Hello @collis
COVID - How much decrease has been experienced in our sales in general due to the 19 virus.
With all the questions about Market and Elements, and how we are investing and growing our business, I thought I’d re emphasise a few points from previous times I’ve posted here on the forums (and add a bit more colour and new info!)
First and foremost, as you all realise, Elements is no longer an experimental product and it continues to grow customers and revenue (even over the last two weeks). While it may be tempting to think that the Elements product is driving changes on Market, from all our analysis the bigger forces on Market are primarily the industry shifts. The long term trends started before Elements was launched and have continued since. The biggest single driver here being a growing pool of customers moving away from purchasing single items, to purchasing bundles and packs, then to choosing limited and unlimited subscriptions, and supplementing with free content libraries.
This trend is driven by a steady growth in content creators licensing digitally, married with customers interested to pay less, and startups persistently pushing at new and cheaper business models. Back in December I posted on this topic and a commenter cited Shutterstock’s Music subscription pricing as a great example of where pricing should be. It was about $149 p/month at the time. Just four weeks later, responding to a very competitive market of better priced music offerings, they dropped their price by almost 90%! I raise this, because customer interest in lower prices is not just a trend that Envato is subject to.
The good news is that our market analysis suggests that while prices are generally moving downwards in the competitive landscape, the volume of people interested in licensing digital goods is steadily climbing. What we’re working on at Envato is finding the maximal point where we can attract the most people at a price point that matches their wallet and interest, and keeps us competitive against new and existing players. The reason we’re doing this is because that will create the most revenue for both Envato and authors.
Having said all that, there will always be people who want to buy things as one-off purchases, especially in the template part of the market. This year alone, authors will make over $100,000,000 just on Envato Market. That number means there are also a wealth of opportunities - there is still a lot of money to be made on Envato Market! It is however a competitive market and one that needs innovation and ingenuity to break into as a new author, and to stay on top of as an existing one. We do have some new products like Template Kits, and other opportunities coming soon, such as tools for authors to merchandise and promote their content better and continual improvement of discovery. And as always, I encourage authors to watch for trends, and try to innovate their content approaches to match.
I thought it was worth calling out that in the last two weeks we’ve also seen some customers starting to relook at single purchases as a lower commitment way of licensing items (than a subscription) because of their uncertainty about the future. In fact, we’re currently reweighting our paid growth spend to lean into that trend and help customers find those purchases on Envato Market.
I think the overarching message here is that we do try to drive customers to the place where we see the best overall conversion and maximal lifetime spend. And we are completely committed to sharing that spend with our author community in a fair and equitable way.
I hope you will not leave me unanswered @collis .
What was the effect of the covid-19 virus I had on sales.
Hello @collis!
First, I’d like to thank you and the rest of the Envato team for helping us authors in these quite unusual and stressful times. Really appreciate it!
I’m having a few questions regarding trends (subscriptions, etc) and Audiojungle:
You mentioned that the authors of the Envato market should innovate with their content, could you please tell me would it be possible to extend that innovation idea, specifically when it comes to Audiojungle, that instead of 5 versions we can offer up to 10 versions of the same track? This would highly extend the amount of value that we could offer to our customers and would make us definitely more competitive compared to other markets and even a good amount of competitor subscription sites.
More often than not, we find ourselves in quite a tricky place when it comes to following and analyzing the sales of our own items. Using only CSV files or statement page is quite limiting (especially to us who are not programmers or coders), including using available third-party apps.
It would help us greatly to be able to see graphically or in more detail how our items are performing in order to be able to react more correctly to the need of the market.
Would it be possible to make our portfolio pages more custom? - meaning that we, as authors of the items can edit how the customer sees our portfolio in a way that we can highlight some items and add them on the top of the page (compared to a limited possibility where tracks are automatically sorted by release date, sales or similar) or that the playlists of tracks can be shown on the portfolio page (instead at the bottom of the profile page)
This would greatly increase our presentation possibilities, especially to us who are having 500+ items for sale on Audiojungle/Envato Market.
As an Audiojungle author, when it comes to innovation we can only do it by offering higher quality items in the specific categories and partly with editing the HTML on item pages, which we feel is becoming quite limiting, considering the new trends with subscriptions and other competitors.
Thank you again for your help!
Yes I believe that comment was from me 
Worth nothing though, at the very same time Shutterstock raised their single licensing track prices from €39 to €49. And I wonder why? Maybe to compensate? Maybe to make their subscription offerings look even more tempting? Or maybe just to make a clearer separation in terms of customer segments? Either way they still have standard licenses at €49 and I know other sites have raised their marketplace prices as well when introducing subscription. Maybe theses sites will also “adapt” and reduce their minimum price to $5 for a track in 4 weeks…Not happening. It is simply not necessary.
You also mentioned Hyperstock back then (DNPO 7-2 new unlimited sub service) This service is now put on ice because of feedback/resistance from the contributors there. Many video producers refused to put their items in unlimited subscription because of previously bad experiences on other subscription sites. They also did a very unwise move and placed a huge amount of contributors into the new sub model without them even knowing about it (!) Which understandably is an upsetting move. Long story short, a staff member recently said they would use their resources planned for the sub model to improve their marketplace instead.
Anyhow, this example shows the very opposite of what has been happening here at Envato. Envato has done a great job selling in subscription to its contributors and growing it slowly/controlled, I’ll definitely give you that.
I totally understand the focus on Elements, I never had any problems understanding it as long as it is a market for it. I totally do not understand the lack of resources used on improving the market itself, and I really hope to see this change. I am under the impression that making big changes to the market for the developers might seem like the task of making an elephant tap dance… Still I strongly believe that a lot of simple things can be implemented and help overall traffic and incentives for authors to make the marketplaces grow along with Elements. Where there is a will there is often a way.
This is great. I don’t think anyone can say with 100% certainty what is going to happen from now. Maybe more customers might also see that they cannot afford having a lot of running subscriptions and will “safe it” with single purchases, especially since there are so many subscription offerings nowadays. Of course if you are need of a high volume of assets with a small budget you will go for subscription. But I think it is safe to say as you have said, it’s not for everybody.
Either way there is, in the long run, or should be, a strong incentive for Envato to keep a lot of authors motivated to produce super quality items. And that is much more likely to happen if you can provide the “safety net” of single item revenue. It’s not going to be easier as time pass by to do the balance act of keeping authors happy and at the same keep growing the subscription authors/items if you ignore the authors market earnings here. I believe there are countless of reasons to invest in the market and stop seeing the market as platform of yesterday.
If I could make a request, please allow us to withdraw our monthly earnings regardless if it’s below the required amount. This will help small earners like me as any financial source no matter how small is beneficial in this time of crisis. Thank you.
Is it possible to remove the upload limits for VH on Quarantine period ?
Some users has 5 files a week limit, but some has 20K files approved by one day.
Thanks
@collis, thank you for the answer. Believe me or not, from Audiojungle market author point of view our market looks almost abandoned. And all implemented latest changes even make things worse. I mean dumpring prices, “new below 11$” and so on. I have no idea from where all this numbers and initiatives grew, but it is killing our marketplace. Envato protected themselves by implemented fixed rate for every purchase. But who will protect us, those who supply you with items to sell? Honestly speaking, in a big picture i believe number of services by subscribtion will grow until reaching point, where average Joe will count his money with one question in mind - “Do i really need all this monthly payments?”. Elements looks very tempting from business point of view, but what if era of subscribtion will end? What will left? Almost ruined market. Why you do not create some sort of “Table of Author Advisers” with whom you can discuss some of the initiatives and where you can listen for feedback? Who asking us, who listen to us? Did not you forget that in Envato business authors also important, because they are supplying you with items to sell? Biggest problem here is how unfriendly Envato became to us, authors OR to be precise - how Envato lost feedback from authors. I can say this, because i am here for many years. Of course, i am really thankful with all my heart about how Envato helped me and many of us in the past, and how we grew here and how we built our success. But some years ago something changed. Listen again to story of @Sky-Productions And i do not believe this changes occured due global market or economy. Something changed in minds of Envato staff. You lost your connection with us, authors. I am glad you opened this thread and i hope this, and many other first steps (ID check, ban of multiple accounts, etc.) will show that i was wrong. But we asked about this changes many years ago. And honestly speaking we lost momentum. This steps were required many years ago, and now they are almost ineffective. Of course, huge business is huge business. It takes time to make changes. But we need some sort of connection with decisions that affects our life. One very descriptive example - Elite Lounge. It is dead. Just dead. You have special team for working with authors feedback. What are they doing? i am really happy about this thread, this is first time during last few years i felt some light of hope in my heart. I wish you to stay healthy with all you family with all my heart. P.S. Lack of fluent English do not allow me to polish my text to the point where it looks “polite” and “friendly”. Sorry for that. I am not agressive at all, not in panic. Just trying to survive in rapidly changing world, as many others do.
Heya Collis. I wanted to ask 2 questions if possible. While I understand Elements is here to stay and folks generally love getting more for less, could you guys implement a “bundle” deal on the marketplaces?
Let me explain my thought process on this. If you were to allow authors to bundle Themes and Templates, but be it for a limited time only, and still keep the 6 months support + extension available to customers after the bundle was removed, this would surely drive more traffic to the marketplaces and also allow authors to generate revenue from affiliates. Also, it would boost customer confidence to know that a bundle would still have support even after it was removed by the author.
In this case, authors could sell bundles at a discounted price, while also giving buyers that are interested in support the confidence that they won’t be abandoned after the bundle is no longer available.
It could actually be a win-win for both Elements and Envato. Thoughts?
My second question, I do understand that Elements is now the growing kid at Envato, but can we expect a redesign/new features to the author dashboard, profile pages for the marketplaces? We’d all love to see this happen! The category pages have changed, the homepages have changed, it seems only the profile pages and product pages are left behind on this one!
Thanks in advance for your answer! Cheers mate! 
No sales + 1 Reversal 
Hi @collis Hoping everyone is OK and keeping safe! 
We support this idea and add a homepage redesign! A while ago we had a cool idea to help Envato with an Ideas Megathread [Ideas Megathread] Let's make Envato Market great (again) together! (so the community can help reverse Market’s decline) and one of them was a simple revamp of the homepage (you can also see some other easy-to-implement ideas in the topic 
)
[Ideas Megathread] Let's make Envato Market great (again) together!
Sadly the topic didn’t had much participation because, as mentioned by other users, the notion about Envato is that they don’t care about new ideas, which is kinda sad that the overall community member thinks like this.
One more thing about Elements is if you could please stop with the confusing Elements advertisement. We have a really long list of topics created in the forum complaining that they don’t know that Elements doesn’t include the items from the marketplaces (because of the abundance of ads), or being confused and angry after they pay for Elements subscription that the subscription doesn’t include Market items.
We’re sure that @charlie4282 can tell you the huge amount of confused people as we always see that he or other mod has to try to explain to customers what Elements really is. This 2 examples are only of the last 24 hours!
As you know, these kind of customers who have a bad or confusing experience, are more than likely to not return to buy anything else.
We already mentioned in another topic that the new homepage banners are still getting potential buyers confused because when someone chooses the market option with the “continue browsing themes” button, it redirects you to the main category page which also has an Elements ad (and also the top banner keeps popping up) which leads to confusing the potential buyers.
The ad also keeps pushing market items, because it’s situated almost on top, when If someone wants to quickly see the newest market items, they have to scroll all the way to the bottom!
Even when a buyer searches for something, at the bottom of the results, you can find 2 more Elements ads.
If the idea behind the new homepage boxes was to avoid confusion, then why after people chose to stay on the market you keep bombarding them with Elements ads? (4 more ads) Don’t you think that it’s a bit too much? This looks almost as cheating buyers into subscribing to something they really don’t know what it is (supported by all the topics started by buyers, complaining because they can’t download market items after buying the subscription)
Sorry if we seem a bit blunt, but as a team that relies on Envato to make a living for themselves and their families this kind of uncertainties and changes affect us really deeply.
Thanks for your time!
It’s not fair that in this thread only bad things said about the Elements by authors. EE is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Great to hear it. Because you were invited and others not. So this is where we are now - divided.
The problem is not in the Elements, Elements is a good market (from the point of view of a regular customer and indeed in general for many customers), the problem is in the banners that are placed on the Envato Market main page. There are Elements, but we are not there (in the Elements market in which 99% of authors do not participate, but see this banner, which takes our sales and our traffic).
As well as featured files and weekly top sellers. Let’s remove it too.
