I’m a university professor planning to teach a graduate class in Shakespeare for the first time. I’m going to be buying some music for my online lectures. Perhaps you should market to universities? We’re all trying to figure out how to make our courses “pop”. And your music is a good way to do that.
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Many have seen elements killing market by this time already, did not happen. If your file is not on elements, is what the customer needs and fits in his budget, it will be purchased.
If your item is less than $33 and all the buyer needs, it is even cheaper than one month of elements.
And in a big recession with lots of fear and uncertainty going around, I can imagine people who don’t have a constant need for our stuff are more drawn to the one time “I know what I will pay” deal than a subscription that may be a pain in the a** if you forget to cancel at the right time. Like all subscriptions.
But I am an Elements author so I can talk easily, I guess…
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Thanks for the message Collis
Wishing every body at envato and fellow authors good health and safety during these challenging times.
My suggestion would be that during the crisis, Envato can consider sending authors funds at immediately end of the month instead of mid next month as has been the norm. This could help authors also to get much needed supplies as most of us are freelancers. Also Envato may have the power to lobby for a US tax % reduction during this time.
Thanks
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I don’t think Elements is killing the marketplace, that’s not what I was getting at at all.
What I’m saying is if your file is on Elements and customers are on Elements, it has a far higher chance of being downloaded when going against other Element items. If I already paid $33, there’s no need to be more selective, so I can purchase however much I need.
However if I have $33 on the market, I may have to think hard on how I want to spend it, as this was always the case, but in events like this - this may be exacerbated even more.
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Totally agree with you 
Update:
But my first post was saying that our customer base may increase due to people now entering the low budget market that we are, and this is true for both market and elements.
There may be people who only need the few templates now and don’t need the subscription. Those will come as well as people who gladly go the subscription route. Both markets may see an increase in my opinion.
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We market-only authors don’t count on the additional and rather stable revenue that Elements represents for the hand-picked contributors, who get the best of both worlds. Instead, we’re left to ourselves dealing with an increasingly aggressive and imposed promotion of a platform that’s been seriously harming our incomes and a devaluating pricing policy that allows authors to literaly give away their work generating revenues only for the company. The latter encouraged by the implementation of categories like “Hot under $12” or “New under $12”.
If there’s a real will to lift a little weight from our shoulders throughout this harsh times, please:
- Remove all Elements banners and promotions from the Markets.
- Set a fair minimum price at $10 where at least the author receives almost the same amount as the company.
- Temporarily reduce the fee to exclusive non-elite authors to 12,5%, and %25 for non-exclusive, until the end of the lock downs.
This is a great opportunity for Envato to show it cares for its community.
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Yes, this is correct, and during the pandemic it seems that we have nothing to do with it, but only these Elements everywhere (on which we are not). They (Elements) are in advertising on the main page, on top of the banners, and everywhere wherever possible and impossible. This is terribly annoying!
Better $ 15 as in many markets that are designed to respect the work of the authors! (P5, ME and etc.)
This is would be an example where Envato could show his determination to business support and make a victory (including authors), now we are just on the verge of survival here!
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Friends ! The previous policy of 16 and 19 was the wisest !!! Everyone was equal and the best track in quality won .I experimented with$5. This is nonsense !!! Why are you doing this ? It ruins everything! Please return 16 and 19 for the track it will be fair
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Thanks for the follow up question. This is a commentary about potential shifts in the broader market (rather than within Envato) where customers have options ranging from free to high cost along with different quality and licence options. As Enabled suggests, the crisis may see customers search for a different value mix as their needs and appetite change and take additional care in purchasing decisions.
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Now this is much clearer.
Thanks for the reply.
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Thanks!
I hope they will be careful in choosing items but not critically! 
Event-driven items are going to face challenges at the moment. We’ve just released a complete trends guide for all our marketplaces based on demand we’re seeing from customers. There may be some edits required given the rapidly changing pandemic situation but I highly encourage you to check it out for ideas on what customers have been looking for. We also have a top trends article with further insights from what customers are searching for on Elements. These insights are relevant to all authors, though, and you can read more about these here.
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thanks @collis for creating this topic.
i hope envato team can temporaly remove minumum amount for payout for few next month,no doubt this pandemic has effect in our sales.
Best regards,
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if people are really concerned about us, this is simple, at least, in the first place, give us back the fees on USA sales for last year! see with the US government , as they are thinking of making sure that the full economy does not collapse and give all people living on tips and independent some money. This would be the beginning a little bit fair thing, for once. After all , we are imposed the unfair fees on every single sale - when we already have very high fees on every sale in envato already - made in USA, fees that were associated with the move to USA that no one has chosen but that we all had to deal with
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completely agree ! no one can understand what are supposed to be the criterias to get out there! in the end we end with very weird things to say the least … as any time the selection is made out of selecting arbitrarily , i might add! i would even add that this elements thing is impacting all the people that may be willing to join but have been denied the right to do it as all of us could the focus and energy spent on promoting this service over the traditional marketplace!
Hi Everyone, I’d like to introduce myself as part of the Envato team. I’m the Author Management Director, working closely with @camgough, @jamesgiroux and the whole Envato team.
I’d like to take this opportunity to answer a few of the questions on behalf of the whole team.
@Themovation The team is working hard on ways to help our Authors. Here are a few things we are working on and you’ll see some links already in earlier responses from @jamesgiroux :
- Communicating regularly and consistently throughout this period
- Releasing creative trends and search data to help authors navigate the shifts in customer demand and identify new opportunities
- Creating new opportunities for authors to earn such as new contests, item types, etc.
We are always happy to hear about activities or suggestions you have that you would like us to consider. There will be more information and announcements in the coming days and weeks, so keep an eye on the forums for updates.
@SpaceStockFootage More frequent payment cycles is something we are considering at the moment. At first review, it doesn’t look quite as straightforward to do as it may seem, but we’ll continue to work through.
@devotchkah Firstly, we truly hope that this isn’t an outcome any of our authors face. But should it happen, the first point of call would be with our support team who can help work through options. Assuming ownership of the items passes clearly to a new owner, the most likely path is for us to close out the author’s account (including paying out remaining funds to the authors estate) and have the new owner of the content load up the transferred items under a new author account.
@mkl4757 Thanks for putting this idea forward. We do have a new Enterprise plan that is suited to larger businesses including universities. You can find more information here - https://elements.envato.com/pricing/enterprise. For individual students, the Elements student plan may also be of interest - please see https://elements.envato.com/pricing/students Thank you
The team is working very hard on ways to help our Authors. We’ll have more to say over the coming days and weeks, so keep an eye on the forums.
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Well, this sure sounds like the exact opposite of “working very hard on ways to help our Authors.” (except for Elements contributors, of course). Seems like this opportunity to lend a hand to the the less favoured will be more like a chance to put the final nails in their coffins. Hope I’m wrong; feels like I’m not.
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Hi all, just jumping back in to answer a couple more questions.
This is awesome! We love it when community supports community. As we’re all hanging out from home right now, it’s a good time to connect with others. We are always looking for authors willing to step up and lead an Envato Local chapter, you can find more details here.
We’re always happy to see more experienced authors helping new authors navigate review and get feedback on items that haven’t been approved yet.
These forums are full of authors with lots of questions and things to say. Feel free to drop into a thread and offer some encouragement and advice.
Thanks for asking.
While sensible to prepare for the potential of decreased sales we would recommend a continual focus on things that improve your earnings potential. This will serve you well in good times and bad. Some things to consider in the current environment:
- Look for ways you can adapt the topics of your content to reflect the new lived reality of workers around the world (think eCommerce for shops, digital marketing for service businesses, slide presentations and webinar graphics, video marketing, etc.)
- Stay on top of the latest trends (e.g. our latest trends guide) and update your existing assets or invest in new fresh content in line with these trends.
- Stay across new earning opportunities such as those we announce through these forums.
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I appreciate the efforts of reaching out to help authors here in these surreal times. Aside from the obvious health and economical worries with all of this, I must say that I am very grateful to be able to earn money and work from home with something I love. Not everybody has that luxury.
The creative trends guide and following up with updates on that one is useful for anybody here. But the Opportunities and Resources for authors, is at the moment Opportunities and Resources for Elements authors. Hope to see more initiatives for market improvements that can benefit the majority of authors here. If not, all of this basically comes across as a bit desperate attempt to sell in Elements to Elements contributors in a turbulent time.
Overall on the sites I sell on, sales have been surprisingly stable in March. I do expect my sales to take a hit sooner or later because of the global situation, it would be super weird if not. But I also share the optimism that we will see increased demand for some digital assets while the world is locked down to their computers and TV’s.
As for initiatives that could help market authors I agree that reduction in the author fees is an excellent idea. Other excellent ideas could simply be to revert the transaction fees and turn on the credit system for customers. This will boost traffic over time and generate a win win situation for both market and Elements. Making it less uncomfortable to impulse shop at the market.
At AudioJungle specifically you could do simple things as introducing “Hot Over $20” sections on the category pages, or even better just remove the under sections completely. 75% + of the first page of new “best sellers of the last month” are price dumped at $5-$9. This might very well be working against its purpose and be very off putting for many customers, cluttering the discoverability. We are super trained at price dumping at AJ at this point, we do not need help from Envato to make matters worse.
And lastly as mentioned 100 times over the last few years, PLEASE implement a system that credits AJ authors in Elements Video templates. Leaving this up to Videohive authors has never worked and it never will (with a few exceptions of VH authors who take this seriously). I have read customers complaining on the forums that they rather use other subscription based sites because the workflow is not interrupted by having to play detective to find the music used in a video template. Please stop upsetting customers, that is the number one way you can make everybody earn more.
Thank you in advance.
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