Considerations on opening a non-exclusive account

Envato Authors AudioJungle
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Hey guys!

So I’m just about to create an additional non-exclusive account and I wanted to know your thoughts, impressions and eventually suggestions on possible strategies. By now my idea is to take a handful of the least sold items from my exclusive portfolio (let’s say with 3 sales or less), move them to my upcoming non-exclusive account and upload those in a few of other stock markets out there. Of course, that would mean that this new non-exclusive portfolio won’t include my best accomplished or top-selling stuff, which I still want to keep exclusive to AJ.

Until now I’ve only sold my music here so I still have a whole lot of research to do on other stock music markets options. I’m really curious about what the outcome of this move will be. If any of you went through a similar experience, any thoughts or suggestions are utterly welcome!!! :slight_smile:

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Hi WormwoodMusic - I went through the same thing you just mentioned. You ask for permission from support, you delete the handful of tracks you want to move from the Exclusive Account, you resubmit them to the Non-Exclusive account for another review (be sure to reference the support ticket number; of course the new review scrutiny level is tougher than the first time they were reviewed, so it’s not a given they will be accepted).

However, after about 6 months of maintaining two accounts here, I decided to go 100% Non-Exclusive late last year. There are multiple reasons I made the change, but the biggest is because I don’t want to have all my eggs in one basket. I wanted to pick up sales from other sites. And, as of the last couple of months, this has been happening such that my loss in profit per AJ sale (at a ridiculous mark of 36% of total sale) has effectively been offset by additional sales at other sites. My goal is to increase that multiplicative factor over time. I felt I could grow sales better by using solid tracks that have been buried in the AJ masses along with the new stuff I’m producing. Currently I sell the most tracks at AJ. And it is growing steadily, albeit not at an exhilarating pace :wink: I’m hoping to see more increase this year from sales across multiple sites.

In summary, It came down to this for me. Did I want to trickle out a few low selling AJ tracks to enter other markets? Or did I want to use all my best tracks to extend into other markets? I chose the latter. In these first couple months I’m doing OK, but that’s not my goal. I hope to see a bigger payoff in 2018.

Perhaps this isn’t entirely what you were looking for. I provided it because I did a lot of thinking about my own strategy and I thought it might be interesting to you given your stated plan.

I wish you luck in your pursuits!

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Hi. As I know (I myself have not tried it), there are very few “living” trading platforms now (if they exist at all). For example: one of my friends from 5-7 trading platforms earns $ 150-300(per month). Try it perhaps you will find a more profitable source of income. At the same time in a couple of months, you will tell us what and how. Try it! :wink:

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Hey MidnightSnap! Thanks so much for such a detailed reply! I can’t tell you how much it helps to know about the how-to’s of the process and get different perspectives and experiences.

I totally understand your line of reasoning and the call you made. It’s definitely a path worth evaluating. In my case, however, sales have been steadily growing for the last 6 months and nowadays I have a quite decent income abiding to the exclusivity terms. Of course, there are no guarantees that this will keep up, but right now I don’t want to jeopardize it either. My idea, in this first attempt, is simply to give these handful of buried items a second chance.

I guess in 2 or 3 months I’ll be able to tell you how it turned for me.

Really, thanks again for taking the time to share your experience. Wish you the best!

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Hey mate! I’m still in the research stage, but yes, besides the big fishes of the stock market industry, I haven’t found many solid worthy options out there. The numbers you mention are quite harsh indeed.

Of course, I’ll keep you guys posted about the outcome of all this. I have to say that I’m really satisfied with the overall experience in Envato, and that’s why I’m going non-exclusive only with those items that had almost no sales at all nor views in the past 3 or 4 months. It seems pointless to keep them buried in the thickets of the jungle.

Thanks for your support! Cheers!

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Hi,
(Not a story about a move from exclusive to non-exclusive, but some thoughts related to this).

At this point in the evolution of royalty free markets, most are very crowded and competitive. Others are less saturated, but not visited that much. That said, some of these markets sometimes attracts different buyers. Even things as superficial as a different website design have the potential to appeal to a different client base, so I think it’s a good idea to try a few and see what you can make after a few months (or years… sometimes, it’s slow to kick in!).

A zero sale item here could turn out to be a steady seller at another place or vice-verse.

Of course, other markets are not entirely different. You will still find tons of corporate/happy/epic/etc, but some buyers simply have their habits and like to buy at specific sites. Having things at a few places can help even out sales.

(But then, don’t forget to factor in the hassle of loging to many sites, dealing with different uploading interfaces, specific keywording/descriptions structures, different rules, etc. Nothing that can’t be learned in a few days, but it’s a bit more work than doing it all on a same platform).

Ps: I’m just a small (80 percent sfx / 20 percent music) business, so it could be different for a 100% musical venture, but probably similar, I guess.

I chose to be exclusive here and try to mostly upload sounds/logos that fit this market client’s base, but I spread other eggs at other places. Didn’t found many gold mines, though. (Hope I wasn’t too off-topic. Just thought that another opinion about selling at different platforms could maybe help your reflexion a bit somehow).

Good luck with this move. Please keep us updated. :slight_smile:

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Hey Nonzero!

Not off-topit at all and I definitely agree with your analysis, which is greatly appreciated. So far I uploaded just 4 items to my new non-exclusive account and a couple of external sites and it’s been a pretty harsh and time consuming task. Actually, I don’t even know if they’ll be approved, so go figure.

Thing is that I have this fistful of tracks with 1 or 2 sales (or no sales at all) and almost no views in roughly a year and I felt it was totally pointless to leave them buried like that. While my main focus will remain on composing and producing exclusively for AJ, this whole non-exclusive thing is more like a test or a Plan-B for those items that didn’t work out as I expected but who knows what could be of them elsewhere.

Of course, in the process I’ll see if it’s all worth the effort and the time. At a first glance none of the other stock markets I explored seems as promising as Envato but, as I said, I’m at an early research stage yet.

Thanks so much for sharing your valuable thoughts on this. I’ll definitely keep you posted on the outcomes. :slight_smile:

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They are certainly worth exploring. And although very few have a similar traffic, some have better prices. Sometimes, 1 track can give you around the same profit as 3 here, so it counts.

But since Audio-Driven Prices seems inevitable, this might change soon. Spreading some tracks elsewhere could at least help with the transition.

Maybe this new price system will be profitable in the end, but I guess it will take more work and some time to find the right price points to keep selling, etc. :slight_smile:

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@MidnightSnap , by now you should have some idea on how this is working for you, so i will ask: How is this working for you? :sweat_smile:

Thinking a lot about it lately…

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Hi @SR40 . Ok, it has been a couple months since I reported going to Non-Exclusive. Frankly, things are about the same. I still sell the most licenses with AJ, and my sales numbers are staying about the same at the other sites. So I haven’t lost sales, but I’ve yet to grow the bottom line. I still think in the long run I’ll grow across all sites as my portfolio grows. The odd thing I’ve noticed is that AJ sales predominantly occur during the work week, and the other site sales are spread throughout the whole week; so the other sites give me weekend sales often. Weird, huh?

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Thank you, @MidnightSnap!

Interesting… I think i will do a test with my other tracks before changing here, if i have at least a good number of views somewhere else i will change here to Non-Exclusive and use the songs that are in here on other places too.

I tested a few music libraries, including one that is highly recommended by others, and i got ZERO views. I’m not talking about sales, you read right: NO VIEWS.

AJ, by all my tests, is the one who worth it (so far).

Let’s see…

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I agree, being here exclusive, and focus on writing good and useful tracks is the best option in my opinion

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