how long does it take to files to be approved?

I uploaded two video clips several days ago and my dashboard still says “Queued for Review”. How long does this process take?

134 days (≈5 months)
http://quality.market.envato.com/videohive

you are kidding me right?

no

0 new clips approved since yesterday.

Seems like they could use at least ONE more reviewer. :slight_smile:

It’s Saturday. There’s not much reviewing action on a weekend, no matter how many reviewers there are.

Yes, we can notice that. It’s a brilliant plan with a 6-month queue.

Which, naturally, is why ONE more reviewer could be useful. Who can work on Saturdays. :grin:

You either stop or limit the queue, hire 1-100 more reviewers or see the queue reach 10 years.

Evidently, one more reviewer cannot be hired (strange for a multi-million dollar company), so an upload cap must be introduced.

What difference would one reviewer make? How many reviewers are there currently? How many reviewers do they need to get the review time to two week or less? How long would that take? And why would it make any difference to the total review time if one of those reviewers worked on a Saturday?

Envato will have the answers to those questions, and if you don’t, then maybe they’re in a slightly better position to answer them, and to know the cost versus benefit of doing so. I mean, 100 extra reviewers will probably cost about $2m a year. But if you’re happy for them to reduce the commission percentage to compensate for the extra costs, then I’m sure they could look into it for you.

If the queue goes up, do you think they have too many reviewers or too few?

There seems to have been 3 reviewers, all from Hungary (presumably fewer now). 1 more reviewer would mean a 33% increase. So yes, that’s a very big difference. Right now, it is completely out of control.

Envato make more money than Shutterstock, and 1-3 more reviewers won’t even make a dent.

Pressmaster’s sales alone can cover a whole bunch of Hungarian reviewers.

Envato have a chance to completely dominate the footage market, and they already have a ton of customers that bring in many more sales than any of the big competitors.

Hire a few more (competent) reviewers, reject the (many) sub-par clips that are currently being approved, and increase the library with a lot of quality content.

Not necessarily more approved clips per week, but going through the queue 2 times faster and getting to the quality clips.

Envato has made about 50% of what Shutterstock has. You’re forgetting the payout percentages. Sure, 1 to 3 reviewers might not make a dent, but it is a cost. Is it a necessary cost? What would be the benefit to Envato to hire more reviewers? Have you left because of the long review times? No. What would happen if you did leave? Will Enavto earn more money from having 100 shots of business dudes shaking hands rather than 90?

For you? For whom? I’m talking about company profits. (As a side note, I personally make 50%-200% more here with a portfolio a third of the size).

No, that’s very much remembered. More sales = higher number of downloads. For many here, that also means higher earnings. The top authors at Pond5 and Shutterstock don’t even come close to 3,000+ downloads per month. Far from it. Do they make more money than Pressmaster here? Yes, some. But the download numbers tell you something - that there are MANY, MANY buyers here.

The benefit, as I’m sure you can understand, is that they can go through the queue faster, ideally with STRICTER reviews, allowing more higher quality clips to pass through. This would of course mean rejecting sub-par similars like handshakes with white balance from Mars.

Long-term and short-term benefit is that even more buyers will migrate to the Envato universe.

Furthermore, footage is highly seasonal and can be event-based.

Yeah, I’m saying that Shutterstock makes more money than Envato. I’m not sure where you’re getting your info. And the reason I mentioned payout percentages was because it makes a big difference to actual profit, rather than just revenue. SS payout 25%, if you’re lucky. As you know, Envato payout around 36% to non-exclusive and 50% minimum to exclusive… with most of the best selling items getting around 70%. So when Envato have paid out $500m to authors, their revenue will probably be around $850m (gross profit of $350m). When SS payout the same, their revenue is going to be $2bn (gross profit of $1.5bn).

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the number of reviewers. Stricter reviews are stricter reviews, whether you have 1 or 100 reviewers. I don’t think the issue is higher quality clips not being approved anyway.

Why? Maybe if having more reviewers resulted in higher quality clips, but it doesn’t. Just having clips reviewed quicker won’t bring in more customers.

Seasonal footage would probably be one good reason for getting files reviewed promptly, but then again, a snowman from 2017 is going to look pretty much the same as a snowman from 2016.

SS payout for footage is 30%.

Something along the lines of a famous Lannister: “I enjoy you, and you’re clever, but you’re not as clever as you think you are”. :sunglasses:

A higher number of reviewers will always result in faster sifting through the queue. Regardless of strictness. More quality clips will be approved over a given period of time. Pair that with stricter reviews and the VideoHive portfolio will increase in quality faster and faster, making it more and more possible to compete against the veterans.

A quick search or look through the bestsellers will give any buyer an idea of the overall quality of the site.

No matter how you look at it, a higher number of quality clips will result in more buyers. It’s better if that happens in 1 year than in 10 years.

There are big, big gaps in the VideoHive portfolio with lots of common subjects missing or with only low quality clips. If those gaps are filled, more serious buyers will start looking this way and abandon the other sites.

Sorry, I should have said 25% of $79. They do pay 30% but they regularly discount files for buyers… so you rarely get 30% of the listed price.

Which is relevant how? Your point was that SS would get more money, which they obviously don’t if it’s a discounted price.

With your rants about percentages I would have assumed that you knew that 30% is still 30% no matter what.

Following that logic a non-exclusive gets 144% on multi-use. That’s awesome!

Well it’s $2bn to $350m… they don’t discount that heavily. That’s my point. You said Envato make more than SS and they don’t. That was the whole point of all the things I’ve said related to SS. Just to be clear… hopefully.

With “making more money” I meant profits. The money that is actually left to hire one more reviewer. I will correct myself and say that Envato are close to Shutterstock.

Envato 2015: $33 million pre-tax profit.
Shutterstock 2015: $34.27 million pre-tax profit.

The difference is not that big. Those are the actual numbers. Not a “$1.5 billion SSF estimate”. Do some research.

I’m willing to bet that Envato make more and more each year and the 2016 numbers (which we don’t have access to) are close to or higher than Shutterstock (SS 2016 number is 44.5 but who’s to say Envato didn’t grow as much? You’d have to ask Collis).

Surely $33 million would be enough to hire one more Hungarian reviewer and see contributors happy, and the site grow. Call me crazy, but it might just be enough for two.

By the way, P5 is not even in the same universe. Hopefully they have increased sales but in 2014 they had $20 million in SALES. Barely, if even, making a profit. They were not profitable in 2013.

Shutterstock Q2 2017.

Net income: $3.1 million.

There is no such thing as pre-tax profit. Pre-tax income is gross revenue. A company’s “profit” occurs after all taxes and business expenditures are paid.

I think what you meant to say is Envato’s 2015 Revenue was $33M.

However, that $33M is the revenue they generated over the course of that fiscal year, not how much money they have available to spend or invest back into the business.

But to address your point about hiring 1 or 2 more reviewers to help with review times… the Stock Footage category is handled by a dedicated team comprised of several reviewers. Adding another employee or two certainly wouldn’t make any difference :wink:

It’s not about how many reviewers Envato hires, its about implementing tools that make reviewers’ jobs more efficient, which is already occurring. By my estimation, the expected review time has been dropping over the last 30 days.

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