Important changes to Elements Content Bonus

Wise decision to finally make us not upload more products. First our products rejected all the time and now cut our earnings. Clear and concise :clap:

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This is very very sad for us authors. :frowning_face: You take 20% from us just like that. This will impact my life in a big way. I hope you speak truth and this money is really invested in growing Envato and not just going to shareholders, employee bonuses or charities.

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I have 30 products ready for upload just to keep this bonus rolling. Now there is no point to upload.

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In other words: time to find a real job :sob:

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Shutterstock No2… … its time to move on TemplateMonester friends.

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Will be?! are you kidding? They were increasing it for the last two years to be precise -60% each year. This message is long but shows what do they think about us and future perspectives. Its time to leave this platform, move to other place or find a permanent job (what i done last week). 6 sense probably…

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Envato gave Triple Rewards some weeks ago to encourage authors to upload more items and now it s cutting their income. This is a bad strategy.

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What other marketplaces do you think are growing? To me it seems they are all going down.

All the marketplaces are about to consolidate into one big “global partnership”
:sob:

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Imagine Amazon, Zalando, Etsy, Ebay or any other platform charging sellers 50% for providing a platform where to sell goods.

Let that sink in.

Yet here we allow this and more… Explain me why envato is different from any other platform and why is right that they can charge 50% of an author income.

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I think any company goes through ups and downs. The world is changing, the model is changing, the demand is changing. It’s a business. No one will adapt to the authors, business and demand dictate their own rules. Admittedly, creating templates used to be something exclusive, but now there are more and more automatic generators, designers, where you can click a button and get a presentation or a website, quickly and easily. Perhaps we are going into the era of design, where exclusive design, creativity will be highly appreciated and it can be sold really expensive, from a hyped, popular author. And maybe it’s worth doing it on your own sites. But to do this, you need to try hard, make a name. The time of easy money has passed and it’s time for the authors to understand this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Envato soon abandons the authors and puts an automatic generator on the site, which, for a subscription, will generate and assemble the design. Just specify the style, text, photo and get the finished video in real time. And you don’t have to share it with anyone. :slight_smile:

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This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes again

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Great decision, because I no longer know where to store and spend my money. Damn, there was too much income.

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I’ve been uploading stock for over a decade - proud owner of a 13 year badge on GraphicRiver! In my opinion, Envato has always been and is arguably one of the only micro stock companies left who appear to care about their authors.

It must first be pointed out how incredible it was of Envato to share the Content Bonus with Authors. Most businesses would keep those juicy leftovers for themselves.

To those of you saying “you’re taking away xx% of our earnings!” - you’re essentially saying “I want my free money back!”

Short term this will sting a little for Authors, but long term I believe it will be a net benefit - if, in fact, Envato uses this additional income to drive new members to the marketplace. And unlike rent seekers like CreativeMarket, I believe Envato will actually do as they say.

We recently scaled our team from 4 to 10 people with the intention of slowing down client work and growing our micro stock business - with a particular focus on Elements. So this is definitely a bump in the road for us, but it makes no difference to our long term plan.

The opportunity here is huge, and continues to be huge, for authors willing to put in the time and keep producing products.

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What it falls down to are operational costs, such as hosting, maintenance and the ever expanding storage space, which aren’t cheap. And to make it all work you need advertising. Add to that the cost of hiring employees who mostly reside in high wage countries (except for Mexico which seems to be where most recently hired reviewers are). That’s not all since higher ups still need to turn a significant profit margin to make this all worth it.

The marketplace has significantly expanded throughout the years. And with it the aforementioned costs. Which is why it is very possible that we’ll see some major ‘restructuring’ in the near future, based on recent statements and change in management.

I wish they’d be more transparent, and let us know if we should still be putting effort in the classical marketplaces or not. I imagine the general strategy is to move everything to a subscription based model. The simple reasoning would be “why host it twice if one model significantly outdoes the other”.

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Easy to say when you don`t have to pay 30% Withholding tax to Australia because you live in UK :expressionless:

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Hi, can’t you deduct this tax when paying your local income tax? To avoid double taxation. For me personally, the 30% cut just means I pay it in Australia but don’t pay it in my home country. Really makes no difference at the bottom line.

As for the bonus loss, well it was a bonus and it was great for Envato to pay it at all. Motionarray never had such a thing in the first place :man_shrugging: Now that it’s gone it will definitely sting a bit, but oh well. Business is business I guess, times change, everyone needs to adapt. Either you tag along and make money when it’s working for you, or put your time elsewhere when it stops making sense for you. Meanwhile I would like to think that there are always opportunities to keep making money. Here or elsewhere, with different strategies or different products.

Wishing everyone all the best with adapting to these challenging times! It is really a volatile year, to say the least :sweat_smile:

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I meant that he lives in UK not me. I live in Latvia and no i cannot deduct that Australian Withholding tax.

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The content bonus was not done out of generosity. It was an incentive for us to upload and keep uploading. I would not have uploaded all my fonts here to have them sold for scraps if it hadn’t been for that incentive. It’s not “free” money as you call it. We earned that money and we should continue earning it because of our CONTRIBUTION to the marketplace. As such I will no longer be contributing to the marketplace anymore and I will pull my products as soon as I’m unhappy with my earnings.

My fonts played a big role in the growth of this platform, as I’m sure the products of many others did as well. This is what we were paid for. Calling it “free” money is incredibly offensive.

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@BrandPacks
13 years and you’re level 6, meaning → its not your only source of income.
Even if you live in Chiang mai,
Sorry, hard for me to take what you said seriously…
(especially the upscaling from 4 to 10 employees part)
But none the less, if you intended on growing your microstock business,
under these conditions, go ahead, by all means.

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