Hi all.
I am very concerned about the state of affairs in Envato. I have been working with this website since 2011 and have always had almost 100% of the approved photos. But, last month was taken 6!!! of the nearly 800 photos. Reason: repeat of (or too similar to). Many photos were of the new series, and was uploaded to the site for the first time. I can assume that the photos have not been tested sufficiently, and was removed in “one-click”.
I’m very sad to see such changes in the policy of the site.
Hi Illia,
Sorry to hear about your latest experience. I had a look at your recent rejections and they mostly seem to be related to submitting too many similar images more then actual quality issues which is probably the easiest problem to fix.
The rejection reason says:
“Unfortunately we’re not able to accept your submission at this time as it appears to be a repeat of (or too similar to) a previous submission. Please only upload the very best and significantly different images within a series while also avoiding submitting them in multiple color versions. We might also need to decline this image because of the quantity of files you have previously submitted on this subject.”
I can assure you reviewers do not take pleasure in declining these, their jobs would be much easier if they could approve everything coming through the queue, but we need to trace the line somewhere otherwise we’d be receiving dictionaries word by word and this would be considered spamming more then actually adding value to the library. Often we’d rather have an item with a blank space so the customer can add exactly the word he wants then trying to cover every possible word combinations by submitting abundant variations of the same files.
Our policies/requirements are currently under works and some clarifications will be provided soon that should also affect this policy.
Until then, by submitting new and different items (not just variants of previously approved files) your approval rate should go right back up.
Hope this helps!
Best regards,
Gaby Jalbert
Content Operations Media Specialist | Photodune
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Hi.
I heard you. Of course, your opinion is the place to be, if your target group are designers. But, to be fair, the modern stock’s buyer is either user of social networks wich wants to enchant his page, or the entrepreneur creating your own website, or for illustrating the news on working site. This audience does not know how to use or don’t have time for additional image processing in programs like Photoshop. They buy and use the images “as is”. There’s enough proof on the Internet. They are my target group, and sales on other sites confirm my position.
It is always painful to witness, inspector websites take the responsibility to decide what customers need and what is not.
We will be revisiting categories on GraphicRiver and possibly create categories on Photodune along with new functionalities, so the situation will be addressed one way or the other. Unfortunately I can’t say much more for now, other than these are already things that are being looked into at the moment to find the best possible solutions for both customers and contributors (and we are aware that some customers appreciate variations and not all customers are designers). I at least wanted to clarify our current policy so you know how to increase your current approval rate.
I’ll wait for your formalisation of your current vision of the stock industry, and expressing this in clear and enforceable regulations(as many similars are possible, how they may be similar, etc.) Because, try to know it empirically is not a commercially viable solution.
I have had the same problem with a series that I’m doing on flags of the world.
Of course they look similar as all flags look alike but each country has different colours and designs on their flags.
I’m doing 4 or 5 different looks for each countries flag. Is this too many Is it better to say just do the flag with one difference.