Hi. What do you think about merging all 3 markets: Shutterstock, Envato, Pond5? Take the best of each and combine them into one non-subscription marketplace.
This will help:
1- Unify all items in one place, which mean less hassle for buyers, bigger chance to find desired item.
2- No confusion for buyers as there is no banner indicating unlimited downloads.
3- Less cost for server maintenance and promotion.
Offer a share of 70% to exclusive authors, which is the standard choice for most online platforms nowadays, such as Steam and others. Revise the payment processor to reduce sales reversals, like Pond5 has. Create a user-friendly interface that meets modern standards.
In my opinion, this will help the non-subscription model survive. Since not all authors like the subscription, some projects cost a lot of money, time and cannot be sold for a few dollars on Elements. The subscription market will continue to exist separately.
While the theory is great it goes back to the points I raised here Sales down 70% from 2018 to 2023 !!! Terrible status! What do you think about the future? - #475 by charlie4282
There is SO much more to this than just building the marketplace and assuming people will come.
Is there research that says there’s enough interest in non subscription buyers to make something new profitable? Obviously the audience here will be pro a change but that’s a handful of people who would directly benefit.
While I agree (and include myself), elements does not work for us and I preferred the way things were, who is going to pay to staff, market, resource etc something new?
Perhaps most sensible is what @FWDesign mentioned elsewhere and there’s a way found with Envato or Shutterstock and their existing resource and audiences to help balance things out as part of the acquisition, whilst not deteriorating their investment in Elements.
Building a new marketplace is not that hard and it will happen soon…
As for Envato, they could save this play tomorrow if they want it but they don’t…
There was a similar merger of markets recently: Scetchfab, Quixel, Unreal engine market and soon Artstation merged into one. They launched a big campaign on websites and via email, notifying their users. I think the merger was successful. Now advertising will cost less money than promote each market separately.
There is another solution as allow upload items on SS, P5 and Envato while remain exclusive, through not very best. Doesn’t help reduce the cost of the server and paid advertising. Changes are necessary, otherwise, if things remain as they are, the markets have little chance of surviving.
I doubt any marketplace would allow their email lists to be used to drive to a marketplace they are not profiting from.
You are right that it would be less to market but that’s to market a new marketplace and not any of the 3 that are trying to be replaced/updated.
Building the marketplace is easy and server side costs are again only a tiny part of doing this - the unavoidable legal paperwork and ongoing protection, business registration, financial management and accountancy, support costs, and more would be huge.
I don’t doubt that something new will emerge but not without significant financial backing and given that none of the existing competition has made significant impact (some using subscription, some not) then starting from scratch is going to need to come up with something unique.
I am not at all against people sharing or encouraging these ideas - I just think it’s important to be aware of the potential complexity as otherwise it ends up fueling the frustration with Envato.
The idea works for you, it doesn’t work for them.