59 sales so far, in earnings less than usual.
4 days left, only few hundreds in earnings. Element is also dropping, without bonus is useless if you submit your whole portfolio as i do.
3 years ago Envato achieve $500M in Community Earnings. Everything was superb, now 3 years later everything is falling down.
How itās that possible? Instead we go in opposite direction and growing our earning or make them stable, we are falling.
Itās a magic to be accepted on Elements with Audiojungle portfolio.
Also there is a big fail for authors who are on multiple Envato markets. There is no chance to earn more.
Everything is programmedā¦
I can write a book about that, maybe i will earn more from curious authors and newbies.
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There are many factors:
-elements
-more and more authors producing and the number of buyers not growing to match
-saturation of items which is inevitable with so many authors at the same level (in my opinion itās very difficult to come with something new everytime, many others are inspiring from many others)
-instant approval of big portofolios with thousands of items which are spamming the market
-poor market prices for items, letās not forget we are selling on the market with smallest prices
-and the most important one: lack of the unity between authors in demanding valuable changes. When a mass of people becomes one they change the future of their country and make dramatical changes for their benefit, look in history. But we are at sleep , we just stay here and complain thinking that we canāt do nothing which is only a stupid ilusion. We donāt demand anything as one, so we get nothing.
Which are the reasons you guys think are responsable for decreasing the sales?
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Drop in both VH and EE here.
EE and subscriptions in general are difinitely a few of the reasons of this drop in the industry, at least for authors.
We are at the very bottom of the supply chain, we produce the items that agencies and freelancers are reselling for REAL money!
We should probably join the dark side, become customers ourselves and build a career around freelancing and arbitraging digital goods.
Itās the first time in mankind where you can spend 15$ and get a all-you-can-eat deal !!
Come on!
Think about how much money people make on top of our items?
Simple example: 3 days ago it was gut wrenching to see for the first time one of my AE template airing on national TV, saturday afternoon, that show normally has 30% of the share with 3Mil people watching it, guests were pretty famous people and their cache is probably 4/5 figures eachā¦
Aaaaaaaand ladies and gentlement in the background there was my template that they probably got from EE!
At first I thougth I was happy, but then I was like āhold onā¦my templateā¦tv showā¦EEā¦a few centā¦Tv showā¦millionares working thereā¦My template ended up in Tv, I should be richā¦but noā
I donāt really mind if they got iy from VH or EE, what I get in return is still nothing compared to the value customers get from buying our items.
How can I celebrate? If I told anyone that one of my template ended up in Tv they are going to be like:
āOh thatās great how much money they give you to use your item in TV, you should have made a lot of money well done!!ā
What would you tell yourself/your friends/potential clients in this situation?
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This is just global trend, look at top-sellers these weeks (they are not on Elements and you canāt find same quality items there) - their sales fell as well.
Nowadays lots of things in digital world are changing, new demands, new trends, new mobile solutions, new marketing solutions. I see tons of advertisements in instagram which offer me to buy digital items directly from authors. There are lots of new authors who starts to spam copy-cats. But there are also examples of new successful authors as well. Elements make its impact on sales, but not that much as people like to describe here. I judge for myself: on VH I have 3 similar years in a row, earnings may differ in 2-3%. Last year was full year on Elements and average monthly income now is ~80% bigger (if not taxes it would be 100%+ bigger) and it is rising. But I understand it is impossible for everyone to get growth as everybody has different type of portfolios.
Authorās frustration is understandable, there were some month where I had 300% loss, but I had comeback to work, reconsider my portfolio and now Iām on the level of my best year on VH.
Probably it depends on type of clients you are working with, but from my freelance experience - to earn solo from freelance really good money - you should work very hard, if you earn at least 2k+ on stocks it is ok to spend 1-2 weeks for freelance, just for additional cash. But possibility to earn here much more than from freelance - is higher. But you might be lucky to meet your āgolden cowā type of client, who knows))
p.s. as for TV show - it is most probably was made by that channel TV production team, like one guy who got the task to create some background action/titles and he sits there and just gets his salary, but not millions for sure.
As I can see you sell AE projects. Many promo products. You are hitting a good spot from the market where creativity and originality really makes the difference. But the most of us are not at this level. We sell stock footage and motion graphics backgrounds. For us the drop is huge. And all I enumerate up is applying for us. Even in the AE projects on different categories like logo stings or titles projects it starts to feel the effects of what I described.
You name it āglobal trendā and you are right. But why is this global trend existing? Why so many drops, lower sales for most of us, in certain months we usually were selling good in the past years? Now we donāt. Yes of course it can be the fault of the author for not uploading content or quality content. But Iām not talking about this category of authors. What is changing in digital world, what new trend, specifically? Can you give a more detailed answer?
True but still, am I the only one who sees a problem when a TV channel budget for their digital productions is 300$ on EE ?
Whatās gonna happen in the next years when itās going to be ordinary routine for everyone to buy unlimited digital goods for 15$ a month?
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For Stock footages/MG I would recommend to go non-exclusive, it is just more consistent income.
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Numbers:
Today we have 1,321,400 on VH
in February 2019 we had 804,541 items
in February 2018 we had 578185 items
The most rise is from stock footages category, obviously.
How do you think did demand on VH items grow up at least twice to stay on same level of sales?
AE did raise from 49k items in 2018 to 62k items today. So here is a catch.
Lol and here is data from 2015:
Just at look how market did change from that time in terms of numbers. Motion graphics went from 20k to 173k, much faster than AE
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Personally, Iām not asking Envato to close Elements but to rise the subscription prices. A more fair price would be from 36$/month to 360$/month. This will never happend but we should ask them to double the prices of subscriptions. And this is only common sense. But for this we must all be united. Nobody will listen only me. And what we will loose ? Nothing definetly.
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It should be some balance here 100%.
But to say the truth it is not Envato who started this subscription options. It is another one platform MA.
And it was rising, so other platforms did catch up this idea, but to compete on a new market you should keep balance of best options for clients and satisfaction of your authors. I guess it is hard work where wonāt be 100% satisfaction for everybody.
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Me neither, for me it would be enough a LIMITED number of downloads, thatās it.
Well increasing the prices would be good too!
Unlimited is wayyyyy to much, it means undervaluing the whole industry.
There must be a reason why I donāt go to a supermarket, and pay 15$ a month and buy unlimited food for 30 days, right?
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Because you canāt buy the same exact product several times 
I definitely can see that. The amount of items is a lot bigger than buyers demand. This a big reason as I said before responsable for poor income.
and because suppliers want to make a revenue proportional to the value of their products.
Here itās way off.
That TV channel saved so much money buying my template that what I got in return is a kick in the nuts 
Creating digital items is much more affordable now, lots open sources of knowledge, most computers are available to handle software demands and here we go.
Frankly speaking, we always didnāt have enough license options to sell our items in such cases. Itās not like on AJ, where they have 1/10 Mil licenses.
So to get 20$ in this case isnāt much better
But the overall revenue - this is what matters.
Without authors there will be no buyers. Envato should fight for keeping the good conditions and income we had a few years ago at least and increase them. A sistematical increase in prices will not bother the buyers which are now āfeeding almost for freeā. The buyers are used with low prices, few dollars from time to time increase wonāt bother them, they will acomodate. Everything in this world had a price increase in last decade , only this business is cheaper and cheaper. And thatās because we are at sleep, we donāt demand anything, we donāt count because we donāt say anything. Despite we are the most important part of all this business!
We must stand together and make demands.
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Iāve spoke about Element three years ago, about the danger but nobody cared thenā¦ looks what is happening now.
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Yes. We need to stand together and make demads. Only talk wonāt help.