I’m genuinely curious as to why sellers are putting their items up on Elements. Is it just market testing or a strategy to supplement their income? From what I’ve been reading in the forums it seems that most authors are only receiving a fraction of their earnings from the platform while its clearly having an impact on demand for the rest of the market.
Heres what I don’t understand, a lot of the content that gets produced here is worth at least the monthly membership.- and I’m seeing a lot of quality products on there worth more than that. Your file gets downloaded and you get a tiny fraction of that sale. Why shoot yourself in the foot along with your competitors? Surely the revenue raised via elements doesn’t compensate for what is being lost in normal sales.
I’ve also read up about how Envato predicts that customer behavior will not be affected by this, but this is contradicted by a lot of authors research about how some of their customers are looking for the cheapest alternatives. I did a quick reddit search and quickly came across one user asking another to split a monthly membership so they could download everything on here. Its like candyland for smaller digital agencies.
I’m not mad at envato for this. This is an excellent platform for digital assets, its straightforward for buyers and sellers, and the product pages do a great job of showcasing what the user is buying. Elements is clearly something they’ve seen as part of their strategy perhaps to compete with their competitors, I think maybe it has been done in the wrong way - particularly the cost and membership structure. But I’m more surprised that authors aren’t valuing their products for what they’re worth, there really are outstanding projects out there that are just being flogged for peanuts.
I’d love to hear other authors thoughts, particularly those selling with Elements.
Actually, it’s not quite true. For example, one of my item get only one sale on January this year. On Elements this item earn 5.74 more during one month than on Videohive during 7 months. And it’s only one example. I also don’t see that my earnings from Videohive somehow decreased.
Yes, there would be cheaters, who will try to download everything during one month. But there are a lot of people who don’t download any item during one month, and we get from them contributor bonus.
The problem on forums is that some people don’t have any statistic, just their imagination. When you use Apple music, or Google music, or Spotify, do you download all possible music on service, or you just listen music only when you want to listen something?
So people who panic think that subscription model is about getting everything you can just for few bucks. But actually most people don’t behave this way. They constantly use the service, and use only what they need.
Why did I join Elements? I know that subscription model is great, and many internet companies use it. I don’t know how it will work for us, but I would like to collect data, and only after that decide leave it or not.
Only two months have passed. Summer months. And some people have already drawn conclusions. What can I say? It’s only their emotions, not reality, they can’t see long term, don’t want to wait or listen. They are in a hurry to say that we all will die.
How many people didn’t like Author Driven Pricing? And where are they now? With Elements it’s a little bit harder, because only Elements Authors see some statistics, others just imagine.
I do not understand this too, on one side earn 50$ and the other lose 100$, earnings per download is funny small for something that has been invested a lot of effort and time for me disgrace to the author. Another bad thing which has so far been a big problem which will more items available on warez site for free. Of course it affects the behavior of the buyers, most people always look for a cheaper alternative but unfortunately the author always loses but the envato loses to the elements certainly did not exist. Envato market did not have so much competition to drag these moves this is just for the more of profit.
Well if you’re talking about VideoHive, nobody has had a full months earnings report yet, so it’s too soon to say whether it’s a great thing selling on Elements, a terrible thing, or somewhere inbetween the two. Give it ten days or so!
Fair point, however if we look at how authors receive Elements earnings, they get half of the monthly memberships, then that gets split between authors based on the amount of downloads they get. With monthly membership being so cheap, it’s impossible to extrapolate anything other than bad earnings for authors in comparison to how many licenses are being sold. Perhaps the theory is to get as many buyers on board as possible, promote far and wide that Envato is where you can get great quality products for pennies and then the authors can receive half decent money. But does it really sit well with us as professionals that our hard work is being sold for cents per license?
Again the author would only do well if Envato is successful with the Elements campaign which is effectively ‘get as much quality digital products for next to nothing’- that really does not sit well with me as somebody who knows how much hard work goes into creating digital content.
I’m going to give it another month or 2, just to see how things pan out, but I’m fairly certain that I’ll be taking my larger, higher priced items off of Elements.
When factoring in earnings, from the author’s standpoint, Elements seems better suited for cheaper, smaller items that are more easily produced.
@vystina, you’re correct… I just can’t justify selling a $36+ item on Elements when the monthly subscription fee is actually less than that.
The question remains, however, how customers navigate and discover new items on Elements. If a customer sees an item on Elements that normally sells for $36 on Market, that customer might be more inclined to see what else that specific author has for sale, perhaps increasing the chance that same customer downloads more items from that particular author.
So in that sense, you could almost make the argument that having as many items on Elements as possible is actually better, since it gives an author the best chance at visibility and discovery.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to give it another couple of months to see how things begin to shake out, and I’ll readjust as necessary. I don’t think there’s any single, correct answer for all authors, and it will really depend on your preferences.
@MotionRevolver yea I agree, I think also as @DOGmotion mentioned it is a good place to revive a product which no longer gets attention on the market. It feels like the biggest beneficiary with Elements is the customer, it feel too good to be true that a measly $29 gives them 30 day access to such a vast library of content to use and produce.
Anyway am looking forward to hearing feedback on the experience of Elements. Hoping for better prospects for authors regardless of the outcome.
I must admit. Considering how much we actually do receive per item , i am seriously considering just setting up my own website and selling g my stuff on there. I am also dubious about what happens to my stuff when they reject it???.
I cannot help wondering whether they actually tweak it themselves and sell it as their own product.
Okay point taken. I apologise for that remark. Unfortunately i work in a area where the people i look after are not of law abiding nature and it makes you feel untrusting of everyone. Again i apologise for that remark.
You are literally doing exactly the same thing with your unfounded claims. The analogies with Apple Music and Spotify are not a good comparison because you do not download anything with their service. You listen to a song and then the next time you want to listen to it you have to use their service again and the artist is paid for each listen. On Elements the user can download and never come back again. But you also make this claim about services like Spotify as if it is understood that they are fair but they are not. Artists get paid about 1/1000th of a penny for each listen so it is exploitative as well.
I have been selling on Elements for about 2 years now but have recently removed my best-selling products. The amount of money I earn from their sales on Elements pales in comparison to my own site. Not Envato’s fault and I don’t blame them. If the demand isn’t there it isn’t there. However, the fact that Envato won’t share download analytics is a pretty strong indicator that they want to avoid the discussion altogether. Judging from other similar services, one of which I managed the inventory for for 3 years, artists are probably earning between $0.02 - $0.20 per download. This is absurd for a product that I charge $100 for on my own site. Again, it’s the market and not Envato. I don’t blame them. I don’t really blame the consumers. This is just how market niches and technology evolve. Adapt or perish is how I tend to think of it.
NOTE: I edited this comment because I was in a bad mood when I originally wrote it. I don’t blame Envato for their business practice and, in fact, they are the ONLY marketplace that shares unspent subscription fees. I really like Elements, I just wish I earned more.
Not to mention the fact there are 2 services being compared that have completely different end goals. Spotify and Apple exist to deliver popular music for end listening leisure and personal enjoyment. At Envato, our end goal is to provide a business to business service where customers license our content to create either marketing videos, ads, TV shows, or films. All of my music is on Spotify and Apple Music and the money earned from streams is nothing compared to what we earn from selling business licenses one track at a time, one project at a time. I am not putting Spotify down by any means. It is another passive royalty stream for music artists, but by no means is it a platform for “production music” creators in the business of providing music for ads and marketing videos, etc…
Kudos to you Iconify for seeing the future destruction that subscription models represent for all of us trading our works.
elements is ineffective for the authors. The content on videohive is not for the end user like Netflix content is. nobody subscribes to Netflix to use its content for creating a different product. however videohive’s items create a value for the buyer, and on elements the subscriber can download as much as they want for the same price, and the authors receive a very small fraction of the subscription fee.
BUT, many more people will download your assets once they’re cheaper. And in the end the earnings of elements and other unlimited downloads marketplaces for me personally always are more than they used to be with “traditional” higher single item prices.
It’s just making quality motion graphics more accessible to everyone. Which can be good and also bad, but it’s just how it is. Either adapt or go left behind. I assume most people will move to paying for subscriptions and the most money will be made there. While the remaining few who don’t want or don’t have the means to pay for subscriptions will continue downloading single, higher price temples every now and then.
This also means that now there’s other ways to make money. Like paid courses, adobe rush templates (imagine if millions of mobile users would use the service just to enhance their social media marketing or even personal videos?), templates customization services, which I assume will only grow as more people start getting access to our templates. So just need look out for new opportunities that this greater accessibility brings and take advantage of them.
Atamotion, Just curious - you only have 2 items for sale on this market so when you say “And in the end the earnings of elements and other unlimited downloads marketplaces for me personally always are more than they used to be with “traditional” higher single item prices.” could this not be because you simply are not selling much content in your regular videohive market portfolio?
The data is out for music guys in elements. Sure some can make $1000 to $2000 a month offering 100 to 300 tracks for unlimited downloads, but some of these same authors also make $3000 to $7000 a month from one off sync license sales.
Also do you not recognize that if every item in Videohive were to enter the elements ecosystem for unlimited downloads, don’t you think your own earnings would be diluted with increased competition? If you are advocating for all customers paying less for content via subscription, sorry, but that also means there is less revenue being divided up with too many suppliers, which means less earnings for all.