1. What is Envato Elements?
Envato Elements is our new creative subscription for digital assets, (elements.envato.com)
As you know, subscriptions are now a popular way to access content and services (e.g. Netflix, Spotify, Shutterstock, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc). With Envato Elements, we aim to create the must-have subscription for designers & agencies who frequently need top quality digital assets.
Envato Elements is a brand new site (separate to Envato Market), built from scratch to deliver a great user experience to frequent users who care about design. We curate and showcase an amazing library of content from talented authors (like you!) and make it available to customers via an ongoing subscription plan.
Envato Elements will offer customers a single, unlimited subscription - meaning there are no download limits or credits. We expect this to offer to be very popular with customers and mean we can offer great earnings for our limited pool of authors.
2. Who are the target customers?
Envato Elements is designed to serve agencies, designers, and other creative professionals who have a frequent need for top quality digital assets.
Many of these subscribers will be entirely new to the Envato ecosystem, or people who are currently going elsewhere for most of their digital assets. In other words, Envato Elements is about growing the customer base and your earnings potential. We expect authors like you will earn extra revenue from participating (i.e. in addition to what you earn on Envato Market).
3. How are authors selected?
Only a limited number of the very best authors are being accepted for Envato Elements.
For now, authors are being handpicked by our content experts (in time we will open this up to inbound applications too). Key selection criteria include high-quality design, consistency across a good size portfolio, appropriate aesthetic style and professional item presentation. Please see the quality requirements here.
We are deliberately limiting the number of authors because we want to deliver attractive monthly earnings for all participating authors. As the number of subscribers increases, we will allow more authors to join and also expand the types of content available.
4. What is the author (contributor) revenue share?
Authors to Envato Elements share in 50% of the net revenue from subscriptions. To be as fair as possible, we chose the “subscriber share” method to allocate this money to authors.
Basically with subscriber share your earnings as an author are directly linked to the money collected from each individual subscriber. We look at each subscriber in turn and assign you a share of the 50% of net revenue from that subscriber based on:
- How important your items were to that subscriber, based on how much of their usage that month relates to your items.
- Which item types they use, since some are worth more points than others.
Given the unlimited subscription model, we’re doing a number of things to make author earnings as attractive and fair as possible for you. These include:
- Limiting the number of authors to less than 500 people at launch.
- Sharing 50% of net revenue with authors using the subscriber share method, which is much fairer than traditional ways of sharing subscription revenue and was developed in response to criticisms of popular streaming services (see this article).
- If no downloads are made by a subscriber in a month, the full 50% revenue share still goes to authors.
5. How do you approach Intellectual Property?
Envato is now conducting more Intellectual Property checks to provide customer confidence and vet non-compliance. Education & warnings will be issued to authors of non-compliant photos. Serious or repetitive non-compliance may result in account disablement. Here’s the lowdown;
- Intellectual Property and Copyright: We only accept original photos. Ensure that you have properly licensed any assets that you are using in your items.
- Model and property releases: You must retain model releases for photos which include recognizable people, and property releases for identifiable buildings.
- Trademarks and real world items: We do not accept photos that contain trademarks or recognizable products. Our guidelines on trademark use and real-world products in photos are here.
6. How will it be promoted & marketed?
As an author, you will benefit from what is probably Envato’s biggest ever marketing effort.
With serious dollars for advertising and a dedicated marketing team focused solely on this product, we are making a huge push to launch Envato Elements and position it as the must-have subscription for designers, creatives & agencies.
In a global multi-touch campaign, we’ll be leveraging the Envato network, worldwide events, top partner brands, and some of the most sought-after design minds to reach and influence millions of designers, creatives, and agencies. We aim to be in all the right places at all the right times.
7. Any other details I need to know?
- Items do not need to be exclusive to Envato Elements - you can choose to sell these assets in other places too if you so choose (unless you are already bound by other exclusivity agreements, such as on Envato Market).
- If you’re an exclusive author on Envato Market, participating on Envato Elements has no effect whatsoever on your exclusive status and author fees. Think of that exclusivity as being Envato-wide, so you’re free to be an author here too.
- License terms are available here.
- See how to Upload Photos on Elements here.
- See how to Manage Photos on Elements here.
If you have any questions or experience problems, please contact support.