Just a random note, Elements did destroy the Envato marketplaces for authors. I was an author on CodeCanyon (until yesterday), sold an analytics script[0] and earned $65k+ over 7 years now, but since they released Elements they drive all their traffic away from the marketplaces, they no longer care about authors. Yesterday I actually deleted my product from CodeCanyon, it was pretty sad to delete an 8 year old item with 1500+ happy customers and 5 stars rating, but the way they treat authors should not be encouraged.
Just one of many examples of how the authors are no longer respected on the marketplace: Imagine that you launch a paid marketing campaign for your product, you drive traffic to Envato's website on your product page and the first thing the customer sees is a prominent banner promotiong Elements where they get unlimited everything for $15/mo, when your product alone costs $99 (even though your product is not even on Elements).
Stock photographers and illustrators are already mostly from poor countries (predominantly non-EU Eastern Europe and South East Asia). Individuals working full-time earn somewhere between $600 and $2,500 monthly on average (depending on the popularity of their content). It's going to become unprofitable even for them.
Comments
Elements.envato.com has moved to unlimited subscriptions. I expect shutterstock is responding.
Sucks for creators but the downward pressure on pricing will give customers more amazing content to use in marketing material.
Just a random note, Elements did destroy the Envato marketplaces for authors. I was an author on CodeCanyon (until yesterday), sold an analytics script[0] and earned $65k+ over 7 years now, but since they released Elements they drive all their traffic away from the marketplaces, they no longer care about authors. Yesterday I actually deleted my product from CodeCanyon, it was pretty sad to delete an 8 year old item with 1500+ happy customers and 5 stars rating, but the way they treat authors should not be encouraged.
Just one of many examples of how the authors are no longer respected on the marketplace: Imagine that you launch a paid marketing campaign for your product, you drive traffic to Envato's website on your product page and the first thing the customer sees is a prominent banner promotiong Elements where they get unlimited everything for $15/mo, when your product alone costs $99 (even though your product is not even on Elements).
[0]: https://www.usertrack.net/
Only until new content begins to dry up because it's not profitable for creators to produce it anymore
Stock photographers and illustrators are already mostly from poor countries (predominantly non-EU Eastern Europe and South East Asia). Individuals working full-time earn somewhere between $600 and $2,500 monthly on average (depending on the popularity of their content). It's going to become unprofitable even for them.
Hurray!