Regarding Envato's Payout Rates.

So i’ve been thinking on the rates of the envato network. I know that one reason it’s so low is so that even under optimum rates, you cannot screw envato through the 50% referral promotion. Even if you were an exclusive author, and reached over the $30,500 to get there, at best you could only cut even from what was inputted, despite your best scamming efforts.

It’s also no secret that Envato tends to sell things rather cheaply. Good for business i’m sure, audiomicro would agree. Now one reason I believe i’m selling here at all is because the catalogue for AJ is not yet as big as revostock, estock, etc, so being found here is significantly easier and true enough i’ve sold plenty more here then there. However as time goes by and the catalogue grows (so well on it’s way already), one can argue that AJ will have as much as these other sites, and incidentally, selling a track will be as competitive.

Will AJ adjust their payout rate when this happens? I do enjoy AJ, and I focus 90% of my energies here, but at some point once it gets as tough to sell here as it would at revostock, i’m going to have to move out.

I mean why not right? They’d pay more and my efforts would mean more for me. There’s no reason for me as a submitter to focus my energies on AJ when it’s maximum payout rate, is the default to many others and is to date the second worst i’ve found (the worst being 20%, I forget where, I kinda laughed and left the site before it left an imprint).

It almost feels wrong to put money in the way of myself and the great community i’ve found here, but this is a real concern for me. Am I alone?

There’s no doubt that the Envato community is growing at an amazing rate. Along with that growth will undoubtably arise new challenges to overcome. I can’t speak for Envato in any way, shape or form, so I won’t try to.

However, my opinion is that the quality of support from the staff members, the exposure we get as authors, the presentation that this site/community offers, the feedback and critique we recieve from the community, all amount to a great deal when compared to other stocksites in the market.

This may change as the community grows even more and although I’m sure Envato will find ways to keep the change positive for all, the benefits we enjoy now in this up-and-coming, close-knit community far outway any minor shortfall in sales rates/commissions.

Just my 2 pence really, but I’m sure the other members will have opinions on this also.

I think this has been discussed quite a lot before already, but I really think with the growth of the envato community, the time has come to re-open the discussion.

I think the fact that you can sell 10 tracks on other stock music sites, and make more than if you sell 30 tracks on here, really can be disheartening sometimes. Its almost like we the artists are paying the price for the referral scams which can happen, rather than envato taking the responsibility for it. Just because someone can scam the site by using referral techniques, why should we recieve a smaller payout? I know that the pricing system on audiojungle was raised a while back, but its the payout of 25% that really isnt fair. I don’t see how they can justify taking 75% of the money that we make. I mean, when I make one sale say of $10, I receive 25% of that which is $2.50 – convert that into euros and that is roughly €2 – that won’t even buy me a cup of coffee in Ireland. After spending maybe a day or more creating that track, and then to receive such a shockingly low price for it is almost insulting.

I do feel that the system needs to be addressed, and kept in line with the other sites out there. I don’t see how they would be able to change it after this long as it would be unfair to all the composers who have been exclusive authors up to this point, but it definitively needs to be addressed somehow. I’d be happy even getting rid of composer referrals – does anyone even make money off them? I’ve never had one referral so I wouldn’t mind getting rid of it – I know its an important part of getting new members to the site, but if it is costing us the contributors to the site, then I’m all for removing it. After all, without us, there would be no content here.

I suppose in the end though it always boils down to the fact that there will always be composers who are willing to sell their tracks for close to nothing.

We can’t really speculate on changes to the system that are a fair way off in the future — the community has not reached a size where this is an issue as yet and we have to get to that point and have the data to plan accordingly. However, it is worth reminding everyone that in 99.9% of businesses, marketing consumes as much as 50% – 75% of the budget; other operating costs take up the rest of that margin. By using the referral system to market your own work, you get a cut that is fairer and higher than I’ve seen elsewhere, and higher than most businesses could afford to pay out, in fact. The 25% revenue share earners from people searching the site allow us to cover our costs when we’ve done the marketing for you, and because it’s easier to be found here, you’ll probably make more from these sales in aggregate than from search sales on other sites even with higher cuts.

Here’s the thing: on other stock sites where it is impossible to be found because of the sheer volume of the catalogue, you need to market actively. At AudioJungle we reward you for doing your own marketing and pay you almost the entire lot, save what it costs us to hire developers, support staff, pay for hosting, etc. All the things that make AudioJungle one of the best stock sites to sell on.

This is often overlooked when these conversations come up and perhaps we should do something to raise awareness of how referrals can be used to get a better pay out than you’ll see on other huge stock sites where you work your butt off to market. The referral system isn’t there to get new people to the site (though no offense to you musicformedia for suggesting so), but so that you authors can actually gain more from this system than from other systems. We have, in my humble opinion, one of the most robust and fair payment systems online.

Sorry if that was a bit of a ramble, I’m exhausted — I literally just got in the door after a long night, my wife just gave birth to our new baby daughter. I’ll go pass out now before I’m tempted to ramble on some more.

Is there any way to make your own referral link go to your own portfolio? Mine just seems to go to the main site…

Congrats on your little baby monkey… best wishes.

Congrats Joel!

Hi,

Here is my current referrals:

July 2008 90 Clickthroughs 0 Registered Members 0 Deposits $0.00

August 2008 139 Clickthroughs 1 Registered Members 1 Deposits $45.00

September 2008 111 Clickthroughs 0 Registered Members 0 Deposits $0.00

October 2008 149 Clickthroughs 0 Registered Members 0 Deposits $0.00

November 2008 50 Clickthroughs 0 Registered Members 0 Deposits $0.00

And Adrien, please turn on my cash counter again

Congrats to joel …

And now, let’s see some heavy promoting out there on the world wide web, envato

Audio | Portfolio | T-Shirts & Prints | Prints

Well said Joel (and congratulations, I hope she’s a fighter!), but I would like to chime into that and say that though you are right to state Envato is the only kind with this kind of referral system, it still doesn’t cut out the fact i’d have to spend extra energy advertising as well.

I for one, have recently become a freelance composer. I spend all my time either finding clients or making music, or school (not yet graduated :P). My bread and butter won’t be coming from AJ or other licensing sites. If I was to spend time advertising my music for licensing, it seems to make more sense for me to advertise Revostock’s page, since ultimately it would be more probable that they’d just buy a couple songs there then use my referral link, charge their account, and THEN buy material.

As well I also kind of don’t like how many variables the referral system has. What if I had a regular buyer from me, who used my referral link, charged like 10 dollars to buy a song? I get $5, and as he charges to buy more, I still don’t benefit as much as I would have if I had shown this guy to my revostock page instead. What if he doesn’t even sign up at all through my referral link? They visit the site, go “ooo, i’m definitely buying something from here later!”, closes the browser and goes away. Now when they return to make the account, charge it and buy my material, well now i’ve lost that referral forever and i’m still making 25%

The referral system only really pays off if the person who signed up charges a crap load and does it right away. Since my clients are probably not going to be gong ho on buying royalty free everything from Envato or me, and I don’t have the heart to ask them to sign up and charge their accounts right away (I don’t think it’s my right to ask them to do anything with their own money), the referral system is essentially useless to me.

tl;dr, I’m not a big figure in development sites, at best I only advertise licensing of my own music for clients who want something existing made. spending the necessary time and energy to advertise AJ would seem to yield more if I spent it advertising somebody else.

Also keep in mind i’m saying all this from a rather ignorant stand point. I’m not going to lie, my experience with royalty free licensing sites is limited to when I signed up to AJ. I might not be reading trends right, so do let me know if people disagree with me, and please, why.

Ah ha. Okie, glad to see I’m not the only one thinking about this Audiojungle was the very first stock site I signed up to in early October this year. Since then I have found other stock sites which give out much, much better rates, I signed up to that too and then I started thinking… I’m selling my music for 2 different rates here, the exact same songs, one much larger than the other.

I looked in my profile when I got home, I’ve only made 2 sales, which I’m not knocking here, the amount of sales is not the issue for me, as I only have 8 songs uploaded. The issue is that I saw “With: 2 sales ($20.00 worth)” at the side, then I looked at the top of my screen: “Denieru (US$5.00)”... You know that’s £2.50 for me. Envato have made $15.00 off my music and I’ve made next to nothing :-/ I understand about the whole marketing thing and why it’s cheaper, and why we get a lower cut, and that’s fine. But for me, there’s just something telling me to withdraw my songs from here I’ve made more money from one sale on that “other” site than I would 3 sales here, not only that but my songs were only up one day and I got a sale there.

It’s a shame, because I don’t really want to leave, I’ve learned a lot here and I love the site and those little comments I get in my emails everytime I load a new song They’re very encouraging and make my day.

I’ll stick around for a bit, just to see what happens. But I’m only saying what I think, hope I don’t come across as a right *