All items on Envato Elements are created by our community of independent designers. Half of the net revenue from every Regular, Student, and Teams subscription* goes straight to talented designers from all around the world. As a subscriber to Envato Elements, you help them earn a living doing what they love.
To ensure content creators are paid fairly, Envato uses the 'subscriber share' payout model at scale. The core idea is that a subscriber’s money should go to the contributors they actually use and value. This differs from traditional subscription approaches.
*Authors also share 25% of the net revenue from Envato Elements Enterprise subscriptions.
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How does subscriber share work?
Each month, we look at every Regular, Student, and Teams subscriber and share 50% of their net revenue with individual contributors based on how vital a contributor's items were to that subscriber. This calculation is based on the number of licenses used, with a weighting for different item types.
If a subscriber only uses items from one contributor, then that contributor receives all of their revenue share.
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Why do we use subscriber share?
We chose subscriber share for Envato Elements because we believe it's the fairest possible way to divide earnings. While we'll explore the rationale in more detail in an upcoming blog post, broadly speaking, subscriber share encourages contributors to:
- Make items that are broadly appealing to many subscribers.
- Make unique items that do a great job of serving various niches.
- Not spend time making copycat items to target big downloaders.
- Not bother trying to game the system.
This has huge implications for how our content library will evolve over time: it’s not about everyone chasing the big “hits” or "blockbusters," but instead, each contributor is rewarded for creating unique, diverse, & valuable content that attracts and retains subscribers.
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How does Envato Elements support independent designers?
As a subscriber to Envato Elements, you can be proud of the fact that you're helping independent designers earn a living doing what they love.
One way you can help out is by making sure you license items each time you use them. That gives us the most accurate data possible to help pay contributors fairly. Importantly, it also helps reward the contributors you use most often and encourages them to make even more of the content that you like.