Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on September 15, 2023, 15:08

If Canva had used this payout model when starting out, they'd have had no content. 123rf did start out with this setup (a pool scheme with no minimum, but no boosted categories). It very quickly changed to include a minimum payout on subscription downloads because the royalties were so much lower than SS's and contributors weren't happy.

In addition to this they promised a guaranteed amount of income for a period of time otherwise many people would had left.

I know - I assumed at the time this would not end well Sometimes it really stinks that one's most cynical instincts are accurate.

Basically, essentially, Canva can do whatever they want now, and we can kiss their a**. And they do exactly that, because they can and they don't know any better.

I saw in a video or two how they say that at Canva they value human values very much, and in order to work for them you not only have to be a good worker but also a good human.

Is this what Canva is doing to it's contributors last year and a half something what would a good, or at least a fair human do?

I guess we can congratulate Canva for ruining good source of income for many people and ruining their own image and reputation as well.

Thanks

It seems their royalty pool has grown a lot. There's this info on their site where they explain how royalties work. I can't see info for 2022 though. Not that it matters.

"The size of our Royalty Pool grows with Canva�s subscription revenues and is calculated every month. The exact numbers month-per-month is confidential business information. However, we provide public updates on the size of our total Royalty Pool about once per year:"

June 2021: $27.6 million USD annualized


My earnings in 2022 were about 70% of those in 2021 and my earnings this year as of now are not even half of last year, there are a few more months but seeing how it is going I doubt it will get much better.

Assuming there isn't any other creative accounting behind the scenes (a huge assumption) from your quote they seem to have dropped any "in proportion" language. Theoretically sub income could have gone up many times more than their Pool. As long as they are both growing they can still claim they are growing "with" each other.

But the main point is that the original "Royalty Pool" was a pool for image contributors. We don't know whether this section of this new "Royalty Pool" has grown or by how much as they have now started paying other people from the same "Pool".

What % of revenue does Canva generate from the total revenue from selling stock photos?

Editing as I misunderstood the question.

All these small agencies will eventually go out of business because greed and AI

Yes, Canva gets several times the web traffic of Shutterstock. 5x as much according to sites like "similarweb".

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on September 18, 2023, 01:46

Yes, Canva gets several times the web traffic of Shutterstock. 5x as much according to sites like "similarweb".

I am not sure whether web traffic is what you can compare to each other, because Shutterstock is only a microstock agency, while Canva is also a graphic design tool, so part of the traffic is not generated by customers buying images, but using the tools.

I know there are some people who say Canva was their best earner, but if you look at the poll, Canva does not even make it into the top 10 in terms of revenue. I know if you have the right graphics you can probably make a lot of money.
When I signed up with Canva, they told me that they would not accept my images on white background, but that I should make them transparent pngs, because these were the images that would get sold the most on Canva. So, for example, if you have a lot of transparent pngs you will probably do much better there than someone doing travel photos. That's why I think Canva is one of the top earners for some contributors, but not for most. It's just not your typical microstock agency.

I agree that it's not your typical agency, but the design tool drives traffic that requires images/graphics, and these are almost all licensed from the images available in the database. The tool has proved to be so successful, that Shutterstock and other agencies now have similar integrated tools, because the model works.

I don't have any images on white and I've been with Canva since day one. At the beginning, you could submit such images and they had staff who were cutting them out from the background before publishing them. The reality was that such submission sat in the review queue for months on end, so it quickly became clear that you either needed to submit ready prepared png cutouts or not bother, (but I don't even think png submissions were even an option at the start). I had very few images on white, so I didn't bother to submit those, and just uploaded my standard stock images - a mixture of food and drink, backgrounds, travel, wildlife, and a very small collections of people and lifestyle.

However, from an earnings point of view, I've always done pretty well, with Canva  being somewhere in my top 4 each month since 2014 - they've never topped Shutterstock, but often beat Istock or Adobe, and were way higher than other mid-tear sites, such as Dreamstime, 123RF, Depositphotos, etc.

Now my year to date earnings for this year are only 25% of the same period last year.

That's a huge drop.

... The traffic they create by using the tools is extra traffic that does not 'translate' into sales...

It really, really does when it comes to volume at least. I mentioned in another thread but my volume of sales on Canva every month rivals my total sales on SS over my whole career. Much more than 5X.

Of course they only pay the tiniest fraction of a fraction of a cent per sale, but in volume they are huge.

First time I went to read Canva's license and wow, that Pro license is so unfair to contributors, no wonder sales are crashing: "As a Pro subscriber, you will simply be issued with a new One Design Use License for the second, third and fourth designs (and so on). You do not need to pay for these individual licenses, they are included in your subscription. Free users need to pay for a new license for each subsequent design."

Plus, they allow selling on POD and similar, buyers obviously need just slap text over image and that's their "new" design: "All of our photos, fonts and graphics can be used to create designs for printing on products for sale (like t-shirts, mugs, books and other merchandise). Please note, you can�t sell standalone prints of Canva content, such as a printout of a stock photo (without any other design elements) on a t-shirt."

I'm not on Canva (luckily), I was just curious because some discussion from people who are heavily using Canva content for reselling on various designs. Sometimes is hard to read and I was convinced it is not allowed but I was wrong, obviously.

The least they could do is give us Canva Pro for being a contributor. At least Adobe has enough respect to offer contributors their software.

September is worse than August for me. It seems I would be able to say this each new month.
Applies and exports are up.

https://www.canva.com/creators/element

Select dashboard, it's in the upper left.