Envato Notes

The Envato Marketplaces Can Turn the Right of a Fair Income Into a Reality

Posted: 15 Oct 2013 11:09 PM PDT

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Human rights – we list them because not everyone gets them. The world is not intrinsically a fair place, and its resources are not handed out evenly. We all have the right to earn a fair income from our work. For many, that’s just a dream. The Envato Marketplaces can make it a reality. Here’s how.

Today is Blog Action Day, an initiative started by Collis and Cyan Ta’eed in 2007 to unite the world’s bloggers in raising awareness and triggering positive global discussion of important issues. The theme for this year is Human Rights.

We All Have the Right to Make an Income

The United Nations defines a human right to be “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” They list that standard in The Universal Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The right to work in order to make a fair income makes the list. It’s Article 23:

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

At Envato, we affirm that right. Our mission is To Help People Learn and Earn Online.

At our core, we're a company about empowering people with tools and services to develop new skills and make a living. We do this in the creative space with marketplaces and education platforms and materials that help people get creative.

That mission is underpinned by our values, which include giving people a Fair Go.

Everyone deserves an equal chance and a fair opportunity. At work, on our sites, and in life we strive to be fair and consistent in everything we do.

So that’s the standard, the aim, the goal. But what’s the reality?

There’s Tremendous Inequality in Incomes and Opportunities Around the World

The reality is, that depending on where in the world you were born and live, the opportunities to make a good living may be seriously limited. And even if you have regular employment, the wage you make from it may not be enough to make ends meet. People in some parts of the world are making far less than people in other parts.

Last year, the BBC asked an interesting question:

If there were no rich and poor, and everyone had an equal share of the world’s total pay packet, how much would they earn?

They calculated the answer to be less than $18,000 per year. That may not sound like much to you. Chances are you make much more.

According to Wikipedia, the average Aussie has a much higher income—nearly $45K, which is similar to the average wage in Canada and the UK, and a little lower than the United States and Ireland. On the other hand, $18K is about the same as the average wage in Poland, and double the average wage in Bulgaria. The average person in Tajikistan makes only $2,700 a year.

But we’re missing something. $18,000 might be average, but it’s not typical. More than a third of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. That’s tragic! There is huge inequality in the world. Not everyone has the same opportunities.

The Envato Marketplaces Are a Great Equalizer

For those who have access to it, the Internet can be a great leveler. That’s currently 34% of the world’s population, and that percentage is growing every year. The Internet can lift people out of the employment limitations of of their native country, and give them access to opportunities and income enjoyed by others around the world.

The Envato Marketplaces are one such opportunity. They attract people from a wide range of nations, ages and backgrounds.

What opportunities do the Marketplaces offer to authors from around the world?

Kriesi, the first Marketplace author to sell $1 million in items.

1. Supplement Your Regular Income

Many of our authors have a full time job outside of the Marketplaces. Becoming an author lets them supplement their income by doing something they love. It’s a hobby that earns its keep.

Marketplace income is passive income. That means it keeps coming in even when you’re not actively working on items. Many authors who work on the Marketplaces part time make a very useful amount of money.

2. Become a Full-time Author

The goal of many authors is to work full time on the Marketplaces. It isn’t just about the money – it’s about being able to spend your life doing something you’re passionate about. It also gives you amazing flexibility, because it means you can work from anywhere.

A couple of years ago we put together a roundup of insights and experiences from authors who have gone full time. Here are a few of them:

Sherman Jackson found the experience of quitting his full time graphic design job amazing. He now enjoys a new dimension of freedom of expression as he works full time on GraphicRiver.
After working 20 years as an internal and furniture designer, TanyDi now works full time as a GraphicRiver author. She works hard, has learned a lot, and is still learning!
VF has been full time on the Marketplaces since September 2008. That's the longest he's been in any job!
Digitalscience quit his job four years ago to work on the Marketplaces. He is successful, but finds working on his own sometimes boring, and went a bit crazy two years ago. He found the ability to do a lot of traveling a huge bonus, and supplements his income with some freelance work.

3. Become Elite

Our Elite Author Program is a way of recognising the best of the best. These are authors who have sold more than $75,000 worth of items. We currently have over 500 Elite authors, and come from a wide range of countries including Portugal, Pakistan, India, Philippines, USA, UK and Australia.

We also have a growing number of Power Elite authors, who have sold a million dollars worth of items or more. You’ll learn a lot by reading their interviews and studying their progress: Kriesi, Peerapong, Orman Clark, Internq7, GoodLayers, MDNW, Pexeto, Sara_p, ThemeFusion, TrueThemes.

Several of these are about to cross the three million dollar milestone, so stay tuned.

Meet Some Authors

Here are a few examples of the difference the Marketplaces have made in the lives of our authors.

Peerapong

Before discovering ThemeForest, Peerapong was unemployed, and ready to give up on the Internet and web technology due to failure. Now he’s one of our most successful authors. Here is his story:

Back in 2008, I was still unemployed and had failed with so many web products. I still remember, before I knew about ThemeForest, I was ready to give up on the internet and web technology because I had tried so hard to come up with many web projects and they had all failed.

But when I found ThemeForest unintentionally (I saw ThemeForest ads on Twitter app), I started learning more about the Envato Marketplaces and how they work. Then I decided to give it a try and it turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life.

Peerapong’s home in Thailand

RelStudios

Satish Pokharel (RelStudios) is from Nepal. Web development became his hobby when he was 12 years old, though his parents had no idea what he was doing on his computer for hours on end.

He moved to India to study engineering. His parents support him financially, but he’s also able to make some extra money by selling templates and landing pages on ThemeForest.

Joiaco

Jo Taylor (Joiaco) is a grandmother living at the bottom of Africa. She has been making a living creating “analogue” artwork since the 70s, and just recently entered the digital world.

I only started learning the skills of digital art last year when my son Ross died of spine cancer at 30, leaving me his iMac with Photoshop and Illustrator on it. He said I had 'potential', so I don't want to disappoint him!

She skipped housework for a month to learn vector drawing. She’s always loved letters and type – her dad was a signwriter – so she started creating fonts, which she submitted to GraphicRiver. She’s now made almost 4,000 sales.

LCweb

On the forums, LCweb describes how he was looking for searching for new income sources, since, in his words, he was “being strangled by Italian taxation.” He discovered Envato in 2012, and submitted an item to CodeCanyon.

The item was accepted immediately, and he made his first sale a few days later. He felt he was onto something. Within a month he started to make a decent income, but soon started to experience the burden of supporting his work. He’s now an Elite author, and says that the income he is earning could not be achieved in any other way in Italy.

Jake and Muhammad

I love hearing how authors spend their earnings. The money goes on the essentials of life, tools for the job, and lots of cool toys.

I get especially excited when I hear about new homes that are bought with Marketplace earnings. I showed you a photo of Peerapong’s home above. Here are photos of new homes built by Jake Caputo (US) and Muhammad Haris (Pakistan). Jake calls his “the house that Envato built.”