Sounds interesting! Has anybody tried them out? What's the minimum payout?

Quote from: zeamonkey on August 27, 2013, 02:48

100$

Way too high for a new site. 25$ would be more realistic.

not to mention the exciting 35 cents

Thought this might have got a bit more attention here given the involvement of Lee Torrens (Microstock Diaries/Microstock Expo) who after being a consultant initially has now moved himself and his family to Australia to be part of this start up.
I don't know enough about the design business to know if Canva is offering something there is a big demand for (though they obviously think so). Any designers here who could offer an opinion?
The initial flat rate (one time use) fee of $1 for use of stock images in designs seems on the low side to say the least and the 35% commission on offer probaly isn't going to get many rushing to upload. That said, the announcement says there are going to be regular Royalty Free and Extended licences going forward which will generate higher earnings.
Interestingly, Lee says they already have a million stock images from some "top" contributors. Anyone here already been uploading prior to launch?
Might be one to watch.  Regards, David.

I honestly don't know much about the Canva system and tools yet, but what I can say about the company based on a conversation with Lee about it is that they took a very serious interest right at the beginning of their development to launch with a contributor system that was fair and easy to use. They approached Lee and asked him to help them figure out a system that was as contributor-friendly as possible, and Lee has been working with them throughout their early stages of development to build exactly that sort of system.

I'm impressed by companies that take contributor issues and concerns seriously, so that's why I got on board with Canva as a contributor. The payouts are fair, not the best but certainly not the worst either. And I think the product they are offering is very interesting.

Will be fun to see where this goes as they get closer to the official launch.

Hi all,

Luis, thanks for posting the link and video.  You have the fastest fingers in microstock! 

Interesting concept, but 35% of 1$ per licence? Doesn't really make me jump up and down out of joy...

That's fair enough Dirkr.  Canva won't be for everyone.  We feel that 35% of $1 per *use* is substantially better than 25-38 cents for unlimited use at other places. 

Quote from: zeamonkey on August 27, 2013, 02:48

100$

Way too high for a new site. 25$ would be more realistic.

Shiyali, we thought a lot about where to set the payout threshold.  The transaction costs are proportionately heavier with lower payouts, so we thought it logical to offer payouts below the threshold for a small fee, as ClickImages pointed out.  It's better for contributors and helps us avoid losing money on smaller payouts.

Thought this might have got a bit more attention here given the involvement of Lee Torrens (Microstock Diaries/Microstock Expo) who after being a consultant initially has now moved himself and his family to Australia to be part of this start up.
I don't know enough about the design business to know if Canva is offering something there is a big demand for (though they obviously think so). Any designers here who could offer an opinion?
The initial flat rate (one time use) fee of $1 for use of stock images in designs seems on the low side to say the least and the 35% commission on offer probaly isn't going to get many rushing to upload. That said, the announcement says there are going to be regular Royalty Free and Extended licences going forward which will generate higher earnings.
Interestingly, Lee says they already have a million stock images from some "top" contributors. Anyone here already been uploading prior to launch?
Might be one to watch.  Regards, David.

Thanks for your thoughts, Newfocus1! 

$1 seems low because we're all used to thinking in terms of unlimited use as per the Royalty Free standard.  After we launch our Royalty Free licenses we'll get data on how many designs an image purchased with an RF license is used.  If it's a lot, the $1 One Time Use license fee will seem high. 

I found it interesting when I was recruiting contributors for Canva last year that some would respond to the 35% royalty rate with positive excitement, while others were disappointed.  Nobody will tell you it's the best rate in the industry, but it's a long way from the worst too.

Among our "top" contributors are Andres Rodriguez, IOFOTO (Ron Chapple), Monkey Business Images, Pressfoto, CandyBox Images, LifeOnWhite, Sergey Nivens (aka the artist formerly known as NexusPlexus), Kirsty Pargeter, Lev Dolgachov, Remy Muser (netfalls), Elena Elisseeva, Elnur, Serg Zastavkin, Diego Cervo, Lumaxart, and many more inspiring artists!  We've also added almost 100 since we announced our launch three days ago.

I too found it interesting, David.  I think Lee's blog post might be a bit premature, however.
It is something that should be worth following.

Fair point.  I published on the date we announced Canva's launch, so there was a lot of press at that time: http://press.canva.com/in-the-media/

I honestly don't know much about the Canva system and tools yet, but what I can say about the company based on a conversation with Lee about it is that they took a very serious interest right at the beginning of their development to launch with a contributor system that was fair and easy to use. They approached Lee and asked him to help them figure out a system that was as contributor-friendly as possible, and Lee has been working with them throughout their early stages of development to build exactly that sort of system.

I'm impressed by companies that take contributor issues and concerns seriously, so that's why I got on board with Canva as a contributor. The payouts are fair, not the best but certainly not the worst either. And I think the product they are offering is very interesting.

Will be fun to see where this goes as they get closer to the official launch.

Thanks Mike, I really appreciate this support.  That's exactly how it happened.  Here's some of the things Canva is doing differently to make life easier for contributors (most of these will arrive in the coming months):

- We have user accounts and 'brands'.  Contributed content is associated with a brand.  This way you can have multiple brands of content (separate portfolios, separate earnings) accessed with a single user account.  You can also have separate user accounts with different permissions to access a single brand, for all those who don't want their keyworders / submitters to see their earnings reports.
- We're doing everything technically possible to automate release matching, including automatically associating releases from a release matching spreadsheet that you upload into your FTP account with your images, AND automatically assigning releases to the images in the same folder in your FTP account
- We have the simplest, quickest and most graceful submission interface you've ever seen.  Everything is on one page, bulk action enabled, and built for speed.

There's obviously LOTS more, but those are some that address the most commonly cited pain points for uploading to a new, as-yet-unproven distributor. 

Interesting concept. It reminds me of a company I used to work for. Everything was in a database, so you pull in your graphics, style sheets, templates and copy. All you really had to do was fit it all on the page (not much design). It seems like they are bringing that well organized database idea that a big company like the one I worked for had, and they are sharing it with everyone.

That's interesting Cory.  That's indeed very similar to some of the core concepts of Canva.

-----

If anyone has any questions they'd like answered publicly, feel free to post them here.  If you prefer personal or private discussions you can reach me via lee@canva.com

this reminds me of the new deal between SS & FB: It's not that bad if you consider this is a 72ppi image being used, not downloaded, and we are being paid a SS subs fee for a single use. I think it will actually educate more people that images "found" online aren't free. I'm off to have a better look.

I'm a little bit stuck at this bit:

Part of what makes Canva wonderful to design with is that most items in our media library will be cut out, so that the background is transparent.
If we create the cut out, it will be owned by us. But of course the original copyright holder will still own the copyright to the original photo and we won�t sell licenses for the cut out if you deactivate the original version.

so if you own the cut out, and sell that cut out, you don't pay me?
are you doing these cut outs yourselves? or farming them off to India? if that's the case, doesn't that put my images at risk of being stolen by a third party?

Nice to see someone doing something different from the myriad ill thought out me too sites

Can I submit my own cutouts?
Yes, you can. Simply submit a cut out file in PNG format. As you can�t embed metadata in PNG files you�ll have to enter it at submission. We�ll review the image for the quality of the cutout as well as all the other aspects we usually review.

Perhaps you can explain the advantage of submitting isolated files in the PNG format. I'll have to go back into each file and add the metadata. Will these files be given any preferential treatment? If not, then it would be easier for me to submit JPEGs (with a white background) and the data already embeded.

I believe that JPEG does not support transparency, whereas PNG files do.

I was confused about whether all their images are isolated, and whether that's all that most designers want (I don't see that in use all that often).
I hit 'stop' when she searched on 'monkey' and pulled out an ape. 

Quote from: ShadySue on August 30, 2013, 11:27

I was confused about whether all their images are isolated, and whether that's all that most designers want (I don't see that in use all that often).
I hit 'stop' when she searched on 'monkey' and pulled out an ape. 

If you search for "monkey" on iStock, half are isolations, and a lot of the results are apes.

I've been pointing out the monkey / ape thing for years.
H*ll, on iS if you type in e.g. "Bombus terrestris" in quotes, you get everything tagged Bumblebee.
Irrelevant anyway - I didn't say iS was better.

A new site has the ability to get keywording right from the start, but none seems to want to do it. Bizarre, eh?