Yep, still here.  I moved back to Argentina a couple of months ago, but I'm still acting in the same capacity in regards to Canva. 

Our revenue is growing super fast.  We started at zero a little under a year ago, and every month we've seen very pleasing gains, though we're still a very long way from the big, established microstock agencies.  We still have a relatively small collection, so the contributors who already have their content online with us are earning disproportionately well.  So far our revenue growth has kept pace with the growth of our collection so our early contributors haven't experienced much of a slowdown, but we're getting more and more new contributors with great portfolios now. 

It'll be great to have Canva in the poll so we can start climbing the ladder.

If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer them here or by email, [email protected]

I looked at your site and intro video and read some of the contributor information. It sounds as though what you're looking for (for photos) is isolated objects, but some of the big contributors you named don't specialize in that. For example, Monkey Business Images: on Shutterstock, her portfolio is over 34,000 with only 180 isolated images.

Hey Jo Ann, we haven't got the messaging quite right on this so most people get confused. In short, we sell all the typical images but the isolated-on-white images can't go directly into the collection, but must be cut out first. Contributors don't have to do anything differently and can just submit their portfolios as normal. We sell all kinds of images, not just isolated ones.

Based on typical usage so far, can you talk about what sorts of things Canva needs (photographs) other than isolated objects?

Based on our extensive data mining and expert analysis we've identified that we need everything.  What sells on Canva is the same as what sells everywhere else.

$1 per use is a sort of RM license, so although it sounds cheap it might be workable, but I'm not clear what a use is on Canva. If someone makes a design and then produces a web page, a poster and prints postcard mailers, is that three uses or one? Are there uses on physical products - such as tee shirts or other merchandise - where a design use would effectively be giving away an extended license (on existing micro sites) for $1?

This is also a little unclear.  The 'use' as it relates to our license means one design. Once they've purchased a license to use an image in that design, they're free to use that design multiple times as long as it's within the permitted uses of the license. So your example of someone using a design on the website, a poster and postcard mailers, requires only one license.  But if they want to change the design, they need to re-license it.

We require extended licenses for resale products, reproductions over 250,000 and multi-seat. But at the moment we only have our One Time Use license available. Extended licenses will be available soon. There's no rights in our base license that require extended licenses at microstock agencies.

I'm guessing that professional designers don't much like Canva - I assume it is effectively replacing them and allowing someone who would have hired a designer in the past to do it themselves. Is that how you'd see your user community?

Not at all. We get a huge amount of positive feedback from designers every day. Of course there have been a few designers who felt threatened by us empowering their clients, but they're few and far between. Most designers love that we take away the laborious work of updating phone numbers on their client designs (in Canva the client can do it), that we make it easier for them to do their basic designs, that we enable them to easily collaborate with their clients, and many other reasons. We also have a designers program which will launch soon and enable designers to license layouts: https://www.canva.com/designers

So no, we don't see our community that way at all.

I'm very open to trying new things - especially if it might be expanding into new areas (making "designers" out of end users in the same way desktop publishing made "typographers" out of office workers in spite of the howls of horror from real typographers), but I'm not entirely clear if the sorts of things I do would have any usefulness in the Canva universe.

Anyone who's successfully selling images in the microstock market has usefulness at Canva.

I submitted hundreds of isolated PNG format photos, since they indicated that was a preference. Also submitted some background JPEGs. So far I've sold 9 images, (since April) but they were all JPEGs . Curious.

Hey Danny, PNGs are a little more complex for us to ingest so they take a bit longer. Yours will come through review in the coming weeks. As you say, cutout PNGs are preferred for isolated-on-white images when they're done well, but we weren't expecting anyone to do that for us so soon, which is why we're not yet setup to process them quickly. Thanks for chiming in with your experience!

Quote from: rimglow on May 22, 2014, 12:50

I submitted hundreds of isolated PNG format photos, since they indicated that was a preference. Also submitted some background JPEGs. So far I've sold 9 images, (since April) but they were all JPEGs . Curious.

I would guess the designers of the site assumed that their users would use it one way but users have a habit of not acting the way designers and coders expect.

Very true. We weren't expecting contributors to cut out images for us so soon, but it's great that some are. 

Thanks to all for your interest, and for all those who've emailed me yesterday and today about contributing!

-Lee

Bumpity-bump.

Are people contributing to canva? Do you have results?
I'm thinking of contributing, but don't want to waste time, so if anyone has anything to say, I'm all ears.

Hi Spike, I'll give you an internal update and hopefully some of our contributors will chime in with their experiences.

We've been online for 9 months now, and growth in contributor royalties is extremely pleasing.  It's not appropriate for me to give exact numbers, but let me try to find some insights I can give you:
- We have five contributors who have earned over $1,000 already, and quite a few more are not far off
- The quantity of contributors making monthly payouts over $100 is in double digits and grows by an increasing amount each month
- Royalty growth percentage is well into double-digits each month and has been since launch

A couple of other non-royalty-related but relevant updates:
- We're still not ingesting vectors. Given we're a design platform, we're quite different. We need to serve files to the user's browser before they buy a license, which means they must be protected. If you've ever tried watermarking an un-rasterised vector, you'll know it's not trivial. Our solution for this is taking longer to perfect that we expected, so we'll soon be serving rasterised & watermarked vectors to our users and temporarily foregoing all the cool interactive possibilities. We have been very lucky to have a lot of very patient vector artists upload to us already. We hope to have new about them being ingested in the coming weeks.
- We're almost through the backlog of reviewing photos, so new contributors can expect to have their content online in around two weeks. We're ingesting in the order that contributors signed up, so all existing photo contributors will be online in the next two weeks.
- While it's still not near complete, our upload / submit system is super easy as I'm sure any of our contributors will attest.

I'm not going to tell you that you'll instantly make money from Canva. We have many contributors who don't make much at all. But as someone who contributed to most microstock agencies for many years, I can tell you that it really is about quality and quantity.

But I will tell you that it's still very early for us and all the signs are super promising. Getting in early has its advantages!

We've also been getting some nice press lately: http://about.canva.com/in-the-media/
And recently hired Guy Kawasaki as our Chief Evangelist: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/16/guy-kawasaki-joins-australian-design-startup-canva-as-chief-evangelist/

If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them here.  If you're interested in contributing, sign up for a Canva account if you haven't already and email me your details: [email protected]

Thanks!

I'm a little bit stuck at this bit:

Quote

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?

Thanks for pointing that out Gillian.  I've taken it out.  Here's what happened:

One of our early strategies for avoiding becoming a free deep etch farm was to claim ownership of the cutout as a derivative work, in the same way that a designer who uses a stock photo in a design owns the design but not the photo inside it.  That policy lasted a very short time, but when we took it out I neglected to update the "human readable" notes in the right-side column of the Contributor Agreement.  As the big disclaimer at the top says, those side notes are not part of the legal agreement, but they are obviously confusing when they don't match up with the clauses. My apologies for the confusion.

Contributors are currently paid the same royalty for sale of a cutout as for an image that isn't cut out.  We included a clause in the agreement (clause 3.1) stating that we reserve the right to charge a premium for the cutouts and not include that premium in the royalty calculation. This is a facility we wanted to keep in place to enable us to scale up the quantity of cutouts we created, but at this point we're not charging any premium. I don't believe it's likely we'll start using it any time soon, but we wanted to be upfront about the future possibility rather than just change things without warning.

Image security is of critical importance to us, just as it is to microstock agencies.  We contract the deep etching to a company that specialises in that task and have ensured the file security is managed appropriately.  We've spent months working very closely with them to get the deep etching process to a very high standard to suit even high resolution print output.

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.

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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 [email protected]