Thank you for choosing to become an author! Before we get started there are a few things you need to know in order to sell items on the Marketplace. It won’t take long to learn, and after you’ve read it and completed the quiz, you can start uploading and selling your items!
The Marketplace is a venue for the sale of your content. Anyone can become an author and sell their items on the site.
It is important to realize that as a venue for item sales, transactions are between you and the purchaser. This has the legal implication that if you are doing something wrong such as breaching copyright, you are responsible and liable. The consequences of unlawful action can be severe, so please take care.
The authoring process is relatively simple. As an author, you complete an upload form, taking care to prepare your items properly according to the upload instructions. Once uploaded, the items are inspected by our review team to ensure the items work and are a good fit for the library. If your item is approved, the reviewer inspecting your item will give it an appropriate price and the item will then appear in the library.
If an item is not approved, the reviewer will provide some explanation on whether the item needs a small improvement to be accepted, or is not appropriate for sale here. In both approval and rejection cases, you will receive an email to let you know the outcome of your upload.
If your item is approved for sale, you will receive a percentage of every sale into your account earnings. If you choose to keep your portfolio of items exclusive to the Marketplace then the percentage you earn begins at 60% and increments up to 80% as you sell more files. If you choose to sell the same items elsewhere and opt to be a non-exclusive author you will receive 25% of each sale. You can find out more about percentages on the Payment Rates page.
Note that exclusivity does not mean you cannot sell other items elsewhere. It only means the items you sell here must exclusively sold here. We have created this system to help make the Marketplace libraries as unique and valuable as possible.
Each sale of one of your items will result in an increased earnings balance in your account. Your earnings can be used in the following ways:
All payment requests are processed at the start of each new month and paid out on the 15th of that month. For example, if you request a payout on the 20th of March, payment will be made on the 15th of April. If the 15th of the month falls on a weekend or public holiday, payment will be made the next business day.
In order for an item to be accepted on the Marketplace it needs to follow the upload instructions and fulfill our quality standards. Each item type has its own upload instructions and file preparation guidelines.
As a general guide, all items require:
One of the main technical requirements is that the downloadable ZIP contains files that are as customizable as possible. This may mean keeping all layers in a Photoshop file intact, or providing extensive help documentation for a Flash file, or preparing multiple versions of a video loop. By making files customizable you increase their value to the customer.
By keeping the Marketplace packed with high quality content, we ensure that buyers are more likely to come here to find items they need. This increases sales, and profits everyone. When the review staff inspect your items, they will be considering these criteria:
If for some reason an item does not meet one or more of these requirements, the reviewer will outline the reason the item has not been approved and describe any specific improvements that need to be made.
Occasionally items will be rejected for other reasons. Some of these reasons might be:
Every year items on the Marketplace are reviewed to ensure the library remains up to date with current software and trends. If your item does not pass review, you will receive email notification and your item will become inactive after 30 days.
As an author you have the responsibility to only sell things that belong to you. By selling an item, you are making an agreement not only with the marketplace but with anyone who buys your item that you own full copyright to that item, and have appropriately licensed any auxiliary content that it makes use of.
There are very serious consequences for doing the wrong thing when it comes to copyright so make sure you read this section very carefully and avoid misusing another person’s work. If after reading this section you are still unclear you should contact us to answer any questions you have.
The Marketplace takes copyright violation very seriously. If we discover that a work has violated copyright we will ban the author from the Marketplace, freeze any funds made from the sale of that work and in some cases the injured party will take legal action against you – so make sure you know the rules!
You can find a full definition of copyright on the U.S. Copyright office website. The following is a very short description.
Copyright is a legal concept that gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it. The copyright holder has the right to choose if anyone else can use, adapt or resell their work and have the right to be credited for that work.
Only the copyright holder of a work may do the following:
Remember the creator of a work retains copyright to it even if they don’t expressly tell you so.
The author is responsible for all copyright use or potential copyright violations in his or her files. For you to make use of another person’s work you need an express license to do so. So for example if you purchase a stock photo you are not buying the photo, you are actually purchasing the license to use that stock photo in a certain way.
Different licenses allow you to do different things. You need to look carefully at licenses to see what they permit and what they do not. Specifically to use an asset like a photo, music loop or code snippet in an item you want to sell on the Marketplace, you need a license that allows the asset’s use in items for resale and redistribution.
In plain English, the license has to say that you can use it in something you’re selling and distributing. If you don’t have such a license you may be unlawfully profiting from another person’s work!
Oftentimes you will find something that you wish to use which doesn’t appear to be licensed. For example you may have followed a tutorial which didn’t expressly permit or forbid its use in an item for resale and redistribution. In this situation you must contact the original copyright holder and get written permission.
The penalties for breaching copyright can be severe. The Marketplace takes copyright violations very seriously and will not tolerate copyright violation on Marketplace.
A copyright infringement or violation is the unauthorized use of work that is covered by copyright. If you use, alter or sell another person or company’s work without a license or their written permission then you are violating their copyright and are breaking the law.
If you suspect another file has infringed on the copyright of your work or others, you should us to report it.
Here are some requirements to comply with copyright violations:
When you sell an item on the Marketplace you are granting purchasers a license to use the item. There is a regular license that ALL items must be sold with. This regular license allows the use of your item in a purchasers projects for either personal or commercial use without the payment of any further fees or charges after the initial download cost. If you do not want to or cannot grant these rights, they cannot be sold on the Marketplace. Please do not upload them.
From time to time The Marketplace adds other license types which you as an author can opt-in to sell. These extended licenses are more expensive than the regular license but grant extra rights. For example they may allow the purchaser to incorporate the item into something which they then sell. So they might buy an illustration and then make a T-shirt design out of it which they then sell.
The cost of purchase of each item is decided during the review process, based on a number of factors. Reviewers price items to create a consistent pricing system on the Marketplace as well as to maximize income for all parties concerned. If an author disagrees with the cost of purchase of an approved item, they may contact us. Support will then reevaluate the item, and if the item is under or overpriced we will change the cost of purchase accordingly.
Prices may be reevaluated and/or changed solely at the discretion of The Marketplace staff.
Before you can upload and sell your work, you must take a short multiple choice quiz to demonstrate your understanding of this tutorial.
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