Flourishing Envato Creative Community Now Five Million Strong

Envato, one of the world’s leading online creative ecosystems, has reached five million community members, including freelance designers, developers, musicians, photographers and other creatives globally.

Since 2006 Envato has helped its community earn and learn online through digital marketplace Envato Market, freelance services marketplace Envato Studio and educational platform Tuts+. This week Envato reached a milestone with 5 million community members signed up to buy, sell and create with Envato online.

“We’re so proud of our community. Through their knowledge, talent and passion they’ve helped Envato grow to become the massive creative hub it is today,” says Natalia Manidis, Community Manager at Envato. “If our community were a country, we’d be right after the Central African Republic and just before Norway in terms of rank by population. Huge!”

All over the world digital creatives have flocked to the Envato Market sites to buy or sell their digital goods to create stunning projects. These sites include ThemeForest, the largest website theme marketplace, as well as CodeCanyon, AudioJungle and VideoHive, among others.

In December 2013 Envato announced it had enabled 30 creative teams on Envato Market to sell over US $1 million worth of their goods. An enticing Elite Author incentive package encourages community members to achieve milestones offers. At the top spot, a trip to the moon for those who reach $25 million in sales.

Envato Studio, launched in 2013, and has seen over 20,000 jobs completed. The most popular categories for its community of talented professionals are logo design and WordPress, earning the Studio community a total of $1.4 million since launching.

Tuts+ has grown to over 440 courses and 18,500 free tutorials for its community dedicated to learning online. One user details his experience of using Tuts+ to learn web development skills in his spare time before finally gaining the skills to change career. “I began as a truck driver with a wife and three kids working for a small lumber company. I began getting up at 4:30am every morning and studying online about web design,” he says. “Four years later, I make five times what I did before and work at a university.”

Envato created the ‘Envato Stories’ YouTube series to showcase the lives and passions of the Envato community worldwide, across a range of different occupations. The series featured Muhammad Haris, a developer from the ThemeFusion team in Pakistan who used his earnings to build a home for his extended family. The series also features web designer Andy Wilkerson, a ‘Power Elite’ level web designer from Alabama who cherishes the opportunity to work from home with his young family. Irina Trpovska and Ivan Gashevski, known as designer duo Unipen, are based in Macedonia and have found great success on Envato Studio as has one of the site’s top service providers graphic designer Chris Zammit, or zlaws, who is based in Malta. Tuts+ instructor Jordy Vendeput is passionate about filmmaking and teaching others skills in online courses he produces from his home in Belgium.

However they are involved, and whatever they are buying, selling or creating, the team at Envato are in awe of the role the community have played in the one-time startup’s success. As Manidis says, “Thanks to all of our authors and buyers for helping us reach this milestone and here’s to the next 5 million!”

Now with 5 million community members, Envato continues to go from strength to strength, helping people learn skills and have access to the materials they need to get creative.