Common Rejection Reasons for all Marketplaces

We'd like to keep improving our review process, and part of that means making sure that authors understand what happens when an item is submitted for review. 

Reviewers use a combination of pre-prepared review responses and handwritten, personalised notes. The pre-prepared responses handle the most common errors and issues we see in the review queue, and are standardised to ensure that each review is as informative and clear as possible. 

You may see variations of these rejection reasons across all our marketplaces: 

1. Your submission doesn't meet our quality requirements.
   Unfortunately your submission doesn't meet our current minimum technical quality requirements for the category it was submitted to. Please consider taking some time to familiarize yourself with our current library and quality levels of popular items before resubmitting.
   

   Need help understanding our quality requirements? Check out our Quality Guidelines.  



2. Your submission does not have sufficient commercial utility.
   We're not able to accept your submission as it does not provide enough commercial utility. Submissions need to be commercially viable and provide a minimum level of utility for potential buyers. Please consider browsing the marketplace to see what kind of submissions provide more commercial utility.  


3. You have uploaded this submission to an incorrect category.
   This file would be better suited to the [correct category]. Please read the category upload instructions and resubmit this file using the [correct category] upload form. 


4. Your submission is too similar to existing items.
   Though there may not be anything wrong with your file, we either have plenty of this submission type already or there is currently not enough demand from customers for this type of submission.


5. You have resubmitted a previously rejected submission without changes.
   This is a resubmission of a previously rejected submission. Resubmitting without making the required changes or any improvements is not considered acceptable use of the Envato marketplaces and repeated attempts may result in a temporary or permanent suspension of authorship.
   If this item was previously soft rejected, please resubmit your updated files by updating the item directly. If this item was previously hard rejected, it must be changed as required in the initial review or significantly improved such that it qualifies as a new item.
   

   Need more information on the difference between a soft and hard reject? See here.



6. Your submission does not meet our maturity content guidelines. 
   Unfortunately, your file contains inappropriate language and/or explicit sexual, violent or drug-related content, which will need to be removed from all previews and download files. Please remove offensive material from future uploads before submitting them.


7. Your submission contains watermarked images not from Envato sites.
   Your submission appears to include watermarked images or other watermarked assets not from Envato's marketplaces.  Envato policy does not allow non-Envato watermarked assets. You are welcome to use any watermarked preview of an item for sale on the Envato marketplaces within your submission preview, screenshot or live demo, as long as the item is credited. You should not include these assets in your main file. For further information, view this article and consider browsing our various marketplaces, such as PhotoDune, for watermarked assets to use in your submission previews. 


8. Your submission is not suitable for sale due to copyright or intellectual property issues. 
   We're not able to accept your submission as it appears to contain copyrighted content or content in the submission is protected by intellectual property rights and is not allowed to be sold as commercial stock.


9. Your submission has an incorrect description. 
   Your file description was either not relevant, not appropriate, or contained a list of keywords/tags, which is not allowed. Descriptions should briefly and coherently describe what is in your submission.


10. Your submission has incorrect tags.
    Your submission contained no tags/keywords, or contained tags which were irrelevant or misleading. Please add some descriptive tags/keywords to your submission via the dedicated tagging section of the submission form.
    

    For help with effective descriptions and tags, see here.  



11. Your submission requires a release form.
    Your submission requires a release form. For more information about providing signed release forms for images containing recognizable humans and/or locations protected by intellectual property rights, please see our Model and Location Releases page. Please attach your release form(s) in a single zipped folder.

In addition to these general responses, reviewers use pre-written responses to tackle marketplace-specific issues. PhotoDune review responses are viewable here.