The economics of selling Poser stuff are rather weird. If you sell real items like clothes or cars, each unit you sell has a base price to manufacture, which is carried through into the selling price. With a Poser model or texture or whatever, once you have made it you have no further costs. It may take you more man-hours to create an elaborate item than it does for a simple one, but once made, there are no per-unit costs. This has an odd effect on pricing strategy. As a merchant, your only aim is to maximise your income in dollars. Let us say you make a character pack and price it at $20. Those who see it in the marketplace will fall into three groups: A) "I'm not interested" B) "I like it, but it's not worth that much to me" C) "I'll buy it" If 100 people fall into group C, your income is $2000. Of the rest, you don't know how many are A and how many B. If you price it at $10, the number in B goes down and the number in C goes up. If there are now 200 purchasers, your income is the same. If there are now 300 purchasers, you make $3000! You might analyse, "I put so much work into this that selling at less than $20 would be ridiculous". But if the only objective is to bring in more money, the lower price point might be in your interest. On the other hand, if you get only 50 more sales, you are less well off. So how does one find the right price point? It would be helpful if one could see the number of sales made by each item in the marketplace. Then you could get some idea by comparing similar products. If you found from observation that sales of similar character packs priced at $10 were usually more that twice as great as those priced at $20, but those priced at $5 were not twice as great as those priced at $10, then you would have a good idea as to how to maximise your return. Of course, the quality of a product will increase the sales as well, but the principle is actually independent of quality. If you have a very good package at a bargain price, the shift from B to C will be even greater. So even though you would think that the higher quality is worth a higher price, your economic interest might still be better served by selling cheaply. Finally, the financial interests of the site are to maximise the revenue of ALL sales, in order to increase the R'osity commission. Therefore it is in the interests of the site to help merchants find the pricing point that maximises sales. Therefore it is in the interests of the site either to publish the sales figures for each item, or to make their own analysis and make the results available.

Interesting analysis. Sharen

!!!!!!Exactly right!!!!!!! Is R'osity listening? They clearly have the technology available, because the Freestuff already lists number of downloads. It can't be hard to change a few variables!

yes- interesting one indicator for the "b" class might be how many times it is added to peoples wish list. also- you have to think of the next product that you will release- a cheeper price point now will bring in even more sales on the next product, or less. word of mouth and product satisifaction are the big keys to repeat sales. in for a penny, in for a dollar :)

There is no way that I would want my sales figures published on Rosity Daz or anywhere else for that matter. I can only talk for myself, I price my clothing packs on two things, number of hours it took me to make, and price the market will bear. The natural tendency for new merchants is to underprice their work. Yes you may get a few more sales, but in the long run you are defeating the purpose because it no longer becomes worth it to do the stuff, you devaluate your work and the work of others. The other thing to consider is that you really have a short window of time to sell the product, because you quickly get buried (especially here at Renderosity with the high volume of product). My personnal policy is I try to give a high quality package at a fair price, if people think it is too high they have the right to stay away from it, I will not under price my work.

DominiqueB has a good point, I can't say to much because we don't sell here. It takes sometimes way more hours to produce a product then most even begin to realize, and we do also base our price on our hours worked, but not that alone, of course what the market expects and what about free updates, more hours. So it varies. But I can understand what you say also Phantast, I just don't know if it is really what merchants want. But I don't know, like I said I don't sell here. Sharen PS: does RDNA do this? gotta go look

I have recently dropped the prices of most of my products here at R'osity in almost half from what they were originally sold at, and have not found a significant change in sales (much to my surprise). So to me it seems that "if someone likes a product, they will buy it"....and the cost is a lesser factor in it. It seems to me that since we are primarily dealing with hobbyists here, that the market may fall into 2 catagories...those who dont want to spend anything and look into the freestuff sections (I did that for a long time), and those who feel they can spend some money, and would buy something if they like it (because honestly....anythng under $20 in the marketplace is not a hard purchase for someone shopping with a credit card....I know I start to second think things when it gets higher that the $20 mark) But thats just my view. Rawnrr

Im only a buyer but i agree to one thing Rawnrr said, if i realy like something , the price is not the point.

In concept, I can see where you are coming from. But I just see the idea of publishing sales as a problem. First off, nobody needs to know how much I, or anyone else, sells of a product. Secondly, I could see this having a negative effect on either decent products that get buried, or new merchants who aren't established. If you look back through the catalog, and see two similar products. Say you are new, and don't know that one of them is from an established merchant, and one is from a new merchant. You might like them both, even lean towards the newer merchants. But then you see that only 7 people bought the one product, and 700 bought the other. What are you going to conclude? I also agree that the price isn't as important to me as the quality and usefullness. But then I started buying years ago when the market prices were higher all around. Those days you wouldn't find a good texture set for much less than 20. Never anything at 5. So I still tend to speculate that if it is too cheap, it isn't as good. I know this is not always the case, but people do sell themselves short. Charge what it is worth, not what you think you have to. If you spent 100 hours on a project, don't charge 5 bucks for it. You will never make it worth your time.

Good Point RealitysPoison, good point...Sharen

Cost is a factor, but only to a point. I've bought some things that I wouldn't normally have bought, but it was a great deal, so what the heck. Quality, though, is the overriding factor. There are a few vendors who charge higher than average prices, but I'll snap their stuff up because I know I'm getting a great value, even at the higher price. Most vendors I'll decide upon on a product-by-product basis, factoring price vs. quality vs. versitility. Other vendors I'll buy only if it's a very good price. (And a few vendors I'll never purchase from due to low quality or horrendous service, but thankfully there's very few in that category.) I've also seen some incredible deals for well-crafted items that I absolutely don't want, so I haven't purchased. I'd hate to have a public, or even merchant-only, area that showed how much everyone sold. If people want to share the information, they can post their sales info themselves. There's a lot of ugly politics that can happen if the sales information is distributed. While I know that most vendors are good, honest people, jealousy and envy are very human traits and could spill out with such public disclosures. Cheers!

My pricing strategy comes down to one point: How much would I pay for this. If I had a project that needed a specific item, that price would go up. But I would guess that, in this market, most products are bought because someone thinks they are cool and want to mke a picture with it. So I ask myself how much I would pay for "this is cool! I want it!"... There have been many items I thought were cool, but I passed on them because they were out of my "impulse buy" price range. On the other hand, there have been several Platinum club items I have bought that I would never have looked twice at if they hadn't been so dang cheap!

I'm just a buyer, not a merchant, so perhaps I shouldn't join this thread, but ... In theory, Renderosity could publish general sales data without compromising merchant information. You know, something like Victoria 3 clothing sold X units last month at an average price of $Y, while Stephanie textures sold Z units at the average of $T. It could be useful for identifying trends, especially for new merchants. Or, it could inspire merchants to try to start new trends, if they realize certain areas are underdeveloped. Overall however, merchants should price their products based on their own evaluation of its relative value and associated costs. I'm like a lot of other people -- I'll buy it if I like it (as long as I haven't overspent this month). Just my two cents..

You have to think of it in terms of business, even if at first it is a hobby. There is the cost of the puter (1gig of ram and a good openGL card ain't cheap), the software and it's updates (modelling app, texturing app). I use Lightwave and in canadian dollars ouch! And time is a precious commodity, we all know there is never enough of it. And even though making clothes started out as a hobby, a challenge to see if I could do it, I will honestly tell you that testing and ajusting blend zones sucks! by the time the product is ready for prime time I can barely stand to look at the mesh :-)

I do not know, I decide the price of the product few minutes before uploading it. What I know is that the product that had more sales is the most expensive, well I have a new one that is more expensive, but is too new for the statistics. What I think is that the quality is the most important factor.

I'm a buyer. You have to please ME not yourself. If you think you are selling yourself short by pricing too low, think again. If your product is good and took a lot of time and care to make, then it deserves to be sold...not languishing in someone's wishlist because it's a bit too expensive for the current market. The deal is that there is a LOT out there. This is a buyer's market. When you compare your product to others you have to take in an entire range of products..not just the specific type you make. The sheer quantity of stuff available is mind numbing and you're in competition with ALL of it for my $.

Rendo won't ever start publishing sales figures because they're confidential. End of story. The basic analysis of pricing strategy here is good, but there are additional factors that complicate it. For a start, most products have a limited window of opportunity to make sales, as has already been pointed out. But there are also things like relative pricing strategy. Say you build a huge, super high quality product and you sell it at $5. Since $5 is the Rendo minimum price, when you build a medium sized, pretty good quality package a couple of months later, what do you charge for that? You don't have any room to charge something cheaper so you wind up charging the same price. Then potential buyers look at it and say "Why would I spend $5 on that when I'm used to paying the same price for bigger better packages?". So having set a cheap price on your earlier product damages sales on your later product.

Then their is the Daz $2 and PhilC and RDNA also sell stuff for dirt cheap. How many people buy this stuff because it is so cheap? I think PhilC does pretty well, his server gets slow with everybody downloading it.

As well as price as discussed, I now look at how is selling an item. I recently bought a V3 item from another store, that merchant is gone, no support, not selling the item anymore nada. great product but it was pricey. Now I look at who is selling an item before I buy. Not to say a new merchant wont make a sale with me if they have a great product but now I'd rather buy something cheap from a starter merchant and then support them by buying the expensive product later. Kinda goofy shrug I'm more inclinded to buy 4 items from a merchant at $5 than 1 at $20, more stuff for the buck. however if the same stuff was in a single product at $20 I'm less likey to buy it at all. irational but I've noticed my pattern in buying. I also mostly buy on sale. I'm a buyer not a mechant so what do I know. (runs off to his Poser 12 step meeting)

I have tried to price some of my items 5$ to see if that would boost sales. One of them is my so far worst selling item (beats me, I really think it's cool) whereas my Kitchen which is so far my most expensive thing has sold quite well. I agree with the "it's quality that matters" statement. And also the "it's so cheap that it must be crap" thought. Daz started this 1.99 trend. But when people thing the platinum items are cheap (and they ARE) they forget that they had paid a lot of money to even be ABLE to buy Platinum stuff. RDNA's Real Deals are another of the "impulse buys" And it works L I've bought a lot of Real Deals. Quite a few of them where I wouldn't have bought them if they weren't so darn cheap. Sure it's a hobby and most Renderisians are hobbyists. But all hobbies cost money in some degree. We're shooting ourselves in the foot (feet?) if we dump the prices too low. In the end the really GOOD modelmakers will sell somewhere else where they can get paid and all that's left here is the mediochre stuff.

I agree that people should not undervalue their items. However, if it is over $20, that's out of the impulse buy category for me. So I try to make smaller packages I can sell cheaper, instead of mega-packages that sell for more.

The only time I by anything around 20 dollars is if the file in near 25 mb too- I want bang for the buck! also except for a very few- this is but a hobby- Crafts never sell at a price for material and time, never. ----------------------------------------------------------

If the filesize is important, then I am completly lost. I make meshes with very low polygon count and use texturing that doesn't require huge textures for good quality, so my packages are below 3 mb no matter how complicated they are, and 80% of the size are textures.

Phantast, You forget that the merchants are COMPETING! There is no way any of them want the others to know their business. You are looking at it from a scientific, theoretical viewpoint. There are more than 2 categories of buyers. I produce comics and sell them. If I need an prop to get thru the next 5 pages, I do not mind spending 10% of the profits I am making on this item. If this prop can be used over, the more chance I will buy it. If it has properties of modularity, even better. Traveler seems to be the king of modularity. His products are often configurable, so 1 purchase gives me 5 different versions, all usable at different times in a story. Ajax stresses modularity, also. To me the Platinum Club, PoserStyle, Trav's Props Club, etc. are good deals, because I need a lot of stuff. Plus I am beginning to make my own props and other support items. I may be selling at some point in the near future. This is a good thread, though. Merchants can all learn something from each other and the >2 categories of buyers. my 2cents -fritz

An excellent thread. But I have to disagree with this idea that the number of hours it took to make something is a factor in the price. My last project took 3 months to make and sells for $19.95. My current one has so far taken 9 months and will sell for $19.95. Does the person buying give a hoot how long it took me to make it? No way. A typical buyer looks at 3 things - price, usefulness and quality, (and if it's known, the reputation of the merchant). The price and usefulness will be obvious. The quality is an unknown factor, unless you have other products ny that vendor, or someone else to tell you if it's any good. I'm all in favor of anything that helps the buyer to make up his mind. Like downloadable help files, reviews, lots of sample pics, etc. I always price for the market. It's usually not difficult to find comparable products to price from, no matter what you make. Although, I feel strongly that if a product is good, useful and well-made, it will sell anyway... unless the price is totally off the wall. Another point I'd like to bring up is this. I have no idea what happens in the rosity marketplace, but at DAZ (and most other places), a merchant who sells through someone else has to pay royalties to the site. So the statement 'If 100 people fall into group C, your income is $2000' is a bit misleading. Out of $2000, a merchant is more likely to see $800-900 after royalties. The up side of it is that items can and do sell for quite a long time after the initial availability. Why do you think DAZ cleared out a whole bunch of stuff from their store last year? Because a lot of it wasn't selling and the good stuff was getting buried under piles of non-items. Another point on selling is that if you plan on making expansions for a product, it's a good idea to keep the price as low as possible, so people will be more inclined to purchase the initial product and subsequent expansions. And I agree with kawecki, if filesize is important, we may as well all give up and go home. I use every trick in the book to keep my stuff low in file size without sacrificing quality. mac

PS Everything spit said is 100% on the nail. mac

Actually this topic was brought up a few months back by none other then myself. I had all the equations, weighted for time (assuming that a merchant here longer had a better known name, not always the case). The one piece missing was the numbers. This is where it got sticky. If you went on a item by item basis then you essentially got to know what each merchant was making, not a good thing. If you went by catagory, you lost the aspect of a well known name being able to charge more. The numbers got skewed. If you went by catagory, price and number sold, you could get close or extremly far off. It basically came down to rosity stating that the numbers would never be published and I support that. Without the number, the analysis would never be done. Try the alternative, which actually works a little bit better. Browse the hot selling items for a while. Pick out your top selling item in dollars and see where it falls in the hot list. THis might take you some time to find it. Now once you have it located, take a look at the pages right before and after your item. Note the ones that would seem to fall into the same catagory. Take a note of thier prices. If the ones higher then yours are priced lower, they may be a key issue. If they are made by well known people that is another. Once you see these relations you can make a more informed decision on pricing. Granted this only works once you have a few items out there and they are actually selling.

Thanks, KattMan. I should have thought of that method. I'm planning on releasing something soon, and I was planning on looking at other "comparable" items to get an idea of price. I also think about what I buy and why. Would I buy it? Would I find it versitile enough to use in different projects and easy enough to use and to modify? (I don't want my pictures to scream, "I got the fad of the week item!") And the file size better be really big and have lots of files, even if it's a bunch of 1kb readmes. ;-)

Maclean Your dead nut on about price, usefulness and quality, except for file size- that is the 'fourth' criteria. I look at 2 products, one is 15 dollars and another is 20. Both made by reputable ppl. The 15 dollar one has say one temple and is 5 mb, the 20 dollar one has a temple and trees and benches, and is 22mb. Guess which one I buy. File size dosn't say anyting about quality, but it is a guide to quanity. When I see a throne for 9 dollars it seam a little high to me for just the one item. Marforno is a great example of what I'd buy over some of the other building makers, he has more "stuff" in his packs then just one item. So, as the ladies say, size does matter,lol.

Look at sites like PoserPros or PW. One time membership and you get all the market place stuff. I like what's here at osity, but gee, its kinda spendy by about 2000 percent and I don't know the quality of some of it. I would like to see osity go to a different scheme. Lower prices means more downloads and more promotion. We just aren't seeing that right now. Consider the number of daz items that we see here in the forum and gallery compared to the number of osity items. Quite frankly, I would rather the daz platinum club to the price of some of the items here. I think its a crying shame that the members here don't shop here. But, Spit has it right.

Guys, do you know what deflation is? If artists are forced to undercut each other to make a sale, then nobody will survive and you'll all go back to buying at TurboSquid. Basically I look at how long it would take me to make something and that becomes part of its value. I also look at how much quality is involved and that becomes a major factor. I won't buy shoddiness or things which I'll have to rework... no matter how cheap they are or how much is included in the package or on the site. If the texture is over-sized and uncentered, what good is it? If details are painted on rather than modeled, then the model will look bad in lighting other than the promo shots... and who wants to duplicate promo shots? As to comparisons? If this castle is $20 and this other castle is $60, I don't really care if the more expensive castle has 42 MAT files for the windows (I hate bloatware). I do care if this castle is uniquely-styled or is flexible in its parts... if I can make 20 or more different looking castles from it, the more expensive model becomes the better value. Carolly

Carolly, Making the comparisions by browsing the hot items list helps with that. Just take a look at it. If the hot items are the same price or even more than what you were thinking of offering you may want to see about adding value rather then reducing price. Perhaps those other items had a better advertising campaign. Check it out, did that merchant have banner ads, front page articles and posts in the Product showcase forum all advertising it? If so, perhaps that is the route you should take. Learn by example, watch what others do. You can even take this to the point of viewing the ads to see how they are laid out, how flashy are the promo images, etc. It all has an affect. The hot selling items list is one of the best ways currently to judge the market.

I do not think that price is that much of a problem! I am more interested in quality. When I buy clothes for a particular model, I do expect them to fit without having to make too many adjustments. It would be good to have a hi res template included with all models. I know I could use UVMapper but if I am paying decent money for the product I want to have a few things to help me as well. A model with 20 textures is not IMO a good reason for paying more unless the model is very exceptional. I would prefer to have 1 texture and a hi res template to develop my own textures. I have had problems recently when buying from the US (I'm from the UK). When buying items over a certain value by post I now incur import tax etc.. and extra delivery charges. In some cases this has almost doubled the cost of the item. Quality is more important to me than cost. I also think that you (YOU being anyone creating items for sale) will make it difficult in the future if you start dropping your prices just to get people to buy. Price it at a price you woul buy it then once a quarter or month have a sale, reduce the items price for a period of time or have a bargian basement where you put items that are X amount of months old. Some people will buy straight away because they have to have it, others will wait to see what else comes out by then you may have introduced your sale price or moved it to bargain basement. Try some of the schemes from a "normal shop" try BOGOF (buy one get one free). Can be good if you allow them to buy a full model at the right price and allow them to have a LE version of any other model. The LE mopdel may also promote that model and they then buy the full version of that model etc...

{Those who see it in the marketplace will fall into three groups: A) "I'm not interested" B) "I like it, but it's not worth that much to me" C) "I'll buy it"} You left out the fourth group of people: d) I'll make my own version of the model/ texture, give it away for free, effectively undercutting any profit the other merchant would have made, and, in turn, bathe in the praise as people call me "generous" and "nice" for making this item. Heck, if anyone says anything, I can even go on the defensive and say I that my item isn't a copy, but that I was "insprired" by the sale item. It may not be original, it may not be very good quality, but it's FREE, so people don't have to spend money on the other one. Merchants can argue on and on about how "people will buy an item if it's good quality". But, that's complete bull. Other people (including the posters above) rightly point out that cost is the main factor. Why purchase something when the free version does almost as good a job? Do you really have to spend $20 just to get an extra template or texture map? Do a comparison- suppose a merchant puts up a set of poses for free and a set for sale. (Of course, we won't get into the fact that the sale item will take 2 weeks to be go through testing to be available to people and the free item will be available the next day, thus beating the sale item to the marketplace by 12 days.) The for free set will have, what, 10 or 20 or 30 times more downloads? Why? Same merchant, same quality. But, one is FREE! This place was built on free stuff, remember? Why are we even talking about making money in this forum?

A lot of ideas here are correct, not least Spit as the buyer - the customer is king. Absolutely. And because of the incredible volume of stuff going now and the competition, it's a buyer's market. Quality matters. Pricing matters. Presentation matters. Reputation maters. None of this excludes anything else, all of it is true. I make my buying decisions based on many factors. Sometimes something looks really good and I want it, but I refuse to buy it because of too high a price. I will on principle avoid it because I HATE being taken for a ride by a merchant. My worst thing is getting ripped off. And that nonsense about low prices undercutting anything - hogwash. There is some GOOD stuff at low prices out there, selling like mad and making good money for the sellers. All power to them - after all the market now is enormous compared to just a few years ago. How many members does Rosity have? Over 150 000 if I understand correctly. That's a lot of bucks floating around..... But remember, you need to offer merchandise that somebody wants...... it won't sell, regardless of how perfect the modeling and texturing, if no one wants it. Or if there are already 10 like it in the MP (or freestuff). You need to offer something new, something better, something amazing. This after all applies to all markets in all situations where competition is free. It's my money - convince me to part with it, otherwise forget it. :] Fish

"The only time I by anything around 20 dollars is if the file in near 25 mb too- I want bang for the buck!" Let's see, resize all the textures in Photoshop to 4000 x 4000, add a little noise, resave as Quality 12 JPEG, Gee, my Zip is over 25 Megs! And isn't any better! And here I've been trying to make mesh with the lowest poly count that will do the job and size my textures to be as efficent as possable. (Sorry geogress, but I just had to jump on that!) I always try and give the customer a good value for the money, I figure they will remember that when it see my next item. People who never by any of my stuff because they think the prices are too high will just never know what they are missing. ;-) I always try an

Jim: You have expressed the idea much better than I've done.

you said; "And here I've been trying to make mesh with the lowest poly count that will do the job and size my textures to be as efficent as possable." and that is good :) but do you really not understand what I am saying? or are you trying to get 2 or more product packages for sale? you want my money, it had better be worth it. a single chair or throne for 8 or 9 dollars is not worth it. period!!! I'd make it myself. a buyers market remember

My throne chair is for only 7.00$.....

geocress, I understand what you're saying, but I think you're expressing it incorrectly. What you want is not a large file SIZE, but a large FILE, which is a slightly different thing. In other words, you want value for money expressed in terms of more items, larger number of props and pieces to play with, etc. You DON'T want a large download with 2 textures that have been resized and jazzed up the way Jim described. As Jim also pointed out, low poly count (with reasonable quality) is the name of the game, but there's one major reason for it, above and beyond file size. Quite simply, high-poly models cause poser to run like treacle. Add a high-poly castle, 2 vicki 3s and some clothes, and you may as well go watch paint dry while you're waiting for poser to show signs of life. I'm currently working on a room which has a basic room figure, plus walls, doors and windows. I'm well aware that to create a lifelike room, a user will want to add at least 10 or 12 doors and windows, plus textures. That's maybe 15+ figures, so it HAS to be low in poly count. And that's before the vickis and clothes enter the room. I agree completely on the value for money aspect. I just don't think a large file size necessarily guarantees that. A name like 'Jim Burton' on the product is a better guarantee. Fishnose, 'It's my money - convince me to part with it, otherwise forget it' Absolutely! Anyone who can't fulfil that basic rule of the marketplace has no right to complain if they don't sell anything. That rule is as old as the hills, and more valid now than ever, since the 'King Customer' can browse the entire world and choose what to buy. mac

Here are a couple of ideas that might be worth considering for merchants and the MP staff. As a consumer, I have a fair amount of experience here, and I use the Wish List constantly to "bookmark" anything which strikes my attention (currently 120+ itmes on it and constantly changing). Of course I can't afford them all, but they all have a reason for being on my list. I think it would be great for merchants to know how many people have their items on wishlists (not the identity of the people, just the count). It might help them decide whether to discount a slow-selling item which appears on many wish lists, because clearly there is an interest in the item, but not enough to motivate a purchase. But discounting merchandise without communicating that price change to potential buyers is pretty much a waste. For example,in reading this thread, I have learned about two merchants who have discounted items that I never knew about, and will now have to go check whether they are of interest by looking through their entire catalogs. There must be a better way to tell consumers about a "sale" than to force them to wade through thousands of MP sale items each week, or just stumble across announcements in the forum. If, for example, my wishlist showed what was "on sale" or recently discounted in RED or as a second column next to the "original price", I might be highly motivated to put that itme in my cart immediately. As it is now, I have to memorize the prices and scan my list to see if any bargains pop up, and believe me, I do shop for the best prices when I can, and only pay "full price" for an exceptional item, but will frequently be motivated to buy an item of marginal interest if it is on sale. I seriously think this is worth considering as a two-pronged approach to helping merchants know when to discount, and helping consumers know when something they might want is being discounted. Now, I'm off to see what bargains I can find in ernyoka1's and Rawnrr's stores. :-0

I certainly second Ronstuff's suggestions. It's easy to find out from Rendo "What's hot" and "What's new", but locating sale items, recently discounted items, or even the cheapest items in a certain category is a haphazard enterprise at best. Too bad this thread's going to be buried in another day or so. Even though the original topic was about disclosure of sales data to help merchants' profit margin, I found this exchange between merchants and customers to be very enlightening. I think I'll just stick to being a buyer....

ronstuff - I think that's a good idea and I put your suggestion up in the back room to see what the admins think. Thanks!

My biggest pet peeve is to find something I really would love to have stuck in a giant package of stuff I have no use for. There's something now I'd dearly love to buy (and I would even though it is stuck in a pack of stuff I have little interest in) but, upon reading closer, there is a requirement is to buy both that package plus an expensive other package of clothes in which I have zero interest. I won't buy if I feel like I'm involved in bait and switch (and, frankly, I sometimes feel like that with Daz offering an appealing item that requires a much more expensive item for it to work). Much nicer when the vendor makes items that stand alone, at least for me. I understand that Daz wants to sell their higher end items... but not all of us have endless funds. The longer I am in this hobby, the more careful and more particular I am. I like to buy from vendors I know or at least from vendors who offer free stuff that shows me I can depend on their quality if I buy something from a new vendor. I'd love notification of sales. I hate finding out I've missed out on a short sale because I didn't happen to be at my computer during the right hour. But I don't suppose there is any system that would please everyone.

I resorted to selling Poser items a while back when I was unemployed, and needed to find a way to buy a Christmas present for my ex-girlfriend. I'm still trying to wash the dirt off. I still feel dirty. -ScottA

I don't know why you would feel dirty. It is simply commerce. It is as honest or dishonest as the people involved. Nothing to feel untidy about.

Why feel dirty because of Poser sales????! This is a fascinating discussion. I have over $2000 worth of stuff in my Wishlist. Once in a while I realize that something is actually on sale, and then go finally buy it. Sometimes something new comes out and the introductory sale makes it just right. If it's $10 and under I am much more likely to buy it right away, otherwise to my Wishlist/bookmark list it goes. What Ronstuff suggested is actually how the Daz/Poserpros Wishlists work. In red they let you know if the item you're interested in is on sale. It's teriffic. Presentation is important. I like to see the product from different angles to get a good idea of what it really looks like.

Right, Caly, but an important difference in what I am suggesting here is that merchants should have access to a database of their own products and how many wishlist "hits" each product has. As a merchant on Poser Pros, I can say that they do not have that feature. I think it would help merchants in several ways. Sales figures alone do not tell a merchant much about the desirability of their product because there are too many different reasons why a product might not be selling. At least this would give them an indicator of general interest, and they can make other decisions based on that feedback, or perhaps develop other products that match a high interest level.

I definitely think that Merchants should be given a Wishlist tally. "Your item X is on 5,600 Wishlists, while your item Y is on 22,000 Wishlists". It would help merchants make decisions indeed, like perhaps lowering item Y's price for a few days... ;) Works for me as a customer. :D

I do the same thing. Long wishlist, check it every day to see if the total has changed. If it has, I dig thru it to find the item I can perhaps identify as having a new price. A boring task to say the least. Excellent idea, Ron. :] Fish

One phrase: Price elasticity of demand. There are only two factors that affect profit in a marketplace. The price elasticity of demand is one and the unit cost is the other. Clearly with Poser products, the unit cost is low (and can probably be approximated in some cases by zero). And that tends to amplify some problems with the standard formula, as the PED may actually vary a bit with price, possibly not even linearly. So, if a 10% drop in the price does not increase sales by at least 10%, then you're going in the wrong direction for most Poser items. But you may find that a 20% increase does result in a more than 20% decrease in sales. You're working blind on a curve you can't see, and the only way to get data points is to experiment with pricing a bit. And the resulsts can vary, depending on promotion and other things that actually affect PED. If your item is the only one of its kind, you will be able to sell it for more than some item that there are 40 or 50 of in the marketplace. Presentation can matter, too. Selling two items at half price might not bring in as many sales as a one-cent sale (buy one get the other for a penny). And, for what it's worth, I use a lot of freebies, make props and morph my own characters, but will pay for good character meshes like Dina. My wishlist right now is topped by Vicky 3 and will stay that way until I can afford her and a bunch of morphs for her.