Heya John :) THanks, and sorry for the gifts not quite working out for you -- it kinda all I could do in the time I had. I'll do better next time, though I'll be hard pressed to match some of your vehicle work! As for your comments, however.. For one, you're missing the most important question: What will customers pay for?. You can ask people all day long what they wish for and what they would like to see, but after you make those items, how many "wishers" actually purchase the item? Actually, that's precisely what I'm asking except I'm asking it about categories of products, as opposed to specifics -- which is more useful to the greater number of merchants and provides a greater breadth of information. While one can use this information to say "What sells the best", as you noted, that sort of thing can readily be found without much effort. What this allows you to do, however, is compare the "what sells the best" to the "what do they want the most" and also to see what the interrelationships between various areas are. A cursory glance at Renderosity's top sellers is misleading and isn't based on the customer's interests, it just shows what they spend their money on here. What sells well at Renderosity does not sell the same way it does at DAZ or at Poser PRos -- and this isn't about Renderosity specifically, this is about the marketplace as a whole, which, ultimately, is considerably larger than just renderosity or DAZ. And, if the marketplace is to grow inusabuility and function beyond just the present state, the additional items need to be present int he marketplace -- this will help us to see where those potentials lie more clearly than trying to guess them out. Second (whether we like it or not), we can tell what paying customers want, just by looking at the Top Selling products here at Renderosity. Does everybody want these items? Maybe, maybe not... but they are best-sellers. As noted above, that only shows the Rosity picture. DAZ has done a yearly list the last few years as well, but neither of those elements give us an idea of who (in a demogrphics sense) is buying them, what type of person they are, how much disposable income they have, and where they cetegorize themselves -- all of which is essential data to effectively market your products (assuming, of course, you have a location to do so, which is something else I'm working on as ya know). So it's not an effective, efficient, or even reasonably accurate form of market research. THe survey is collecting information and data that can be sorted and broken down into a wide range of possible questions, and can provide answers to those queries better than one mght readily percieve from a glance at it. In closing -- don't knock it until ya see it finished. Aside from doing the obvious stuff (who all uses poser 5 or D|S, how much do people spend on average, etc), it can tell you the more interesting stuff as well -- like what sorts of things are the people who like science fiction vehicles interested in besides scienece fiction vehicles. Pretty handy to know that from a merchant perspective ;) Fromt the customer side of things, it's trading a bit of time now for a reward down the road. What sort of reward and how is that reward gained? THe reward is that things you wanted to see more of will find their way into the market, and at a price that you will tend to prefer to see overall. This is becuase the merchants who pour over the information will be able to see, from the answers that we provide (because I'm a customer too), things that we may not realize individually, as noted above. This will have the effect of increasing the available choices we have inthe marketplace, and potentially increase competition (which is good for us). It also helps us, as a group of people who use a certain class of programs that often are sorta snickered at, see what and where we can grow and develop in order to improve that. It's not something that can happen overnight, but this is the first step in doing that. The second step will likely come around June ;)

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)