"Davo has a point, but in the end, he sells far more through DAZ, and that's the bottom line." Regardless of the monetary bottom line, that line isn't necessarily the absolute bottom. Okay, let's consider... What if, for purposes of hypotheticality, there were a company come along that, with loads of funding, managed to drive DAZ out of business and become the only fish around. What if they made merchants feel at home, comfortable, certain, and with heavy marketing and an instant brilliant quality reputation managed to outshine everyone else for long enough to get all the attention and most of the money... a store and brokerage on the same model as DAZ and a few other sites. Every merchant who sold their made twenty time what they would make anywhere else. Now, what if this company then issued a decree that all of their merchants were required to call their representative contact "Sir" or "Ma'am" at all times in conversation. Further, every Thursday they had to appear on webcam wearing a dog collar and play out the "may I have another" scene to the best of their ability. Then add to that they they pick and choose among your stuff, and if they really like an idea, rather than brokering it, they'd hire someone else to make it cheaper and buy it from the other merchant outright. You become an idea mill, and only 1 in 5 things make it in, and never the best ones. Further, the testing proces gets held up on those products for weeks on end while the other contractor finishes their up and releases so when it's finally rejected it looks like you copied the idea, and no one is the wiser. Five or ten merchants, however, are treated as the teacher's pet and such things are never done to them, so there will always be people to shout out how great they are. That would be a hell of a business plan, especially because those 1 in 5 products that make it through would still make 20 times the sales, and the creators would thus be somewhat in thrall. Nobody does that stuff right now, not even anything like it... but if they did, where would that bottom line be? Now consider that being in a state where you totally rely on someone else... of course nothing would ever get that extreme, but even just part of the above as a possibility is scary. The sales figures are not the bottom line. Independence is the bottom line. Being able to do it yourself and at least get by. Because, to be completely honest, if it came to it, any one of us doing this stuff for a living could go put up a resume on monster and get something that makes more money. If the almighty dollar were the real bottom line, none of us would be doing this. No one but the few big companies that make all the money, anyway. Davo: We'd like to discuss the possibilities, and we have a server. We'd also like to discuss some other possibilities, about maybe setting up a whole different way to do this stuff. Maybe a way to sell without a percentage of sales being charged, even.

I'm the asshole. You wanna be a shit? You gotta go through ME.