Quote - don't quote me on this, but the current feeling amongst economists is that prices of
everything were artificially high for the last 2 yrs., hence prices for everything will
continue to drop thru at least mid-2009, due to international market pressures.

Prices for everything?

Not prices for Poser content that's for sure.  When the marketplace boomed everyone wanted a piece of the action and to get that little piece they began to drastically undercut.  So for a Poser content creator who is trying to compete they may not make even minimum wage on the sales of their products based on time put into creation.  So while other things went up (and still go up) Poser Content has gone drastically down.

Not everyone makes a living at this, or even enough to support their Poser use, how often do you see a vendor stating how they would love to buy something but they can't afford it? They can't afford it because they are not earning enough.  Why?  Think about how often a comment is made that someone is doing it for a "hobby" well when the vendor has a hobbyist mentality they don't really care about their income from it, it's about recognition, satisfaction and a tiny bit of payback to their wallet. 

This has created a market where customers think that $5.00 for 15 items is fair.  Do you have any idea how long it takes to create packs like that? I'll just say they are not created in a day.  Let's say you sell 100 copies (and the average creator does not sell that many) that's $500.00 and RO takes 50% so that's now $250.00 in their pocket.

If the pack took 3 solid long days of work (for me a day of work is about 12 hours - not 8), let's say it's textures, so that's texture creation, MAT creation, packaging and promos.  That's under $7.00 an hour, above minimum wage but based on selling at least 100 copies of a product that gets buried quickly in the MP.  For the average creator they might sale half of that , making their profit $125.00 which is under $3.50 an hour.

Consider that the majority of the RO market vendors are most likely far far below that number because despite the large membership numbers actual buyers are far lower.

So finally the market is reversing itself to a more reasonable pricing structure, not high end prices but hopefully a middle ground that  works for both sides.  Content Creators are also having to stretch those dollars further and they are doing it with far less dollars.

Granted (and thankfully because I'm a shopper too) the prices will never be what they were even 6 years ago when you could expect to pay upwards of $30.00 for a decent Male texture set (what I paid for Kane at DAZ by Syyd for M2) or $30.00 just to upgrade to M2 or $35.00 for The Adventurers, a clothing pack that everyone was using at one time.  Oh and let's not forget the $60.900 price tag on the Changing Ponytail before it went PC, and that was without the add-on expansion which was another $13.00.

so fair pricing has to be done, and a $5.00 minimum is awfully low to be fair to the Creator.  On the other hand though if they earn a bit more it could give them more time to create lower priced small packs and free gifts because they don't have to work quite as hard.

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I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo