I have recently considered becoming a Vendor, so thank you for the helpful advice. I guess my main concern is that all my skills revolve around Poser and V4, but I can see that a number of Vendors have jumped ship to Genesis. If back sales are important, would it be best to spend months now acquiring the necessary skills to focus on Genesis or jump in immediately with V4 stuff ?

It depends on where you are planning to sell.  Genesis is very strong at DAZ, at Rendo it looks like G2 and V4 are about even, looks like G2 may be gaining but I haven' talked to anyone about that since the summer. I see several vendors I talk to on occasion consistently putting out G2 content. You can still do really well with V4, but also consider your overall skills. Some people like to wit till they are ready to be a major player, others start early and go through more growing pains. To me some of the growing pains (low sales and mistakes) would have been too discouraging if I was trying to be a vendor, so I waited till I felt I could be decently competitive for one of the top seller spots.  Back catalog matters, but it still needs to be quality product.

Personally, I don't worry so much about developing a back catalog, I focus on making each new product being the best  I can make at the time, and the back catalog just builds over time.  I noticed that every time I take shortcuts on a product, I regret them, every time I go all out, it pays extra. Also my personal focus is on high detail, closeups, so I found a tactic that works for a combination of what I like to do and what sells. It is definitely not the only way to approach being a successful vendor.

Anyhow, my recommendation is to let your skill be the determining factor about when to become a vendor. Another things that worked well for me it to not be in a rush to become a vendor, keep learning, make my own stuff and freebies, and let your freebie users, or the brokerage encourage  you to become a vendor. Then you know for sure you're getting close to being good enough... and not getting repeatedly rejected or having bad sales (like 5 sales for two weeks of effort) is a plus. It is hard to stay confident and enthusiastic about what you are doing if you are getting a lot of rejection. This is also a bit tailored to my own personality - I tend to be really hard on myself where I'm always on the verge on running myself into the ground, so a lot of external negativity would not be a motivator to work harder, it would 'finish me off' so to speak.

So in my case roughly by my third product I was inching into top vendor category, but I also prepared to be a vendor for about 3 years (some of it while I was still working full time, so it wasn't 3 years of full time work)...

Soo... Individual mileage may vary.

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Renderosity Store  Personal nick: Conniekat8
Hi, my name is "No, Bad Kitteh, NOO", what's yours?