AmbientShade posted at 4:07PM Mon, 13 February 2017 - #4297272

Razor42 posted at 10:49PM Sun, 12 February 2017 - #4297265

Lol, the way you've selectively edited the parts of my post that you chose to quote makes it read as though I am against brokerages or anybody selling through them. Thanks CNN.

I'm not against any brokerages or anyone using them. The only place I've ever sold to the general public has been renderosity, and I plan to again. I'm aware of the benefits and the limitations.

I really don't know how I can make what I said anymore clearer. Obviously we come from two very different mindsets.

C'mon Ambient I am not misrepresenting you at all. That is the position you have clearly chosen to express here. My position is that the best way for an emerging vendor to attain success in the Poser/DS content marketplace is to partner with a major marketplace to establish their brand presence and to build momentum to whatever their future direction might be. Establishing a basic foundation to build from, built from the success of the major marketplaces which are the core of this market sector and also the primary sales point for most Poser/DS content purchases. Secondary brand marketing through social media or gallery sites is merely incidental and should be approached with a niche marketing and customer retention outlook for this sector in my opinion. It appears you are actively dismissing this approach and up playing the route of independently creating your own marketplace even so that marketplace itself depends and draws from the existing mainstream markets or going even further and implying that vendors should abandon a targeted market approach all together and take a more generic view on content production and sales selling across diverse target markets. That's your advice and that's fine, to me that approach is of concern and fraught with risk, especially for an emerging content creator let alone someone more experienced with the market nuances.

A new vendor posting on facebook isn't going to have a lot of followers the first week or even the first month. And if they're just posting facebook ads linking back to their product whenever they have a new release then no that probably won't get them very far in a short period of time. How about posting renders of that product to other services like deviant art, or the galleries right here at rosity with a link back to the product page in the rosity store? Very few vendors do that, even when the comments ask for what products are being used here or there. How about offering incentives to your regular customers or exclusive freebies to your own newsletter subscribers? There are a lot of ways to market yourself. You're supposed to be the creative type. But I realize that coming up with excuses is much easier than solutions.

Have you actually tried any of the methods I mentioned or anything other than relying on your brokerage?

Not to make this personal Ambient, but it appears you may be reaching for the tape measure already.

For a start, who said I have a problem in this regard? The marketing people I am currently partnered with have been extremely effective in moving my products to their intended target market and also offered valuable advice in regards to my own development as a content creator and also their own future directions as a business. I really don't have a problem and don't intend on any changes to my current strategy in this aspect of my work. I would actually go as far as to sing its praises as I have found that this partnership has given me more creative freedom then when I was working on a freelance basis with individual clientele. I do have a business Facebook page associated with this side of my work, currently it has close to 400 likes and has been up now for close to 4 years. It's mainly focused these days on General sector news and offering freebies through a custom tab, with no sign in required or like gating in place. I also have a deviant art account which is primarily used to follow others and their art and not really as a promotional tool. My gallery here at Renderosity had well over a 100 images in it, before I removed it for reasons I won't go into here. I am a member in around half a dozen other 3D Art communities around the web and a number of other targeted marketplaces mainly in the gaming sector. I have done freelance work for currently available video games, that have netted myself 5 figure payments. My more distant past was heavily involved in operational logistics, marketing, graphic design and web site design, so am quite familiar with marketing approaches and what paths offer higher risk and lower chance of a profitable return. I have been working primarily as a content developer for DS/Poser for around 4 years now. Last year I spent 4 months on holiday travelling around Europe and working from a laptop at leisure. And may I ask the same of yourself? How many of the marketing methods you mentioned have you tried yourself? What were the results? Are you happy with your current numbers in this sector? Don't worry these are all also rhetorical questions, I thought I should make that clear this time :D. I am sure we can discuss this topic without it becoming so personal or a duck measuring match, can't we?

Everyone marketing themselves online does not need a college degree in marketing or web design or accounting. That's just ridiculous.

No one said they do. But entering into a business type setup with no knowledge of any of those things is clearly not planning for success is it? In the opposite respect are you saying no knowledge in these fields would be a better starting point? Clearly not.