VirtualWorldDynamics posted at 9:06PM Mon, 01 October 2018 - #4336828

Excuse me to reply so late.

@Greymom: Thank you for your support. I confess I do not know how to continue VWD.

@mndsng: Yes, I have a PayPal account, currently with a 0.3 Euros amount. It corresponds to my email address : virtualworlddynamics@gmail.com. You are right, sometimes it is frustrating to work so much on the program and have so low incomes. It is for this reason I started to discuss with Daz3D. In fact, I do not know if Patreon is a fine method for a program like I do not know it Daz is a fine method too.

Thank you for your support, I am really interested by all your ideas.

Thanks for the paypal account reference. While I appreciate that the DAZ/Poser crowd seems to primarily be very budget conscious hobbyists, there are many of us who could defer a 'neat to have' purchase of a 3D shirt or texture-set for a month, for the power and flexibility extensions you've been adding to VWD over time.

I ask the good VWD users in here to consider sending a few bucks (even for a beer) to Gerald via paypal for his continued support of this great tool. just do it... 'nuf said.

Gerald, Given that the Patreon payment model may be a non-optimal fit for you, I wonder that a future model for sales might look something like this (anyone with ideas, please chime in) :

• continue to sell the main product here at rendo, or at a site like gumroad at a worthwhile price ($40?)
• release minimal tweaks and bug fixes free to those customers, as you currently do - through rendo or direct email
• be sure to keep the exact email address of anyone who has ever bought the product.
• sell 'minor' periodic versions/feature updates at gumroad, using email addresses as coupons for the price of the update ($10?) (these would be full updated versions, but would only cost existing users the update price - if they have the coupon...)
• if you can't set up that many 'coupons', peraps generate a single coupon per-update-version, and email your customers that coupon for the gumroad update.
• when you do a big feature update, or enough small updates to warrant a 'new release' at rendo, add it, as a new product, to your rendo store (like p3DO here at rendo).
• you can also sell extended docs, videos, scenes, clothes (small things that rendo wouldn't carry), at gumroad for fair prices ($5 to $50 range, probably).

The big idea is to sell your main package through the usual vendor(s), and then create a simple 'channel' that folks can use to easily buy your ongoing feature updates as they see fit, as well as buying additional docs, or scenes and other small products and utilities that might occur to you.

I'm sure special cases would occur that aren't so simple, but most folks would probably pay $10 for an update (feature or performance) every-so-often, and they might also be happy to buy extended tutorials, scene-files, etc.

I hope we can figure out a way to let your users get a good base-product and pay you for the work you continue to invest in updates/fixes, and keep it simple enough to manage.

Lastly, I mention Gumroad (gumroad.com) as a possible co-vendor site, but there may be other similar sites that have comporable offerings (anyone know of any?), and I believe Gumroad supports product-related forums and product web-services as well. It looks like these can be set up over time, once a product is setup. I don't have any affiliation or loyalty to them, I merely buy things there sometimes, and would consider the site for seling my own stuff. It would seem to me that selling feature updates at Gumroad would not be in conflict with selling the main product at DAZ or Rendorosity, but I could be wrong.

You deserve money, and we need your brilliant tools. We can make this work!

cheers!

mindsong (mndsng here at rendo...)