Wait! I didn't intentionally twist your name, ChaosOutlaw.  I have no idea what you are talking about with the "insinuation that you are a thief".  That's way too big of a logic leap for me.  Not only was it just a mistake in attention, I had no such thought in my mind.  Just a hasty post. 

ChaosOutlaw.  Got it. 

Yep, I am completely innocent of trying to twist or corrupt your name for any purpose at all.  And everybody who knows me would tell you that if I wanted to insult somebody, I'm much more direct than that.  But then . . .I'm not actually a jaguar either so it wouldn't cross my mind that you were an actual bandit or an outlaw or derive any meaning whatsoever from those words. Actually, I'm . . . uh . . .stupefied that you thought I was trying to do that.

Please, spare yourself the idea that I was purposely twising your nickname.  It's just not so.

I don't really forecast what I'm going to do.  I kinda have to work by my own whims, eh?

It's pretty safe to assume I'll paint more flowers of some kind, though.

Yeah, what Drakmanover said.

It's well worth the cost in effort and money (not that much after all) to establish a webpresence.  No need to wave a magic wand, there are actual physical steps to take.  The path is pretty well worn so it's not like bushwhacking through the jungles of Borneo.

***Chaosbandit:  You make some valid points but at the same time it seems to me your acting like we can wave a magic wand, a personal site appears

***Given the grinding labor I've expended in the last 8 years, I could hardly be accused of thinking or saying that somebody could wave a magic want to create a personal site, LOL.  I've created many of them and it was always a ton of work and a lot of commitment. 

I don't put much stock in magic, I've got a business that works, having started literally with nothing.  I have no idea why you would fantasize that I'm suggesting it's as simple as waving a magic wand.  That's tooooooo funneeeeee!  What I always suggest is that people invest in themselves and do whatever it takes to get the outcome they want.  If someone doesn't want to be a digital artist and make a living that way, they won't need a web presence or store of their own. 

At one time EVERYBODY starts by struggling to establish a website. I well know the cost.  But if a person aspires to create an income from creative work, the sooner they bite the bullet and create their own website/store, the better.  I had to learn everything from scratch myself, aquire programs and webdesign knowledge the old fashioned way. But the longer one is online, the more traffic and attention accrue, hence the value of starting sooner rather than later.  The fact that I started in the very bottom rung means I already KNOW what is required.  I sacrificed a lot and worked very hard to develop my own business, so I assume anybody else would have to do the same thing if they wanted ot invest in their own future.  If you don't want that, don't do it.  For sure, there's no magic about it.

Obviously I also sell through a brokerage, although my own site business brings me 3 times more than I earn from other markets.  And all the while I am cultivating my own presence online, not just building somebody else's business.  So, however hard and expensive and time consuming it is, it's been an invaluable anchor for me to have my own store.  Well worth every bit of the brainbusting work.  But I know about as well as anybody does, what it is to start on a shoestring and painstakingly  build a personal site and store online.  And yep, I still highly recommend making that commitment IF someone plans to develop a part time or full income from their own creative work.

There are no magic wands involved in ANYTHING.  Everybody starts pretty much as the same place. 

***Chaosbandit:  ome of us have a very small target audience with the items we produce.

***Well, I don't know what your goals are.  Given my goals, a small target audience is the last thing I would aim for.  But perhaps a small target audience fits your needs perfectly.  If you only want that, then you are probably right that it makes no sense for you to create your own online presence because you're not aiming to make a living from your creative work.  My remarks are obviously addressed to people who plan to make a living or at least a significant supplement to their income from their products.  So . . .people with extremely limited goals would naturally tailor their efforts accordingly.

I'm sorry, I don't like guessing games.  In fact, I positively hate them.  While I might figure it out by look back in my email, and while I vaguely recall what you refer to, the effort of guessing is not enjoyable to me.  You'll just have to remain incognito.

***Drakmanover:  I once e-mailed you to let you know about a security matter.

***Alas, that puts you among hundreds of choices.

***Drakmanover:  Whereas online and annonymous you say what you actually think without inhibition

***Uh . . .I already do that.  I started doing that in the womb, ha! 
Now see, if I were talking to the President, I'd be SURE to say exactly what's on my mind, especially if I were saying he is an ass.  I would say the same thing to the President as I would say to anybody else.  I'm extra especially uninhibited with authority figures. It sorta doesn't matter to me who I'm talking to, I've got the same content.

Of course this is also why I barely survived childhood.  ***

Drakmanover . . .Are you Joe?  Michael?  Ralph from the UK?

Jose from Brazil?

***Drakmanover:  But don't you like the cloak and dagger illusion of not knowing who your actually talking too. I know I do, LOL.

No, LOL!  I'm a big fan of complete transparency.  I'm in the 99% percentile of directness.  I have no place to hide even if I wanted to, but generally I like to get to the bottom of every mystery and confusion as fast as possible.  But instead of me PMing you, why don't you just write me and do the big reveal?  Although I might guess from your verbal style.

Yes, Lucie is a good bet.

I'm really a supporter of Vendors cultivating their own stores, even if they depend on brokerages.  I like to see the independence of the individual designer/artist preserved.  If for no other reason than it teaches us how to run the business and gives us an alternative so that we don't feel totally at the mercy of other people's choices which might not be in our best interest.  At the very least, I know what the cost of doing business is and I know what I'm paying for and whether I'm getting my money's worth for the marketing.

I wasn't taking anything you said personally, I am essentially in agreement but . . .clarifying a few wrinkles.

Drakmanover . . .thanks for your customer loyalty, first of all.

But I do assume that  people will buy less, that's why I work harder, LOL.

And I fully admit that I know many "hobbyist" customers will not be able to afford to buy from me, even though they might have managed to fit me in their budget in the past.  But I am sticking with my own formula of modest prices and high quality and high usability . . .and completely accept that some people may not be able to afford my work, because I never intend to make it dirt cheap or free.

The last thing I want is for someone who can't pay their bills to spend their rent and food money on graphics.  I'd NEVER recommend that. 

Now c'mon Drakmanover . . .who are you really?

 Also . . .just between you and me . . .there are even greater pressures among the merchants to lower prices than there are to raise them.  We are being squeezed by colleagues and brokerages in both directions at the same time.  It's a rare person who has the confidence to resist all this pressure and keep from zigging and zagging in their prices.  Some Vendors probably assume that the hobby buyers are going to  drop out of their customer pool and that's fine with them, they are aiming their products profiles at professional designers who are used to paying higher prices elsewhere.  And lots of brokerages just feed a constant downward spiral in prices and in terms of giveaways that morally and economically force other Vendors down in price (not me, hahaha!).  I see prices going down as much as they go up.  It's like a chaotic storm I do my best to resist.  Honestly, My prices haven't changed in a very long time and I do not plan to change my pricing formula.  I think I was clear about that.

 I'm sure a lot of hobbyists are not going to be doing their hobbies in the same way.  Low income buyers are probably not going to represent as high a percentage of the market niches as they have in the past.  And I plan accordingly.

First off, I don't get the hobbyist argument for low prices (or as many reselling hobbyists claim to be their right, for free merchandise).  Not at all.  I guess a lot of people won't be doing their hobby for a while, but then it's not their meat and potatoes or health care at risk after all.

Every hobby I've had required me to pay for the cost of the materials and learning I needed to do the hobby:  needlework (quite costly for supplies), any artistic hobby, building miniatures (same), off road biking, dogs, scrapbooking, computers, cooking, sewing - you name it.  There are many huge industries built on manufacturing and marketing stuff for hobbies.  It seems that only with graphics hobbies has there arisen this bizarre idea that everything should be free or very cheap for the special category of hobbyists.  I have never made any distinction in my prices or usage terms between professional designers and hobbyists who buy my work and I have a steady, long clientele in both the hobbyist and commercial use buyers.  I make a modest living at what I do and it has gone up, increasing still this year, albeit not as much as last year. 

I also do not spend money on Poser products to "play with" any more, LOL.  Rather than raise my prices, I have curbed my own spending on useless stuff that will sit around on my hard drive forever and from which I can't make any money myself.  I spend money only on the most useful and valuable tools and services I need in my business.   The Poser market is glutted with duplications and knock offs and built in obsolescence and clumsy products competing with space with really great products.  I haven't bought a Poser product for almost 6 months and I find that I don't even miss it.  The time I might have squandered on Poser products went into building digital painting skills and dreaming up better products of my own and my monthly income from 2d products has increased this year.  I haven't felt a pinch yet, although that's not to say that I won't suffer income reduction during our oncoming economic tsunami.  I imagine I will because I've had many flatt-ass broke times in my life.  But some people will weather this storm and it won't be by producing more of the same old same old and being at the mercy of the big brokerages who don't give a damn about them.  Maintaining and building my own personal site traffic and taking personal care of my customers is a better way of spending my hours than playing with Poser dollies.  If I have to work harder, it's produced a better outcome.  I've always been on this trajectory anyway.  Hobby?  I do not have hobbies.  I have burning passions and goals and I'm perfectly willing to constantly change and raise my game in order to cultivate them and make a living.

Everybody will have to improve to stay in any game.  That's a given.  But that doesn't mean that I will benefit by selling my work dirt cheap or raising the prices either.  There's middle ground.

I do my best to insure a wide range of the highest quality, unique products with high value for a moderate price and frequent structured discounts.  I can't do better with lower prices.  But I CAN do better in terms of quality and appeal.  This economy will surely see a dramatic change in the buying patterns of the public, just as there will be a similar change in the producers in every area.  Some producers and some buyers are going to fall out of the buying cycle.  And some will get better at what they do.  I plan to be in the category of those that get better no matter what. I don't need to get rich, I just need to make money to survive and get better at my craft.

Frankly, there's a hugely bloated marketplace with tons of stuff in it that very few people will buy or even give a second glance.  Just a trip through the mall (which I can tolerate for only the occasional hour) makes me wonder who's going to buy all this crap?  Not me, that's for sure.  99% of it wouldn't add a titch to the quality of my life.  Maybe . . .people will wise up and begin to buy only what really adds to their lives?  Tons of "hobbyists" got into the image resource business on a shoestring and don't yet have the skills and experience to weather a big pinch like the one we're facing.  If you can't produce yourself out of the mountains of crap through compelling prodicts with high qualtiy, an economic downturn means you gotta do something else. A lot of people are going to stop buying stuff they don't really need and a lot of people are not going to be able to continue to flood the market with knock offs and products that aren't worth their price.  For sure that's the grass roots free market at work.  I only have to make sure that my products are worth every penny.  Then I'll get the pennies.

I'm in this for the long haul and my goal is just to keep coming up with something enough people will want to buy . . .no matter what.  I'm giving great value already but the thing that will go up for me in this crunch is the quality and appeal of the products, not the prices.  My prices are not going way down either.  If I find fewer customers, I'll suck it up and just make something even more compelling next week.  And the week after that.  And when the economy changes again, as it surely will, I'll emerge with a whole lot more skill than I have today.  Meanwhile, I gain by spending less on stuff I don't even miss.

That's my answer to the spiralling price pressure in both directions:  I KNOW my products are going to get better, the prices aren't moving much in either direction.

Several of my dogs are rescues and I swear by the people at Chihuahuarescue.org.  They are the greatest. I've gotten 2 of my Chihuahuas from them and they have been wonderful for me.

But it's also sad sometimes.  I have an 11 year old male Chihuahua from a puppy mill who was also dumped because he developed congestive heart failure at 8.  When he was rescued from the dog pound he was really in bad shape, had never lived inside and had also never been on grass.  He was terrified of my yard.  He was unsocialized to other dogs, never been housebroken, afraid to be touched . . .but he was just pleading all the time for attention which he didn't know how to respond to. He had no play instinct at all because he had never played with other dogs.  What a tragedy.  But he's much better now.  His little body is not stiff every time I take him in my arms.  He did a lot of fear biting the first year because that's what these poor little vulnerable dogs do when they are scared.  But no more, he just sticks to me like glue. He's just got doggie PTSD and has reactions that have no relation to his environment, like he's reliving awful experiences. Isolation and rought treatment and confinement just are terrible for these dogs.  But I LOVE him to pieces, he's so sweet.  4 years later, he's still a terrific choice we made.  We have 5 dogs and I'd love to be a foster dog mother.  May still do that, but right now the group is keeping me plenty busy.

I applaud the work you are doing.  I've seen such awful things with dogs, but the adoptees can make wonderful companions and are worth all the hard work.  How people can treat animals as they do is just something I will never understand.

Send this thread back to the top.

I respectfully request that you please provide alternatives for those buying products who cannot download them and/or extract them. 

I understand and empathize with the fact that the network/server/programming issues may be thorny and difficult to troubleshoot because I've directly experienced it myself with my own business.  But that is no reason not to address the customer needs in other ways:  provide a quick refund and promise of future improved service AND/OR manually send the product from an alternate server.  If I, as a small business owner, with myself as sole employee, can do as much 7 days a week, I do not expect less from Renderosity.  The credibility of the business on which many of us, both  Vendors and customers, depend requires no less.

If, as you have said, this problem is restricted to only a "few" downloads, it should not be a big effort to take the appropriate and intelligent business action.

Just opting out for the weekend is not a good business plan.

Thanks, Stacey.

Attached Link: http://www.jaguarwoman.com/jaggraphics.html