is the market more in demand for Poser7 or PP12 stuff?

is it worth it to do the exclusive thing?

thanks!

the weather is making it a hardship to get to my dayjob. but my rent doesn't care about that >.<

my 51 bday coming up, working from home is toootally attractive option.

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

I hear people make a living out of it, but I wouldn't give-up a day job unless I already had enough money coming in off it.
But working from home is great if you can find something to pull it off successfully.

is the market more in demand for Poser7 or PP12 stuff?

I'm at the point where I pretty much have everything I need. I mostly buy scenes and props now. (How many bras does Vicki NEED?) I will say that I do look at which version the content was designed for, because I believe I get better features and textures in those pieces that do not feel they have to be backwardly compatible. If it's Poser 7 and it's what I need, it's not a deal breaker, but if it's between something touting Poser 7 and Poser 10, 10 wins every time.

As a minor content merchant, I'm not sure it's something you can build an income on. I've just got one item that I made (for myself) and then decided to sell. It's a male character, so I'm sure that has impacted my numbers. However...Over the 5 year life of the product I will candidly tell you, I've sold about 175 copies of it. It's an $8.95 piece, and I get 50%, so you can compute what I've made on it. I'm sure that the vendors who are better at it than I am, who post more products, and who target V4 make a lot more, but for most I'm pretty sure it's not a living.

My view is much along the lines of basicwiz, I have more than enough content for V4 and I don't use Genesis so I am not really in the market for clothes although I might purchase the odd M4 outfit if it appeared. Much more in buying scenes, props and materials. I am also more likely to buy something that was made with the latest versions of Poser in mind, I use PP2014 so I want to get the benefit as much as possible.

I do spend a lot each month on content but some of the prices are crazy and I really don't see how vendors make any real money but then I have never been a vendor.

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 - Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU . The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

i no haz pp14.

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"is the market more in demand for Poser7 or PP12 stuff?

I'm at the point where I pretty much have everything I need. I mostly buy scenes and props now. (How many bras does Vicki NEED?) I will say that I do look at which version the content was designed for, because I believe I get better features and textures in those pieces that do not feel they have to be backwardly compatible. If it's Poser 7 and it's what I need, it's not a deal breaker, but if it's between something touting Poser 7 and Poser 10, 10 wins every time.

As a minor content merchant, I'm not sure it's something you can build an income on. I've just got one item that I made (for myself) and then decided to sell. It's a male character, so I'm sure that has impacted my numbers. However...Over the 5 year life of the product I will candidly tell you, I've sold about 175 copies of it. It's an $8.95 piece, and I get 50%, so you can compute what I've made on it. I'm sure that the vendors who are better at it than I am, who post more products, and who target V4 make a lot more, but for most I'm pretty sure it's not a living."

it's tough to find stuff in the rmp, once it falls off the what's new

maybe if you made an add-on for it would bring more attention?

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Poser isn't the only market you can make content for. Other content markets pay a lot higher, and the demand is only increasing.

sounds interesting. ... i don't have the poser game s/w.

fear of failure is ridiculous, isn't it? what's the worst can happen?

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** All depends : I live in Belgium-Europe
**For starters, I have an income, so no "money issue" here, but look at it from this way.

You sell at a site, Rendero, DAZ, RDNA, CP, whatever, and you sell for -10- dollar.

That is 5 dollar for the site
And 5 dollar for you.

Belgium has a tax agreement with the States.

I have to declare my 5 dollar as extra income and pay taxes. (Second income gets a higher tax rate).
2 dollar for Belgian State
3 dollar for me.

But I now have 2 incomes, and they are added up at the end of the year, and total tax is re-calculated over total income.
When I become a very good vendor, I will climb up the tax scale ladder and , yep, you'v got it.

I'd be happy to get 0.50 cents out of my 10 dollar sale on a good year.

Do I wanna become a vendor... BWOEAHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!
Not in a gazillion years. + taxes on that one too. LOL.

Poser will stay a nice hobby, and I"ll gladly offer a free stuff item now and then.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

i'm only a part time temp to start with, because of this weather i'm home not earning.

besides, lathing and lofting is fun. is the uvmapping is tedious. doh

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

I've looked at the same thing just for fun. I have a comfortable military pension, a wife who works, a fun part time job, my house is (finally!) paid off and the kids are long gone (Yippee!) so money isn't a problem. I love making stuff and feel that there's still plenty of room for original content. I feel that the fantasy items are overdone and there's a yawning chasm begging to be filled with period clothing, formal wear, vintage stuff, and regular day wear. We could also use a bigger variety of architecture. CGBytes seems to have the best deal as a broker, with no requirement to be exclusive. Being Canadian they also have the lowest corporate taxes which translates into a better deal for vendors. They are also the only broker who does anything about pirates. There's a gent ('Doc') who spends his days sending take down notices to the torrent sites. I rarely see Renderotica or CGBytes items in the sharing sites.

Looking at the vendors who are most successful (those that appear in the top vendor categories consistently), they seem to have a few things in common: a big back catalog, an extremely fast paced production cycle with very regular releases (at least weekly, sometimes more frequent), outstanding promo art and good (if obvious) marketing text, and frequent sales.

I don't think it matters what you make, as long as it meets quality standards and isn't too obviously niche. What seems to matter is how often you can release something. You need to stay on the front page, with either a sale, a special offer, a new release, or someone else releasing an add-on.

No doubt this leads to a lot of rehashing of old styles and a lot of products that are very similar to already existing items. It can't be easy to keep up that kind of pace.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

If you really want to make money with Poser or Studio, I suggest doing props and or scenery. Doesn't matter which program you make that for.

Figures mainly drive this industry, if you really want to make money, develop content for the mainstream figures, I don't have to mention who they are. Don't waste your time supporting ones that are already dead consumer wise. The second part, sell at a store that generates high volumes of traffic. The formula is quite simple, but peoples "brand loyalty" stand in the way and most wouldn't be caught dead developing for "rival" software and their platforms. Well I have news for you, if your primary goal is to make money, you have to adapt:) You can make money creating anything, but it has to appeal to the market, eg. good promos and high quality construction, be it for a figure or an environement set, and has to be sold at the correct storefront. Selling content also requires a lot of research, eg watching what type of products are released and when. This way you can avoid similar type releases within a similar timeframe which could potentially eat into your sales.

My Renderosity Store

Figures mainly drive the Poser and D|S side of things, but this industry is much bigger than Poser and D|S. There are a good number of content artists making very healthy livings building content for game engines like Unity, Unreal, etc., who don't even use Poser. And with their real-time rendering, physics, etc, those engines are being used for much more than just game creation these days. Poser is a good starting point though. And it does take time to build up a sizable catalog. It also takes a lot of dedication and self discipline, along with a lot of research and learning new software. You have to treat it like a full time job if you intend on growing it into a full time income. It won't happen over night but it doesn't take long to start making some decent coin. There are a number of store fronts you can sell at too, each with their own rules and payment structure. I've found that several of the stores outside of the Poser and D|S markets pay higher commissions even without being exclusive. However, just because a store pays a higher commission doesn't mean you're going to make more money there. If it's a store that only gets a fraction of the traffic that a store like 'rosity gets, then you're going to make a fraction of the money. And the more professional quality you put into your work, the better it will sell, even if it is an item that has already been done. The market is nowhere near saturated, as every artist has their own unique style that will appeal to someone. So it is no more saturated than any other aspect of the art world is. I don't see many sculptors decide to quit sculpting because there's already so many sculptures out there. Or painters that quit painting because there are already so many paintings out there. Pretty much the same concept. If your work is good and well designed, it will sell, regardless of what it is. It just takes finding the right market for it.

If you really want to make money with Poser or Studio, I suggest doing props and or scenery. Doesn't matter which program you make that for.

This is what I would do. There are an infinite number of things you can make. Lots of untapped niches big enough for a full time income. If you release props in obj format as well, they can be used by any software, as you say. I've spent a lot on props and scenery, and there are still things I'd like to see made. Plus, if the models are high quality, they will be good to sell for years, regardless of which figures are popular at the time. So, yes. Totally agree.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

To make money at this, full time living money, and not pocket change you need to develop a large catalog, release often, and find a way to stand out from the crowd.

Only people who consistently get a product in top few of what's hot lists are making money above minimum wage.

You have to treat it as serious business, with product planing, researching and understanding the market, keep up with tecnology, beautiful marketing and product presentation, and quality product.

Props and scenery are not a sure sell. Follow the brokerages for a few months and take note of who and what keeps hitting the top spots.

Make friends with a few vendors, offer to test or help eith things here and there, and you will gain an invaluable mentor.

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

Props and scenery may not be a sure sell in Poser and Daz marketplaces, but as noted by others above, the 3d world is much bigger than that, and an outfit for V4 won't sell anywhere except the Poser MPs.

As for how well props and scenery sell in Poser and Daz MPs -- I suppose we could ask Stonemason and Jack Tomalin, or even folks like Maclean, and certainly Danie and Marforno, about that. :)

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

When things are well made, and well thought out, they will sell. My point was that props aren't any easier of a sell then charactets or clothing in poserdom. Medium quality props won't sell better or bring you more money then medium quality charactets or medium quality clothing.

Sure, there are other 3d markets, but MistyLara has asked about Poser related content. Different 3d markets have different dynamics. That falls under researching your target market.

Some of the prop makers you listed here, I talk to on regular basis, and a few othes, not listed here, and I've done props myself and have first hand sales numbers too. Lot of content makers talk to each other, hang out, or on occasion collaborate. By all means, I would encourage that you verify the veracity of what I'm saying. This is not about who is right on the forums, I'm just offering some of what I leraned over the years of being a content maker. If you don't want the knowledge, or prefer to make your own mistakes, go for it. It only makes it easier for me (and other vendors) to stay competetive.

I have serious reservations about armchair quarterbacking someone's interest in making a living out of this, because there is a significant amount of misconceptions in forums, and I hate seeing people learning the hard way, and suffering losses.

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

When things are well made, and well thought out, they will sell. My point was that props aren't any easier of a sell then charactets or clothing in poserdom. Medium quality props won't sell better or bring you more money then medium quality charactets or medium quality clothing.

Sure, there are other 3d markets, but MistyLara has asked about Poser related content. Different 3d markets have different dynamics. That falls under researching your target market.

Some of the prop makers you listed here, I talk to on regular basis, and a few othes, not listed here, and I've done props myself and have first hand sales numbers too. Lot of content makers talk to each other, hang out, or on occasion collaborate. By all means, I would encourage that you verify the veracity of what I'm saying. This is not about who is right on the forums, I'm just offering some of what I leraned over the years of being a content maker. If you don't want the knowledge, or prefer to make your own mistakes, go for it. It only makes it easier for me (and other vendors) to stay competetive.

I have serious reservations about armchair quarterbacking someone's interest in making a living out of this, because there is a significant amount of misconceptions in forums, and I hate seeing people learning the hard way, and suffering losses.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with what you've said here. Most everyone that has commented has offered some solid advice. Misty didn't specify exactly what she meant by exclusive, and Poser isn't the only market available for content artists. If someone is interested in building a business as a content provider, then it's advisable they consider all their options. Limiting themselves just to Poser and D|S is ignoring a large chunk of potential profit in other similar markets, which often tend to command much higher prices per item - especially considering the process of making content for Poser requires relatively the same skill sets, so why wouldn't someone branch out and take advantage of that? Learning Unity or Unreal, or many of the other free and low-cost game engines out there is no more difficult than learning Poser. But I don't advise trying to jump into all of it at once. If you're most familiar with Poser, or DS, then that is what you should focus on to start and decide if it's really something you can see yourself doing full time. It's not exactly the easiest work and often requires long hours just to reach a satisfactory level of quality. But with time and practice things become easier and faster to complete.

Notice also, Renderosity now offers extended licenses for their content artists as options - so that the content can be used in games - meaning that content needs to be designed to work efficiently in those engines with little to no additional effort on the end user's part. These additional licensing options, combined with Poser's Game Dev upgrade, should be seen as a sort of merging of two ends of the spectrum that have traditionally remained separate until recently.

As for armchair quarterbacking, I suspect you mean speculation without experience, none of which is true from what I've said at least. I make my living as a content artist. I'd be making a lot more if I was more dedicated, which I intend to be. It's my new year's resolution, lol.

When things are well made, and well thought out, they will sell. My point was that props aren't any easier of a sell then charactets or clothing in poserdom. Medium quality props won't sell better or bring you more money then medium quality charactets or medium quality clothing.

Sure, there are other 3d markets, but MistyLara has asked about Poser related content. Different 3d markets have different dynamics. That falls under researching your target market.

Some of the prop makers you listed here, I talk to on regular basis, and a few othes, not listed here, and I've done props myself and have first hand sales numbers too. Lot of content makers talk to each other, hang out, or on occasion collaborate. By all means, I would encourage that you verify the veracity of what I'm saying. This is not about who is right on the forums, I'm just offering some of what I leraned over the years of being a content maker. If you don't want the knowledge, or prefer to make your own mistakes, go for it. It only makes it easier for me (and other vendors) to stay competetive.

I have serious reservations about armchair quarterbacking someone's interest in making a living out of this, because there is a significant amount of misconceptions in forums, and I hate seeing people learning the hard way, and suffering losses.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with what you've said here.

I'm the one disagreeing with specific statements (without elaboration) that props make it easier to make it in the business.

What helps one 'make it' is understanding the market segment where they want to sell. It's not always props. What bothers me is that I hear more and more about props being an easier sell, and I know that is not the case. There is a number of different paths that can work well. Some people may have preference for making props, some people have preference for other things.
I just don't like throwing newbies (to the business side of it) to the wolves.

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

Two words: Great. Hair.

The best hair hasn't been made yet. Make it, make money.

I think that's it.

by exclusive, i meant the agreement wouldn't sell something in more than one store.

trying to shift my workflow to new modeling tools. i keep hitting the spacebar >.< doh

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

I'm the one disagreeing with specific statements (without elaboration) that props make it easier to make it in the business.

What helps one 'make it' is understanding the market segment where they want to sell. It's not always props. What bothers me is that I hear more and more about props being an easier sell, and I know that is not the case. There is a number of different paths that can work well. Some people may have preference for making props, some people have preference for other things.
I just don't like throwing newbies (to the business side of it) to the wolves.

Just for the record, when I suggested props and scenery, I wasn't and didn't indicate that they were an easier sell. Just that, for the most part, they are not tied to any one particular figure. Genesis, V4, Roxie, Dawn or Michelle can all drive a car or shop in a mall or live in the DAZ Dream House. And also, for the most part, they work in either program.

I'd say for a lot (most) of us this is a hobby and in the current financial state hobby's are the first to go so money is tight

spread out as much as you can get models everywhere you can ~one annoyed budgie{TM} on blah could make you more then a lottery win lol

maybe a comic site if you have that sort of mind set to make funny stuff day after day

without knowing more then your name in here ;-) your as likely to make a million selling cupcakes (ok I sorta like 2 broke girls)

its your DRIVE that will make you a success (but a good product helps)

by exclusive, i meant the agreement wouldn't sell something in more than one store.

trying to shift my workflow to new modeling tools. i keep hitting the spacebar >.< doh

DAZ, Rendo or DNA, while they say you can go non exclusive really prefer exclusive stuff. I tried non-exclusive route in poserdom, and place things in smaller third party stores, and you hardly get any sales (compared to the big ones i just mentioned). I have not seen any advantage to going non exclusive. For the most part, it's the same people who shop at the stores, so you are not getting any new audiences (not significant anyway).
Also, going non exclusive means more promos and more store pages to make, and making each needs to be worth your time. If it takes you half a day to prepare an extra product page, and you make 5 sales on a 10 dollar item, at 50%, that is $25. Do you want to spend four hours working for $25? I don't.

Now, when you go and rework your product to function in a game engine, for example, it's no longer the same product. Similar, but not the same, so exclusivity rules are different on that. Mesh prepped for 3D printing isn't the same thing as a piece of conforming clothing for Poser or DS, even if the design is the same or shares some of the textures.

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

I thought exclusive, in that regard, meant that you only sell at that store, as in, being an exclusive vendor to that store.

It seems kind of silly to sell the same item at multiple stores. Kind of competing with yourself in that regard, if the commission rates are different from one to the next.

I know other stores do require exclusive vendoring in order to get the higher commission rates. I think squid is one, (not 100% sure though).

I'm the one disagreeing with specific statements (without elaboration) that props make it easier to make it in the business.

What helps one 'make it' is understanding the market segment where they want to sell. It's not always props. What bothers me is that I hear more and more about props being an easier sell, and I know that is not the case. There is a number of different paths that can work well. Some people may have preference for making props, some people have preference for other things.
I just don't like throwing newbies (to the business side of it) to the wolves.

Just for the record, when I suggested props and scenery, I wasn't and didn't indicate that they were an easier sell. Just that, for the most part, they are not tied to any one particular figure. Genesis, V4, Roxie, Dawn or Michelle can all drive a car or shop in a mall or live in the DAZ Dream House. And also, for the most part, they work in either program.

And this is exactly what I was agreeing with. People who would never dream of touching a Daz figure might still love Faveral's buildings, even though many of them were made almost a decade ago. How many ten year old outfits for V3 are still selling, I wonder? If Poser died a nasty death or if Daz vaulted every figure that isn't based on Genesis, then 80% of Rendo's clothing and accessory catalog would become near worthless for any new customer. But props would still be good. Many very old props need only a higher resolution texture upgrade and/or new shaders, and they'd are as good as brand new models. As long as we're still using polys for meshes, if the modelling is solid, the prop will be useful.

I'm looking at it long term. If all you make is female clothes, your catalog depreciates in value quickly. And when a new figure becomes popular, the value can potentially plummet to zero. I wouldn't want to work for a month on a product I couldn't sell five years later. But that's just me.

I'm sure they don't give vendors that initial fast sale boost that you can get from female figure du jour slutwear. But, as a customer, I don't want to encourage people interested in becoming a vendor to add to the growing list of skimpy clothing manufacturers (many of whom seem to primarily make money by converting their old products into fits for new figures, with very few changes.) If that's how they want to make money, it's certainly their prerogative -- though there are probably a million better ways to do it -- but they don't need our opinions. They already know what they want to do.

And if anyone is serious about becoming a vendor as a living, they had better do a LOT more research than reading a single bloody forum thread. LOL.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

Another thing. I'm absolutely sure that half the reason back catalogs don't sell well is that many vendors who are not running their own site are totally unaware of how many customers have searched and searched for a product and eventually gave up because they couldn't find what they were looking for -- when it was sitting right there in the catalog. We get posts in the forums frequently from people who want this or that hair, or this or that outfit, or prop -- but they don't know how to find it. And it's only by the luck of the gods that some of us remember seeing something like it somewhere and can find it. Only the admins here know how many people made searches that didn't lead to sales -- and who didn't post in the forums.

It's not magic, though. Google indexes every catalog page on Renderosity, for instance. And I'm sure the site search works in a similar fashion. If you actually take the time to put enough appropriate text in your description, it's a MILLION times easier to find. People think it's a waste of time to describe in words exactly what your promo shots show, but until computers have very good and fast image searching algorithms, they are going to rely on that TEXT. Additionally, titling the text in a way that makes clear that it's an addon. Linking to that addon. Listing promo credits. All these things can lead to sales that otherwise wouldn't happen. But all this falls under marketing, and a lot of vendors seem to think that, other than making some pretty promo pics, it's all up to the brokers to do it. Hence, sales while product is one first page and then nada after -- unless you're a top vendor.

No, I'm not a vendor, and I don't know anything about selling Poser content. But I'm an extremely experienced as a purchaser of such content, and I did make a living selling products on the internet from my own site. So I have some experience in making product promos, descriptions and keywords, and coding a site for indexing optimization (and high ranking). And one thing is constant, no matter what or where you're selling, whether on the internet or in a brick n mortar store: if the customer can't find it, they won't buy it. :D

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

Firstly, I am not a vendor but I admire those that are when I look at the price I have to pay for something a vendor spent days or even weeks creating. As a very large portion of my renders are Sci-Fi based I am always ready to reach for my credit card if a decent space craft becomes available and, even if it is three of four times the price of a V4 outfit, the chances are that it will still end up in my cart. As others have pointed out, none of these are locked to a figure so I can use them with genesis, V4, V3, Dawn, anything in fact which is part of the reason I pay the higher price. The other reason is, if I am in the market for an outfit, it is fairly easy to find something cheap that meets the need or I can adapt that is not the case for a lot of props or scenes.

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 - Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU . The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Firstly, I am not a vendor but I admire those that are when I look at the price I have to pay for something a vendor spent days or even weeks creating. As a very large portion of my renders are Sci-Fi based I am always ready to reach for my credit card if a decent space craft becomes available and, even if it is three of four times the price of a V4 outfit, the chances are that it will still end up in my cart. As others have pointed out, none of these are locked to a figure so I can use them with genesis, V4, V3, Dawn, anything in fact which is part of the reason I pay the higher price. The other reason is, if I am in the market for an outfit, it is fairly easy to find something cheap that meets the need or I can adapt that is not the case for a lot of props or scenes.

Me too, Hornet. I don't want to come off as though I'm badmouthing vendors, because -- as we know -- we're not paying Turbosquid prices, even though, we probably should be. Marketing is a PITA, and few people really enjoy it. But -- and I could be wrong -- but I think it's worth doing a few things in addition to what I listed above. I just did some Google searches for Poser content. Generic things like "Poser mini skirt" or "Poser corvette V4 poses". Nobody's search results will be identical, but I found some eye opening things.

Top sites for Google search for Poser content are (not necessarily in this order) ShareCG, YouTube, Daz3D, and then -- growl -- about a thousand file sharing sites. Gack. The pirates should not be winning this.

One vendor's own site showed up, however, near the top. So it's possible to fight back. He's going to capture sales from anyone using Google to find content (Does anyone do that? Yes!). Depending on the keywords in his site and on his page, me may even get quite a few people who don't own Poser or Daz Studio -- yet. If the promos on his site are as mindbendingly attractive as some of the promos here, he's going to be adding to Poser sales/DS downloads, and possibly getting sales for himself. Every vendor should have a blog or frequently updated site with two way links to their content plus information on what Poser or Daz Studio is, a Facebook page that updates with every new product release, as well as upcoming releases, a Twitter account that does the same, a YouTube channel with a tutorial or two or even some trailers for product releases (I've never seen this for typical Poser content, but why not?), some freebies on ShareCG, and helpful posts in 3D forums that are indexed and permit a signature banner link. That's kind of a minimum. The number of places and ways you can use to promote your work -- without spamming -- are almost infinite.

Descriptions in all of these places should be a detailed and imaginative as possible. Where possible, images should be named and tagged with something that can be recognized in search engines and apps (not "promo1.jpg" but "v4_mini_skirt_promo.jpg"). Where you can use alt tags on images (your own site particularly), they should be detailed: "Product Name V4 in a black snakeskin and white leather mini skirt showing voluptuous, utopian, and young morph and lace netting t-shirt with a rose embellishment, facial piercings, including one gold eyebrow piercing and a gold ring lip piercing. Character Name in promo is wearing Product Name hair.... etc etc etc" ) Links should crisscross and go back and forth between all these sources, and it'd be even better if every vendor who had his/her own site linked to each other. High quality linkage is still a powerful force for search engine ranking. Facebook is also huge for driving site hits. Arguably, it's even more important. But isn't going to do much unless it gets beyond a fairly high minimum amount of activity -- and that's where vendors could really help each other.

I know that lots of vendors have their names in many places, like YouTube and ShareCG, etc. But where it all comes together is when you have a clear marketing strategy, so that you have a coherent set of words and descriptions that keep popping up in relation to the vendor name and the links to where you can buy the products. So much space in so many of these venues for bios and descriptions that get used to apologize for the quality of an upload rather than promote the vendor -- IF the space gets used at all. :)

I know a lot of people hate to promote themselves. I'm such a person. I'll apologize for something I've created and point out all its flaws before I'll say anything else. If a vendor has a similar problem they should probably get other vendors, and/or their testers and customers to write some promo text for them. Other people can be way more enthusiastic because they're not worried about being modest or humble about someone else's stuff. :)

Anyway, all this would do wonders for a regular site selling -- whatever. I have absolutely no personal evidence to suggest that it would help Poser content sales. Only the broker admins looking at search words and site referrals would know that. So..... take it all with however many grains of salt you like.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

I thought exclusive, in that regard, meant that you only sell at that store, as in, being an exclusive vendor to that store.

It seems kind of silly to sell the same item at multiple stores. Kind of competing with yourself in that regard, if the commission rates are different from one to the next.

I know other stores do require exclusive vendoring in order to get the higher commission rates. I think squid is one, (not 100% sure though).

Daz, Rendo or RDNA don't require or even ask about exclusive vendoring. Only exclusive items. You get higher percentages by having higer sales numbers. You get a smaller percentage boost for exclusive items. It's also quite possible a brokerage may turn down a non exclusive item, especially if you are trying to place the same item at Rendo and DAZ. Lot of vendors choose personally to sell at only one store, because you get higer perventage when you sell more and because content making is sufficiently time consuming that in most cases you spread yourself too thin trying to have product at several places.

Also, having a back catalog plays a significant role, every time you release a new, likeable item, people look at your other stuff too, and good 20% sales will come from the back catalog. If your back catalog is not huge, that effect is lost very fast. Releasing at one, or at most two brokerages definitely has benefits.

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

Me too, Hornet. I don't want to come off as though I'm badmouthing vendors, because -- as we know -- we're not paying Turbosquid prices, even though, we probably should be. Marketing is a PITA, and few people really enjoy it. But -- and I could be wrong -- but I think it's worth doing a few things in addition to what I listed above. I just did some Google searches for Poser content. Generic things like "Poser mini skirt" or "Poser corvette V4 poses". Nobody's search results will be identical, but I found some eye opening things.

Top sites for Google search for Poser content are (not necessarily in this order) ShareCG, YouTube, Daz3D, and then -- growl -- about a thousand file sharing sites. Gack. The pirates should not be winning this.

One vendor's own site showed up, however, near the top. So it's possible to fight back. He's going to capture sales from anyone using Google to find content (Does anyone do that? Yes!). Depending on the keywords in his site and on his page, me may even get quite a few people who don't own Poser or Daz Studio -- yet. If the promos on his site are as mindbendingly attractive as some of the promos here, he's going to be adding to Poser sales/DS downloads, and possibly getting sales for himself. Every vendor should have a blog or frequently updated site with two way links to their content plus information on what Poser or Daz Studio is, a Facebook page that updates with every new product release, as well as upcoming releases, a Twitter account that does the same, a YouTube channel with a tutorial or two or even some trailers for product releases (I've never seen this for typical Poser content, but why not?), some freebies on ShareCG, and helpful posts in 3D forums that are indexed and permit a signature banner link. That's kind of a minimum. The number of places and ways you can use to promote your work -- without spamming -- are almost infinite.

Descriptions in all of these places should be a detailed and imaginative as possible. Where possible, images should be named and tagged with something that can be recognized in search engines and apps (not "promo1.jpg" but "v4_mini_skirt_promo.jpg"). Where you can use alt tags on images (your own site particularly), they should be detailed: "Product Name V4 in a black snakeskin and white leather mini skirt showing voluptuous, utopian, and young morph and lace netting t-shirt with a rose embellishment, facial piercings, including one gold eyebrow piercing and a gold ring lip piercing. Character Name in promo is wearing Product Name hair.... etc etc etc" ) Links should crisscross and go back and forth between all these sources, and it'd be even better if every vendor who had his/her own site linked to each other. High quality linkage is still a powerful force for search engine ranking. Facebook is also huge for driving site hits. Arguably, it's even more important. But isn't going to do much unless it gets beyond a fairly high minimum amount of activity -- and that's where vendors could really help each other.

I know that lots of vendors have their names in many places, like YouTube and ShareCG, etc. But where it all comes together is when you have a clear marketing strategy, so that you have a coherent set of words and descriptions that keep popping up in relation to the vendor name and the links to where you can buy the products. So much space in so many of these venues for bios and descriptions that get used to apologize for the quality of an upload rather than promote the vendor -- IF the space gets used at all. :)

I know a lot of people hate to promote themselves. I'm such a person. I'll apologize for something I've created and point out all its flaws before I'll say anything else. If a vendor has a similar problem they should probably get other vendors, and/or their testers and customers to write some promo text for them. Other people can be way more enthusiastic because they're not worried about being modest or humble about someone else's stuff. :)

Anyway, all this would do wonders for a regular site selling -- whatever. I have absolutely no personal evidence to suggest that it would help Poser content sales. Only the broker admins looking at search words and site referrals would know that. So..... take it all with however many grains of salt you like.

ROFL, spending all the time it takes to accomplish all this means no vendor has even an iota of time to create new models, much less rig them. You do realize you're talking about a full time job just updating social websites, right?

It's not as much an aversion to self promotion, it's the hours on a clock.

Me too, Hornet. I don't want to come off as though I'm badmouthing vendors, because -- as we know -- we're not paying Turbosquid prices, even though, we probably should be. Marketing is a PITA, and few people really enjoy it. But -- and I could be wrong -- but I think it's worth doing a few things in addition to what I listed above. I just did some Google searches for Poser content. Generic things like "Poser mini skirt" or "Poser corvette V4 poses". Nobody's search results will be identical, but I found some eye opening things.

Top sites for Google search for Poser content are (not necessarily in this order) ShareCG, YouTube, Daz3D, and then -- growl -- about a thousand file sharing sites. Gack. The pirates should not be winning this.

One vendor's own site showed up, however, near the top. So it's possible to fight back. He's going to capture sales from anyone using Google to find content (Does anyone do that? Yes!). Depending on the keywords in his site and on his page, me may even get quite a few people who don't own Poser or Daz Studio -- yet. If the promos on his site are as mindbendingly attractive as some of the promos here, he's going to be adding to Poser sales/DS downloads, and possibly getting sales for himself. Every vendor should have a blog or frequently updated site with two way links to their content plus information on what Poser or Daz Studio is, a Facebook page that updates with every new product release, as well as upcoming releases, a Twitter account that does the same, a YouTube channel with a tutorial or two or even some trailers for product releases (I've never seen this for typical Poser content, but why not?), some freebies on ShareCG, and helpful posts in 3D forums that are indexed and permit a signature banner link. That's kind of a minimum. The number of places and ways you can use to promote your work -- without spamming -- are almost infinite.

Descriptions in all of these places should be a detailed and imaginative as possible. Where possible, images should be named and tagged with something that can be recognized in search engines and apps (not "promo1.jpg" but "v4_mini_skirt_promo.jpg"). Where you can use alt tags on images (your own site particularly), they should be detailed: "Product Name V4 in a black snakeskin and white leather mini skirt showing voluptuous, utopian, and young morph and lace netting t-shirt with a rose embellishment, facial piercings, including one gold eyebrow piercing and a gold ring lip piercing. Character Name in promo is wearing Product Name hair.... etc etc etc" ) Links should crisscross and go back and forth between all these sources, and it'd be even better if every vendor who had his/her own site linked to each other. High quality linkage is still a powerful force for search engine ranking. Facebook is also huge for driving site hits. Arguably, it's even more important. But isn't going to do much unless it gets beyond a fairly high minimum amount of activity -- and that's where vendors could really help each other.

I know that lots of vendors have their names in many places, like YouTube and ShareCG, etc. But where it all comes together is when you have a clear marketing strategy, so that you have a coherent set of words and descriptions that keep popping up in relation to the vendor name and the links to where you can buy the products. So much space in so many of these venues for bios and descriptions that get used to apologize for the quality of an upload rather than promote the vendor -- IF the space gets used at all. :)

I know a lot of people hate to promote themselves. I'm such a person. I'll apologize for something I've created and point out all its flaws before I'll say anything else. If a vendor has a similar problem they should probably get other vendors, and/or their testers and customers to write some promo text for them. Other people can be way more enthusiastic because they're not worried about being modest or humble about someone else's stuff. :)

Anyway, all this would do wonders for a regular site selling -- whatever. I have absolutely no personal evidence to suggest that it would help Poser content sales. Only the broker admins looking at search words and site referrals would know that. So..... take it all with however many grains of salt you like.

ROFL, spending all the time it takes to accomplish all this means no vendor has even an iota of time to create new models, much less rig them. You do realize you're talking about a full time job just updating social websites, right?

It's not as much an aversion to self promotion, it's the hours on a clock.

Yep yep, I was about to say the same thing. Making content is a full time job and then some, one that does not give you time for extensive marketing efforts, and not enough money to hire someone. You have to rely on the brokerages, and maybe sub groups of vendors pooling resources. There are only so many hours in the day. And if you don't finish your product, there is nothing to promote.

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

Me too, Hornet. I don't want to come off as though I'm badmouthing vendors, because -- as we know -- we're not paying Turbosquid prices, even though, we probably should be. Marketing is a PITA, and few people really enjoy it. But -- and I could be wrong -- but I think it's worth doing a few things in addition to what I listed above. I just did some Google searches for Poser content. Generic things like "Poser mini skirt" or "Poser corvette V4 poses". Nobody's search results will be identical, but I found some eye opening things.

Top sites for Google search for Poser content are (not necessarily in this order) ShareCG, YouTube, Daz3D, and then -- growl -- about a thousand file sharing sites. Gack. The pirates should not be winning this.

One vendor's own site showed up, however, near the top. So it's possible to fight back. He's going to capture sales from anyone using Google to find content (Does anyone do that? Yes!). Depending on the keywords in his site and on his page, me may even get quite a few people who don't own Poser or Daz Studio -- yet. If the promos on his site are as mindbendingly attractive as some of the promos here, he's going to be adding to Poser sales/DS downloads, and possibly getting sales for himself. Every vendor should have a blog or frequently updated site with two way links to their content plus information on what Poser or Daz Studio is, a Facebook page that updates with every new product release, as well as upcoming releases, a Twitter account that does the same, a YouTube channel with a tutorial or two or even some trailers for product releases (I've never seen this for typical Poser content, but why not?), some freebies on ShareCG, and helpful posts in 3D forums that are indexed and permit a signature banner link. That's kind of a minimum. The number of places and ways you can use to promote your work -- without spamming -- are almost infinite.

Descriptions in all of these places should be a detailed and imaginative as possible. Where possible, images should be named and tagged with something that can be recognized in search engines and apps (not "promo1.jpg" but "v4_mini_skirt_promo.jpg"). Where you can use alt tags on images (your own site particularly), they should be detailed: "Product Name V4 in a black snakeskin and white leather mini skirt showing voluptuous, utopian, and young morph and lace netting t-shirt with a rose embellishment, facial piercings, including one gold eyebrow piercing and a gold ring lip piercing. Character Name in promo is wearing Product Name hair.... etc etc etc" ) Links should crisscross and go back and forth between all these sources, and it'd be even better if every vendor who had his/her own site linked to each other. High quality linkage is still a powerful force for search engine ranking. Facebook is also huge for driving site hits. Arguably, it's even more important. But isn't going to do much unless it gets beyond a fairly high minimum amount of activity -- and that's where vendors could really help each other.

I know that lots of vendors have their names in many places, like YouTube and ShareCG, etc. But where it all comes together is when you have a clear marketing strategy, so that you have a coherent set of words and descriptions that keep popping up in relation to the vendor name and the links to where you can buy the products. So much space in so many of these venues for bios and descriptions that get used to apologize for the quality of an upload rather than promote the vendor -- IF the space gets used at all. :)

I know a lot of people hate to promote themselves. I'm such a person. I'll apologize for something I've created and point out all its flaws before I'll say anything else. If a vendor has a similar problem they should probably get other vendors, and/or their testers and customers to write some promo text for them. Other people can be way more enthusiastic because they're not worried about being modest or humble about someone else's stuff. :)

Anyway, all this would do wonders for a regular site selling -- whatever. I have absolutely no personal evidence to suggest that it would help Poser content sales. Only the broker admins looking at search words and site referrals would know that. So..... take it all with however many grains of salt you like.

ROFL, spending all the time it takes to accomplish all this means no vendor has even an iota of time to create new models, much less rig them. You do realize you're talking about a full time job just updating social websites, right?

It's not as much an aversion to self promotion, it's the hours on a clock.

Yep yep, I was about to say the same thing. Making content is a full time job and then some, one that does not give you time for extensive marketing efforts, and not enough money to hire someone. You have to rely on the brokerages, and maybe sub groups of vendors pooling resources. There are only so many hours in the day. And if you don't finish your product, there is nothing to promote.

And that kind of thinking is what separates the hobbyist from the professional. I don't mean any disrespect, but honestly, I have to agree with Moriador here. Many of the points she lists are quite possible, along with a few others I can think of that she failed to mention, and some of the more dedicated vendors do accomplish them and still manage to have a life outside of content creation. Granted, everybody's schedules and personal lives are different, but it comes down to time management and setting priorities. If it is intended to be a full time business then you have to treat it like a full time job - actually two full time jobs, or even three, if that's what it takes, especially in the beginning, just like any other business, if you expect it to produce a full time, livable income. Yes, it is hard work, and many long hours, and it will probably require going without sleep here and there - actually no, not probably, it DOES require going without sleep here and there. Sometimes more often than not. But again, it's all about how dedicated you are and how much time and effort you're willing and able to put into it. If it was easy then everybody would be doing it. Granted, I don't have the same vendor experience that you have. Most of my work comes from private commissions, but I still have maintenance on those commissions. I still have to keep up with all my clients. I don't have the help of a brokerage to handle all of the problems that customers might run into, I have to do all of that myself. Part of why I'm not (yet) a vendor is due to keeping up with my clients and meeting their needs, which often cuts into current projects I have with other clients and sets things back, so I have to set priorities and schedule when I'm going to be working on various items. And its in the down times that I get to work on the projects that are intended to be vendor items. I don't mind going without sleep if that's what it takes to get a job done. If I'm not working on something then I'm not making money. Yet I still don't feel like I'm producing at the rate that I should be producing, and that's my fault. Something I'm working on correcting.

But this line of work often does require working round the clock, and it's not something that can be taken as a hobby if you intend on making it a real profession. And if you don't love it then you'll learn to hate it pretty quick. There are content artists that make $50 to $100K and more per year, doing exactly this kind of work - not necessarily for Poser or DS though. For most, definitely not. The ones making that kind of money may still be working in Poser and DS at times but have branched out into the bigger scene and are selling their content at Turbosquid, or Unity, or any number of the other content markets, or their own websites. They've built up a solid customer base and a reputation for themselves and their work. And when they're not making content they're working on freelance jobs, animations, etc., because they take their work seriously and put every minute of free time they have into it, because they don't just treat it as a hobby, it's their livelihood.

And it always helps if you have no life. That just means you have more time to work. Afterall, in this business sleep is a luxury for the weak. ;)

Anyway, all this would do wonders for a regular site selling -- whatever. I have absolutely no personal evidence to suggest that it would help Poser content sales. Only the broker admins looking at search words and site referrals would know that. So..... take it all with however many grains of salt you like.

ROFL, spending all the time it takes to accomplish all this means no vendor has even an iota of time to create new models, much less rig them. You do realize you're talking about a full time job just updating social websites, right?

It's not as much an aversion to self promotion, it's the hours on a clock.

Yep yep, I was about to say the same thing. Making content is a full time job and then some, one that does not give you time for extensive marketing efforts, and not enough money to hire someone. You have to rely on the brokerages, and maybe sub groups of vendors pooling resources. There are only so many hours in the day. And if you don't finish your product, there is nothing to promote.

And that kind of thinking is what separates the hobbyist from the professional. I don't mean any disrespect, but honestly, I have to agree with Moriador here. Many of the points she lists are quite possible, along with a few others I can think of that she failed to mention, and some of the more dedicated vendors do accomplish them and still manage to have a life outside of content creation. Granted, everybody's schedules and personal lives are different, but it comes down to time management and setting priorities. If it is intended to be a full time business then you have to treat it like a full time job - actually two full time jobs, or even three, if that's what it takes, especially in the beginning, just like any other business, if you expect it to produce a full time, livable income. Yes, it is hard work, and many long hours, and it will probably require going without sleep here and there - actually no, not probably, it DOES require going without sleep here and there. Sometimes more often than not. But again, it's all about how dedicated you are and how much time and effort you're willing and able to put into it. If it was easy then everybody would be doing it. Granted, I don't have the same vendor experience that you have. Most of my work comes from private commissions, but I still have maintenance on those commissions. I still have to keep up with all my clients. I don't have the help of a brokerage to handle all of the problems that customers might run into, I have to do all of that myself. Part of why I'm not (yet) a vendor is due to keeping up with my clients and meeting their needs, which often cuts into current projects I have with other clients and sets things back, so I have to set priorities and schedule when I'm going to be working on various items. And its in the down times that I get to work on the projects that are intended to be vendor items. I don't mind going without sleep if that's what it takes to get a job done. If I'm not working on something then I'm not making money. Yet I still don't feel like I'm producing at the rate that I should be producing, and that's my fault. Something I'm working on correcting.

But this line of work often does require working round the clock, and it's not something that can be taken as a hobby if you intend on making it a real profession. And if you don't love it then you'll learn to hate it pretty quick. There are content artists that make $50 to $100K and more per year, doing exactly this kind of work - not necessarily for Poser or DS though. For most, definitely not. The ones making that kind of money may still be working in Poser and DS at times but have branched out into the bigger scene and are selling their content at Turbosquid, or Unity, or any number of the other content markets, or their own websites. They've built up a solid customer base and a reputation for themselves and their work. And when they're not making content they're working on freelance jobs, animations, etc., because they take their work seriously and put every minute of free time they have into it, because they don't just treat it as a hobby, it's their livelihood.

And it always helps if you have no life. That just means you have more time to work. Afterall, in this business sleep is a luxury for the weak. ;)

While you say you don't mean disrespect, you are being quite disrespectful, especially considering you are quoting me in your post. You may need to leave it to me how much time and professionalism I have and how much time, or how I invest it or at least put a little effort into learning about it before being down your nose judgemental about it.
Just because you don't see people doing what you think they should be doing it doesn't mean it is not happening, or that they are being lazy or not dedicated and whatever else you said or insinuated here. You're not exactly privy to what I do or what kind of money I make, or at what effort.
I'm surprised this kind of invalidating and disrespectful posting is acceptable especially by a moderator of the forum. sigh

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

This sort of reminded me why Vendors don't usually frequent forums, I seem to forget that about once a year when I'm in between projects.

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

I'm with Connie on this.

What was just described is a function of our respective brokerages' Marketing department. This is one of the reasons we give them a portion of our sales for, so it frees us to focus on making content. If they aren't on their jobs, we let them know.

This sort of reminded me why Vendors don't usually frequent forums, I seem to forget that about once a year when I'm in between projects.

hehe

I think content creators are better off letting the stores do the promotion, all you can really do is make good looking promos and hand it off for them to use their channels for promo, it's kind of what your paying them for, anything extra that an individual does is minimal and just eats into production time(facebook posts,forum posts etc don't generally equal sales), same goes for support ,if you can find a store that handles that for you it'll equal more production time.

Cg Society Portfolio

This sort of reminded me why Vendors don't usually frequent forums, I seem to forget that about once a year when I'm in between projects.

hehe

I know, some old habits still pop up on occasion... go figure.
I think I was avoiding doing homework.

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

Wow. I'm not being judgmental Connie. I apologize if you took it that way. My comments weren't directed specifically at you but at the conversation as a whole - notice how you weren't the only one whose comments I quoted - and I wasn't trying to start or perpetuate an argument, or step on anyone's toes, vendor or otherwise. I specifically never said it was an easy field to get into - in fact, I've stated multiple times that starting off slow to test the waters and see if it's really something you can see yourself doing full time is the best way to go ('you' being in general here). Because a lot of people try and soon discover they just don't have it in them. Many think it's easy work that most anyone can do and make a quick buck "if they just learn the software", until they actually start trying. It's not for everybody. And I wasn't intentionally implying that you're lazy or don't approach your work the way you should, because again, my comments weren't directed at you specifically. I don't have the first clue how you, the individual approaches your work. (I've looked at your catalog and you have a solid body of work and definitely some strong talent). But at the same time I know the kind of work and hours it entails because I've been doing it for a number of years now - 3 of those years were spent in school, working in a nose-to-the-grindstone production environment where work days were anywhere from 12 to 16 to 20 hours, 6 to 7 days a week with zero tolerance for excuses, because that's how most studio environments are in this industry. They don't want to hear "there aren't enough hours, or there isn't enough time". You make time, or you get replaced. And yes, I do make my living as a content artist. So you aren't speaking to a novice here, or someone who "hasn't done their research" or doesn't communicate with other vendors and content artists. But I don't want to argue with you about it. If you say the (pretty much universal) laws of business and promotion don't apply to being a vendor then I'll take your word for it.

Wow. I'm not being judgmental Connie. I apologize if you took it that way. My comments weren't directed specifically at you but at the conversation as a whole - notice how you weren't the only one whose comments I quoted - and I wasn't trying to start or perpetuate an argument, or step on anyone's toes, vendor or otherwise. I specifically never said it was an easy field to get into - in fact, I've stated multiple times that starting off slow to test the waters and see if it's really something you can see yourself doing full time is the best way to go ('you' being in general here). Because a lot of people try and soon discover they just don't have it in them. Many think it's easy work that most anyone can do and make a quick buck "if they just learn the software", until they actually start trying. It's not for everybody. And I wasn't intentionally implying that you're lazy or don't approach your work the way you should, because again, my comments weren't directed at you specifically. I don't have the first clue how you, the individual approaches your work. (I've looked at your catalog and you have a solid body of work and definitely some strong talent). But at the same time I know the kind of work and hours it entails because I've been doing it for a number of years now - 3 of those years were spent in school, working in a nose-to-the-grindstone production environment where work days were anywhere from 12 to 16 to 20 hours, 6 to 7 days a week with zero tolerance for excuses, because that's how most studio environments are in this industry. They don't want to hear "there aren't enough hours, or there isn't enough time". You make time, or you get replaced. And yes, I do make my living as a content artist. So you aren't speaking to a novice here, or someone who "hasn't done their research" or doesn't communicate with other vendors and content artists. But I don't want to argue with you about it. If you say the (pretty much universal) laws of business and promotion don't apply to being a vendor then I'll take your word for it.

Once again, vendors that sell their products through stores give a portion of their sales to the brokerage in exchange for several benefits including promotion of their products and visibility. How well those products are seen is dependent on how good their Marketing Department is in getting their store into promotion channels and direction they give their vendors on how to set up their products so that they are seen in search engines. Brokerages should have way more reach in promotion than an individual vendor would themselves, as the things they could do would only minimally impact their sales. This frees the vendor to devote their time for production of their products and building their stores. If they were to do the amount of promotion that has been detailed in this thread, there would be absolutely no need to pay a brokerage a fee.. you may as well set up your own store and sell there. So it's a bad idea to devote that much time to promotion and taking away from your own production when you're paying someone to do it for you. So it's not a matter of professionalism or not, vendors are paying for a service in exchange for a cut of their product sales where the result should be beneficial for both the store and the vendor. I hope that makes things clearer, as I don't think many seem to know this.

Vendors are happy to hear suggestions... from those that actually had experience from vendoring through brokerages. Otherwise, honestly, you're just speaking without basis, giving suggestions that most often cost us money and production time rather than making more income.

Ambient sahde, I never said marketing wasn't important.

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

Wow. I'm not being judgmental Connie. I apologize if you took it that way. My comments weren't directed specifically at you but at the conversation as a whole - notice how you weren't the only one whose comments I quoted - and I wasn't trying to start or perpetuate an argument, or step on anyone's toes, vendor or otherwise. I specifically never said it was an easy field to get into - in fact, I've stated multiple times that starting off slow to test the waters and see if it's really something you can see yourself doing full time is the best way to go ('you' being in general here). Because a lot of people try and soon discover they just don't have it in them. Many think it's easy work that most anyone can do and make a quick buck "if they just learn the software", until they actually start trying. It's not for everybody. And I wasn't intentionally implying that you're lazy or don't approach your work the way you should, because again, my comments weren't directed at you specifically. I don't have the first clue how you, the individual approaches your work. (I've looked at your catalog and you have a solid body of work and definitely some strong talent). But at the same time I know the kind of work and hours it entails because I've been doing it for a number of years now - 3 of those years were spent in school, working in a nose-to-the-grindstone production environment where work days were anywhere from 12 to 16 to 20 hours, 6 to 7 days a week with zero tolerance for excuses, because that's how most studio environments are in this industry. They don't want to hear "there aren't enough hours, or there isn't enough time". You make time, or you get replaced. And yes, I do make my living as a content artist. So you aren't speaking to a novice here, or someone who "hasn't done their research" or doesn't communicate with other vendors and content artists. But I don't want to argue with you about it. If you say the (pretty much universal) laws of business and promotion don't apply to being a vendor then I'll take your word for it.

Once again, vendors that sell their products through stores give a portion of their sales to the brokerage in exchange for several benefits including promotion of their products and visibility. How well those products are seen is dependent on how good their Marketing Department is in getting their store into promotion channels and direction they give their vendors on how to set up their products so that they are seen in search engines. Brokerages should have way more reach in promotion than an individual vendor would themselves, as the things they could do would only minimally impact their sales. This frees the vendor to devote their time for production of their products and building their stores. If they were to do the amount of promotion that has been detailed in this thread, there would be absolutely no need to pay a brokerage a fee.. you may as well set up your own store and sell there. So it's a bad idea to devote that much time to promotion and taking away from your own production when you're paying someone to do it for you. So it's not a matter of professionalism or not, vendors are paying for a service in exchange for a cut of their product sales where the result should be beneficial for both the store and the vendor. I hope that makes things clearer, as I don't think many seem to know this.

Vendors are happy to hear suggestions... from those that actually had experience from vendoring through brokerages. Otherwise, honestly, you're just speaking without basis, giving suggestions that most often cost us money and production time rather than making more income.

Well said, thank you! For many of us, we pay several thousand dollars per product for brokerage marketing.

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

Well, you can just release a product with promos and let the sites marketing team do their bit, but nothing stops you from starting a product thread to gain traction or add a promo vid showing the product in action. I have found that extra effort has really helped. People know before hand what is to come and it generates some hype instead of just being drawn to their attention when it is released in the stores. So yes, you do pay these sites to handle marketing for you, but nothing stops you from giving your work more exposure. That does require more effort, but that is strictly up to you if you feel it is worth it or not.

My Renderosity Store

Let me add a few things....... First of all, forget about making a living from Poser content :) Yes you can, but only a few do and you need to put a lof of work into creating items. If you want to live from Poser/DS content you need to be able to create a lot of quality products om a short time. you need to build a catalog and add very frequently to it. You may be lucky enough to make a living then. But prepare to give up a lot for it.

Second.... most vendors that make a living, don't only do Poser/DS stuff. They also focus on other markets or do custom work, or sell art work and so on. Even some of the big names we know don't make enough from their content. The Poser/DS market is relatively small and it is oversaturated with vendors, so it's a constant strive to get to the top and stay at the top. Also take in account the whole myth and hype surrounding being a vendor. It's not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's not money easily made. I know vendors who pretend to make a living, while in fact they have a (part-time) job next to creating content or at least another source of income as well.

Thirdly, pick you store well. Rendo favourites top vendors a lot and tends to support new and small vendors really badly. To protect their top vendors, they determine prices for the content you sell, which gives a beginning vendor a huge disadvantage. The tend to allow top vendors to set their prices lower then others, again a huge disadvantage for top sellers. Same goes for promotion. RDNA is a lot better for beginning vendors, they are really helpful, but I did find them quite controlling in many things. DAZ is a whole different story of course. Selling at Hivewire3D is quite pleasant, but they are still small. My contacts with yurdigital have been pleasant as well. I've been at CP for many years now, the easiest store to work with, they demand little, but also help little. They sure give a great return, they only keep 30%. Find a store that suits you.

Also keep in mind the economy. The content market is infuenced by it very much. Vendors are struggling. Then there's the whole odd seasonal sales problem. Some months sell very well, while other are very quite. October - January (and if we're lucky up to March) sell well, then it's quite and often just before the summer it picks up again, only to see a drop in sales during the summer again. Then there's the weather. That may sound odd, but it is of influence. Nice weather for a long period of time..... less people buying content.

Then there is the matter of content itself. If you do clothes, you need to constantly follow the market. What figures are in? What figures are out? Which figures are constant? Props and scenes are less influenced by figures. I've done clothes and props and scenes. My props and scenes sell better and I find clothes a bit tidious to create. I stopped doing it, it was no fun for me. But others love it. Create what you like to create. Then there's the matter of technology when it comes to figures. Poser 7/8 use a certain figure technology, while Poser 9 is different and Poser 10 is different again. Some figures like V4/M4 work in all, but other figures depend on newer versions. That counts for clothes as well. The process for universal figures is different then it is for version specific figures. DS is of course a whole different matter altogether. Props and scenes depend less upon version, most of it works just as well in older versions as it does in newer versions.

In wrapping up..... to give you the best advice I can :) Create something you like. Pick a marketplace you like. See if they want to sell it and help you out getting it ready for the poser market. Start selling it and see here it all ends up. You maybe surprised. My first item was an instant best seller. It has been created over 5 years ago and it's still selling a few copies every month. I haven't created new poser content for over a year now. Still the store with the catalog I've build up over the years is generating sales. Granted, not as much as in the time when I added new content regularly, but still it's selling nicely. In a bad/slow month I sell 30 items or so, most months around 50 items and in the holiday season I sell well over that. Without adding new content to my store. If I add something new, the sales figures double easily. So, create what you like, that's the best start!

Good luck :)

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

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 ?

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 ?

I'll hit yours and aeilkema's post at the same time. It comes down to this:

Pick your figure and platform wisely if you're going to sell. That's ultimately going to determine the money you make in the future. I've heard from other stores that vendors are struggling and aeilkema may be correct when it comes to making items for Gen4. But, that's not true at one of those stores. You can guess which one if you see your favorite vendors starting to make Genesis items. Even props are being passed over by customers if they don't have DS material support as they're no longer wishing to "adjust materials settings" on items they pay for; they have a store full of native items to choose from, so it will pay to learn to how to make those shaders just as vendors using DAZ Studio had learned Poser to create native materials.

As BadKittehCo said, there really no magic product that will make you money. It's all about finding your niche and working with that. Mine is custom (mostly) male head and body morphs that people use as a base for their own characters. Since they fill a need in a mostly female render-oriented market, I usualy top out in sales with the female items and some props, and my sales have increased as other say they are struggling.

Then you find the store that aligns with your goals. I sell at DAZ because they have a solid history of supporting their male characters when others flounder after a few months. The level of content for the males may be lower, but there enough tech to compensate for that. Also always keep learning and growing because technology and innovations do not stay in one place. You don't want to dig yourself into one spot then find that you have to all of a sudden switch gears because you've misjudged the market and where it was going.

mho, do what you know but keep on learning.

don't forget Aiko3. :)

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

I think a vendor now needs to cater to both Poser and Daz studio even if it is only supplying some Daz compatible materials.

A broker is a good start, since they can help with product testing, and help tidy up readme and advertising material but I dont know any site that actually willproduce an advertising image of a product.

Running your own site can be very time consuming and has its own issues with ecurity, but a group of vendors may be successful working together. One modeller, a couple people doing conversions to Poser, Vue, Studio , and a texture artist may be more productive than doing it all yourself.

You need to find a unique niche though. Summer frock 1,956,728 is not going to sell well compared to Nipple Morph Pack 1.

It can be a good supplemental income.

it's too late by now to get anything in the rmp for Valentine's day?

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

it's too late by now to get anything in the rmp for Valentine's day?

Given my past experience, yes. Even an exclusive product won't get through testing and in a store within 10 days.

I think we are saying Gen4 is dead in the water then. I hope for Poser's sake that isn't so. I may start with V4 anyway as I'm so far advanced there. Perhaps do Daz versions later.

I think we are saying Gen4 is dead in the water then. I hope for Poser's sake that isn't so. I may start with V4 anyway as I'm so far advanced there. Perhaps do Daz versions later.

Don't worry, folks have been trying to kill off V4 since forever. No Vicky killer yet.

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?

Well, you can just release a product with promos and let the sites marketing team do their bit, but nothing stops you from starting a product thread to gain traction or add a promo vid showing the product in action. I have found that extra effort has really helped. People know before hand what is to come and it generates some hype instead of just being drawn to their attention when it is released in the stores. So yes, you do pay these sites to handle marketing for you, but nothing stops you from giving your work more exposure. That does require more effort, but that is strictly up to you if you feel it is worth it or not.

Nod Nod! Most successful vendors do a good amount of that. Preview the product, create some anticipation, give your user base some chance to interact with you, stir some interest, run a contest. All those things help with building a following. It is also possible to build a following without this - some vendors do it, some don't.
Personally, I like to do it, I enjoy a degree of interaction with my customers. I'd actually like to do it more, but have to limit my time at some point or it becomes cost prohibitive. On a larger piece, I'll typically spend a day to two promoting the product (not necessarily all in one lump of time) To do it the way I would really like to do it, it would take 50% of my time, and that is not affordable, because it would not increase my sales enough to cover the time investment. As a vendor you're constantly evaluating if something is/was worth doing or not, and whether it is a short or long term investment you are making. Some things pay off quicker than others.

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

A comment in general:

Act professional and you will be professional.

If someone wishes to make a living by creating and selling 3D content and they don't think they need to be professional about it, they won't make a living by professionally selling 3D content. It is really that simple.

That means that you have to do more than just plaster boob shots all over the place when you're trying to sell shoes... Want to sell hair? Golly, maybe it'd be a good idea to spotlight your hair model instead of fifty different alluring face-shots. (And, please, stop it with the thirty different color filters on your textures. We get it - Yes, there are lots of colors in the spectrum. Thank you...) Want to sell unique morphs? Outstanding! Make them... unique. Want to sell clothes? Great! Spend some time learning how to rig, though. Oh, and don't forget that a texture and a bump map don't replace the need for real geometry. Want to sell dynamic clothes? Then don't just autogenerate whatever your magical clothing maker decides to cough up and call that a "product." And please, please... 3D objects are based on something called "geometry." Discerning buyers would appreciate seeing what your product's geometry looks like. If your geometry looks like poop, learn how to "geometry" so it doesn't look like poop. :) (Obey product standards and common conventions when constructing your geometry and groups. Thanks in advance. ;))

And, if you're doing your own marketing, please learn appropriate grammar. If English is not your primary language, get a friend to help translate for you. There's no shame in that. (Renderosity and other brokerages should be doing that by default, in my humble opinion.) If you're producing your own renders and graphics, please learn how. There's no "do art" button, but... for goodness sakes, if you're producing products for rendering programs you could at least prove that you tried to learn how to use the program you're creating for! It's a rare thing to see a decently rendered promo pic these days. A great promo render, focusing on the darn product being sold, would win half the battle for a possible audience to market to.

Know your audience. Know what they want and what you're going to have to do in order to give them what they want. And, if you don't know what they want, then know enough about what you're doing in order to convince them that your product is what they want. Fill a need or create a need - That's basic business.

If one wishes to make money with their hobby, there's nothing wrong with that. But, if one wishes to try to become a "professional" at anything, one has to do more than just fiddle around with it. Professionals take the time and make the effort to learn how to be professionals. If one doesn't do likewise, one will not be a professional. I'm of the general opinion that anyone who makes the effort and dedicates the time to learn a trade can succeed at that trade, no matter what it is. Unfortunately, many people base their expectations upon misconceptions. They have those misconceptions because they didn't take the time nor expend the effort to learn otherwise.

MistyLaraPrincess : I always enjoy ya Renderosity gallery with DAZ Poser renders but I Don't see any zBrush ,Max etc etc renders .
ya half to be able to make content to sell content.3D CGI Studios aren't cheep. ya can lease some app's now like Max.
they take a while to learn ,take a while to get good at ,takes a while to get fast at.
some 3D app's n plugs are very fast ,others not fast enough for vendors but fine for hobbyist.
ya can tell what vendors make the most $$$ ,there the ones with the best stuff.
and you can bet they have a top of the line 3D CGI Studio also.
Vendoring is a competition. ya can't win winston cup with ya family car.

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I always thought it was odd stuff at turbo cost more then DAZ Poser .when it take more effort for DAZ Poser.

Last I looked The biggest venders at turbo are Max venders.

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The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

That means that you have to do more than just plaster boob shots all over the place when you're trying to sell shoes... Want to sell hair? Golly, maybe it'd be a good idea to spotlight your hair model instead of fifty different alluring face-shots. (And, please, stop it with the thirty different color filters on your textures. We get it - Yes, there are lots of colors in the spectrum. Thank you...) Want to sell unique morphs? Outstanding! Make them... unique. Want to sell clothes? Great! Spend some time learning how to rig, though. Oh, and don't forget that a texture and a bump map don't replace the need for real geometry. Want to sell dynamic clothes? Then don't just autogenerate whatever your magical clothing maker decides to cough up and call that a "product." And please, please... 3D objects are based on something called "geometry." Discerning buyers would appreciate seeing what your product's geometry looks like. If your geometry looks like poop, learn how to "geometry" so it doesn't look like poop. :) (Obey product standards and common conventions when constructing your geometry and groups. Thanks in advance. ;))

And, if you're doing your own marketing, please learn appropriate grammar. If English is not your primary language, get a friend to help translate for you. There's no shame in that. (Renderosity and other brokerages should be doing that by default, in my humble opinion.) If you're producing your own renders and graphics, please learn how. There's no "do art" button, but... for goodness sakes, if you're producing products for rendering programs you could at least prove that you tried to learn how to use the program you're creating for! It's a rare thing to see a decently rendered promo pic these days. A great promo render, focusing on the darn product being sold, would win half the battle for a possible audience to market to.

This seems more customer opinion-oriented than actual vendor advice and in the scope of starting to vendor not very helpful. If you were a vendor, you would actually know that those "artistic renders" sell far more product than standard, plain shots of geometry. It's always helpful to include a few plain shots, however that's not what draws the majority of the customers in and brokerages will reject products until you provide flashier promos to make the product more appealing. Also the vendor may had made those renders as part of the promos and those promos get rejected before they are put in the store. As I said earlier, these are the kinds of suggestions that end up costing sales, when people give advice that don't have the background to do so.

is anyone using uu3d in their workflow?

looks about the same price tag as uvmapper pro.

uvunfolding odd shaped objects, with minimalist distortion, takes a very long time with my current tools.

thanks :)

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

it's too late by now to get anything in the rmp for Valentine's day?

Given my past experience, yes. Even an exclusive product won't get through testing and in a store within 10 days. Thanks. :)

The next seasonal theme would be Spring, i guess. But then again, the other side of the world is heading into Winter.

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

Glitterati3D Wrote:
"Don't worry, folks have been trying to kill off V4 since forever. No Vicky killer yet."

Yeah, listen, I've killed lots and lots and lots of Vickies!!!
But there is still lots more Vickies to kill as well!!!

Later,
Roxie - Girl With Blade

is anyone using uu3d in their workflow?

looks about the same price tag as uvmapper pro.

uvunfolding odd shaped objects, with minimalist distortion, takes a very long time with my current tools.

thanks :)

UV Layout is what will give you professional speed and quality, unless you have cinema4d or maya or max or zbrush. You will also need UV mapper Pro for preppinfg the OBJ's for poser... mat zones, grouping, welding and occasional vertex and normal manipulation.

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

it's too late by now to get anything in the rmp for Valentine's day?

Given my past experience, yes. Even an exclusive product won't get through testing and in a store within 10 days. Thanks. :)

The next seasonal theme would be Spring, i guess. But then again, the other side of the world is heading into Winter.

It's the northern hemisphere seasons that people follow. Most of your customers come from Europe, US, Canada, Japan and Australia. ... so mostly north half.

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

Blender's UV mapping does a fine job too, and it's free.

If you have Poser 10 or Poser Pro 2014 then you don't need UV mapper pro for mat zones and grouping, as the grouping tool does all that just fine and quickly.

Well, you can just release a product with promos and let the sites marketing team do their bit, but nothing stops you from starting a product thread to gain traction or add a promo vid showing the product in action. I have found that extra effort has really helped. People know before hand what is to come and it generates some hype instead of just being drawn to their attention when it is released in the stores. So yes, you do pay these sites to handle marketing for you, but nothing stops you from giving your work more exposure. That does require more effort, but that is strictly up to you if you feel it is worth it or not.

Exactly. If you're already a top vendor with a big reputation who got his/her foot in the door a decade or more ago, you CAN let the brokerage do all the work for you. But if you're just starting out, you're competing within your brokerage with all those top names.

I've read the Daz forums, where vendors complain that almost all of their sales come in the first couple of weeks, with very little after. Even Daz admins themselves admitted that they had a problem generating back catalog sales.

Daz is probably the best brokerage for its vendors, but it will only do so much. And one thing that it's shockingly bad at is helping customers FIND the stuff they want. Shopping there is sometimes like walking into a huge box store, where half the products are in the back room. I don't know how much time vendors spend looking for products, but it's probably far, far less time than I spend. And my experience is that it's really hard to find things. So those vendors who take the time (5 to 30 minutes) to create really good product descriptions will get more sales in their back catalogs than those who don't. People pooh-pooh the descriptions, but once you're off the front page, they're the only way a customer will find your product -- unless you're highlighted in a sale. And really while sales are nice, you make more money when you're not selling your entire catalog at 50% off. My post about descriptions and keywords was meant to address this issue.

Sure, you can make money from front page sales, always running on a treadmill, trying to push out product fast enough to keep in the limelight. But if spending a couple of hours a week on self-promotion helps you sell more, why is it any less valuable than pumping out more product? Aside from that, people spend inordinate amounts of time piddling around on the internet -- me and everyone in this thread is doing it right now, and I don't want to think about how much time some people waste on Facebook -- why not make that time work FOR you instead of against you by developing a promotion strategy that uses your internet time more efficiently for your benefit.

Moreover, if you have a smart phone, you can work on marketing anywhere -- public transportation, waiting at the doctor's office, when you first wake up and are fuzzy headedly drinking that first cup of coffee, while visiting your in-laws. You can't model or rig or texture on your smartphone. But you CAN sell.

When I first started out creating the site from which I sold jewelry, it took A LOT of work to get it going. Months of work. (I didn't have a brokerage to drive sales to my door). But once my site ranked number one for the keywords I wanted, I got people all over the world making orders. After the initial work, I barely touched that aspect of it, and hundreds of these random people just kept buying, for YEARS after.

A Poser content vendor wouldn't need to spend nearly the same amount of effort that I did because the brokerages herd the customers to the website. But an initial investment of time, with a few hours here and there to top it off, might well make a sizable difference.

I'm tempted to take a vendor I really like and do as much of this stuff as I could for him/her. He/she wouldn't even have to know I was doing it. It'd be interesting to see if it pushed them into a top sales category. :D :D

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

Anyway, let me stress this: I KNOW vendors work hard, really hard. And I also know that we customers are the beneficiaries of a pricing scheme that gives us really amazingly good content at shockingly low prices. Believe me, I appreciate that. Without the vendors, I wouldn't be able to render very much interesting stuff. I NEED you guys. And I want you guys to keep making stuff, so it's in my interest for you to get paid as much as you can.

If your current strategy works for you, by all means -- don't change it!

And of course you're right BadKittehCo -- you can't sell product that you've haven't finished making! :) Clearly, "make good quality products" is the first commandment. Some people are so inherently conscientious that doing that will take up all their time. I get that. But if you're not a vendor yet, and this is still a hobby, THEN it might well help to consider how you can use marketing to your advantage because the competition is deadly fierce. The fact that you and Stefan and Male3Media and Glitterati and Zev0 posted in this thread proves the last part, at least.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

This seems more customer opinion-oriented than actual vendor advice and in the scope of starting to vendor not very helpful. If you were a vendor, you would actually know that those "artistic renders" sell far more product than standard, plain shots of geometry. It's always helpful to include a few plain shots, however that's not what draws the majority of the customers in and brokerages will reject products until you provide flashier promos to make the product more appealing. Also the vendor may had made those renders as part of the promos and those promos get rejected before they are put in the store. As I said earlier, these are the kinds of suggestions that end up costing sales, when people give advice that don't have the background to do so.

I gave standard marketing and business advice as it applies to a narrow set of examples.
I am well aware of the positive effects of sultry promo pics. I choose not to mention that because it's basically redundant advice for those selling products that could have such promo shots. Do I really need to tell vendors of revealing clothing or long hair to include a boob-shot or three to add some titillation-factor to their marketing images? My focus was intended to present basic and intelligent business and marketing principles, using a few examples of what "not to do." It was also directed at those who seem to believe that they will be able to generate appreciable income from content sales without an appreciable amount of professional effort being demonstrated in the creation of their products.

My background and experience is more than adequate to comment intelligently on this topic, regardless of the medium or market. I am sorry that my lack of a fixation on "boob shots" in my offered advice is something that you believe demonstrates a lack of adequate experience. If you will note, I did include the mention of appropriate renders and the necessity of a demonstrated skill with the rendering engine of the product being targeted by the vendor. My disagreement with the policy of "boob shot Vickies" concerns the use of poorly rendered and irrationally focused primary promo pics that offer confusing presentations of the product to the point where the potential buyer has little idea of what the product actually is. This is a fine tactic when selling perfume, life-insurance, cell-phones or other intangible products. But, it is not a good general marketing policy when selling "tangible" products.

(For the purposes of argument, we can consider geometry and other "visible" products as tangible. Scripts, for example, could be considered somewhat intangible. However, it's worth noting that the top script producers intelligently represent their products as scripts or utilities and have done so with such style and consistency that the presentation of their marketing materials act as much as to solidify the performance of their "brand" as the products, themselves.)

Edit-Add: I also must question your own credibility when you claim that, as quoted, my insistence on such things as using appropriate grammar, good geometry, providing unique items that are actually unique and other common-sense principles somehow, according to you, demonstrates a lack of experience or relevance to potential vendors in this market. With all respect, and I sincerely mean that, your suggestion that my advice is not worthy seems fairly incredible.

I would also like to add that this particular marketplace appears to be more relaxed in the sort of content offered for sale. Frankly, the increase of favoring more sexualized and suggestive products does drive away a certain segment of the market. I am not a "prude" nor am I one of "those people" who rail against sexualized Vickies.(IIRC, there was a huge stink about that, years ago.) It's common knowledge that the widest use of Poser is for personal porn. That's fine and I have no issue with that. However, perceptions are important and the more a marketplace appears to intentionally cater to such a client-base, the less professional and polished it appears to new consumers who may not be seeking such products. For producers of sexualized/suggestive content, this may be a non-issue and may even be preferred. But, for producers of other sorts of content, this could be a very concerning issue. Those latter sorts of producers demand a marketplace that suits their product and that draws their particular client-base. It's also those latter sorts of professional producers that are responsible for the most innovation and the most dramatic, paradigm-shifting*, products in the market.

*My apologies for using the phrase "paradigm-shifting." But, it couldn't be helped... :)

This seems more customer opinion-oriented than actual vendor advice and in the scope of starting to vendor not very helpful. If you were a vendor, you would actually know that those "artistic renders" sell far more product than standard, plain shots of geometry. It's always helpful to include a few plain shots, however that's not what draws the majority of the customers in and brokerages will reject products until you provide flashier promos to make the product more appealing. Also the vendor may had made those renders as part of the promos and those promos get rejected before they are put in the store. As I said earlier, these are the kinds of suggestions that end up costing sales, when people give advice that don't have the background to do so.

I gave standard marketing and business advice as it applies to a narrow set of examples.
I am well aware of the positive effects of sultry promo pics. I choose not to mention that because it's basically redundant advice for those selling products that could have such promo shots. Do I really need to tell vendors of revealing clothing or long hair to include a boob-shot or three to add some titillation-factor to their marketing images? My focus was intended to present basic and intelligent business and marketing principles, using a few examples of what "not to do." It was also directed at those who seem to believe that they will be able to generate appreciable income from content sales without an appreciable amount of professional effort being demonstrated in the creation of their products.

My background and experience is more than adequate to comment intelligently on this topic, regardless of the medium or market. I am sorry that my lack of a fixation on "boob shots" in my offered advice is something that you believe demonstrates a lack of adequate experience. If you will note, I did include the mention of appropriate renders and the necessity of a demonstrated skill with the rendering engine of the product being targeted by the vendor. My disagreement with the policy of "boob shot Vickies" concerns the use of poorly rendered and irrationally focused primary promo pics that offer confusing presentations of the product to the point where the potential buyer has little idea of what the product actually is. This is a fine tactic when selling perfume, life-insurance, cell-phones or other intangible products. But, it is not a good general marketing policy when selling "tangible" products.

(For the purposes of argument, we can consider geometry and other "visible" products as tangible. Scripts, for example, could be considered somewhat intangible. However, it's worth noting that the top script producers intelligently represent their products as scripts or utilities and have done so with such style and consistency that the presentation of their marketing materials act as much as to solidify the performance of their "brand" as the products, themselves.)

I would also like to add that this particular marketplace appears to be more relaxed in the sort of content offered for sale. Frankly, the increase of favoring more sexualized and suggestive products does drive away a certain segment of the market. I am not a "prude" nor am I one of "those people" who rail against sexualized Vickies.(IIRC, there was a huge stink about that, years ago.) It's common knowledge that the widest use of Poser is for personal porn. That's fine and I have no issue with that. However, perceptions are important and the more a marketplace appears to intentionally cater to such a client-base, the less professional and polished it appears to new consumers who may not be seeking such products. For producers of sexualized/suggestive content, this may be a non-issue and may even be preferred. But, for producers of other sorts of content, this could be a very concerning issue. Those latter sorts of producers demand a marketplace that suits their product and that draws their particular client-base. It's also those latter sorts of professional producers that are responsible for the most innovation and the most dramatic, paradigm-shifting*, products in the market.

*My apologies for using the phrase "paradigm-shifting." But, it couldn't be helped... :)

Yes I'm sure you believe what you said is solid advice for other market segments. However, my response is based on what actually sells in this market and the fact that following your advice on how promos should be set up will result in lower sales for that vendor (if the Broker doesn't reject the promos out right because it doesn't catch the marketplace's attention) not because I think it would happen, it's because repeatedly happens. As you said, know your market and it helps to actually sell in that market so that you actually understand who your customers are rather than attempting to apply strategies from other segments to this one that would not work.

Interesting debate this, though theres another option which isn't mentioned that often. Especially if someone can't model/texture, or just wants a minutes of internet fame. Become a "brand" and buy in content. By that I don't mean reselling or getting stuff from pirate sites, but literally paying other artists to make stuff for you. Which you can then legally sell/give away under your own name, own all the rights etc. Also handy if you want to test the selling waters etc, or learn what collabrative working is all about. It's a service that many 3d studios now offer at affordable prices, so doing it can help other artists/creators out. OK sure some folks do consider this as a form of 'dark arts'. But after 10 years of content creation, including a few commission pieces, I know quite a few folks who do this. If nothing else it's certainly fasinating to see the reactions of others all because theres a different name on something or even where it's being sold somehow sells better stuff.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

Anyway, let me stress this: I KNOW vendors work hard, really hard. And I also know that we customers are the beneficiaries of

And of course you're right BadKittehCo -- you can't sell product that you've haven't finished making! :) Clearly, "make good quality products" is the first commandment. Some people are so inherently conscientious that doing that will take up all their time. I get that. But if you're not a vendor yet, and this is still a hobby, THEN it might well help to consider how you can use marketing to your advantage because the competition is deadly fierce. The fact that you and Stefan and Male3Media and Glitterati and Zev0 posted in this thread proves the last part, at least.

Honestly, the best way to deal with competition is to have a better product. (in a way of quality and what is interesting to people - which is a form of quality) The biggest reason I do some of the hands on marketing is for market research. Gage some of the ideas to see who responds to them and in what manner. I even use warez sites or market research. If noone has warezed your stuff, in a way it means people don't care for it much, even for free. Anyone with intereating and quality content in this market gets noticed fast, by brokerages and customers. Huge percentage of theis market is impulse buyers. Which is, interestingly a bit different then TS and couple of other 3d stores. TS tends to be more focused on need based buyers. There are historical brokerage marketing strategy reasons for this, but that's another thread branch.

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

I meant to add to my last post.... one of the reasons I keep pulling on the brakes about marketing on your own a lot with hopes it will increase sales is because of this...

I had products that had agreat response on social media or in the forums, and didn't sell all that well, and the other way around. Also, not hitting the social media on certain products didn't make or break them, or even showed any noticeable blip in sales.

At first it seems counter intuitive, you would think that people who actively participate in the forums and on social media are a good statistical representation of your customers, but time and time again it turned out that this is not the case.

I had products that had 'huge' forum following.... 30-40 people in the forum can be huge. Then it hots the market, and you realize that you encountered a pocket of vociferous enthusiasts, and the marketat large ... does not exist. So... it can be a bit tricky, interpreting social media reactions. What peopke will look at or talk about, vs what they will buy are often not the same thing.

It's easy to get a following of non-buyers and spend significant time interacting with them.

At the same time there are smaller things a vendor can do to maximize their exposure. I do them even though I can never correlate them to tangibe influebce on sales... and being an engineer and no stranger to a variety of statistical analisys, i'm pretty decent at noticing and interpreting what affects my sales and what doesn't.

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

BadKittehCo Wrote:
"Honestly, the best way to deal with competition is to have a better product."

I happen to agree, I think it really is that simple.
Well, that and being good at creating a spin around your product.

I'm tempted to take a vendor I really like and do as much of this stuff as I could for him/her. He/she wouldn't even have to know I was doing it. It'd be interesting to see if it pushed them into a top sales category. :D :D

It doesn't. I've had skilled peopke do it for me, and i've gone through periods of not doing it at all, and diong it myself (i have decent marketing skilks and some marketing education too) and i can't quantify a difference. Things that make a dfference are

product placement (make sure it appeals to enough people to be worth buying)
product quality
brokerage traffic where you sell. (No individual vendor or a small group can make even a tenth of the traffic a whole brokerage like DAZ or Rendo can) You're talking about a size difference of almost a lemonade stand vs. Starbucks. With brokerages that let you see customer names or nicknames, you see very few people that you see on social media. Less then 10%. I'm yet to see individual vendors affect brokerage traffic... well i've seen AeonSoul affect RDNA traffic on occasion by 10-20% for a day or so, and I think I've seen stonemason have some impact on DAZ traffic on occasion. What seems to draw the buying crowd are sales, special events, themed 'oooh shiny' type group releases... storewide events.
great catchy store promos.
your long term reputation with respect to product quality and usability. lot of 'top vendors' fall into collectibe content category, you want it because they made it, and you hought it before you were sure if you need it or will ever use it. This takes time to build... and... if one starts vendoring too soon and doesnt get known for really good stuff can be even harder to builD. Reputations (branding, really) are much harder reversed then built well from scratch.

-this market IS very impulse buy driven, many vendors are not too crazy about it, and have tried to play a different game. They haven't been able to reverse it. Even brokerages that created this don't really have the resources to reverse it any time soon. If they did, it would be a several year process.

to make a living out of this, do the math... if it takes you a month to make a product (including promos, qa, documentation and marketing), and it sells for 19.95, brokerage takes 50%... you need to sell 400 pieces to make $4000. That translates into about $20 per hour. Usually, you amortize that over a year. This will put you in top vendor category If you do it each month.

I tried to list these in order of importance... although, i'm still writing it out of my head as a cadual forum post rather then a well thought out paper.

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

Off topic here. Connie, if you are the same Connie that I follow on FB, wow, you have talent in all aspects of art. I love your stuff. Ok, back to discussion.

Boni

"Be Hero to Yourself" -- Peter Tork

Off topic here. Connie, if you are the same Connie that I follow on FB, wow, you have talent in all aspects of art. I love your stuff. Ok, back to discussion.

Yes, same Connie :-) ...well, I think so, here's a link to double check. There is also a Bad Kitteh page :-). https://www.facebook.com/ConnieKat8?fref=photo

And, awwwwww, tank you so much blushing

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

You ARE the same Connie and you are more than welcome. We have some gifted artists here!

Boni

"Be Hero to Yourself" -- Peter Tork

mrsparky quote Interesting debate this, though theres another option which isn't mentioned that often. Especially if someone can't model/texture, or just wants a minutes of internet fame. Become a "brand" and buy in content. By that I don't mean reselling or getting stuff from pirate sites, but literally paying other artists to make stuff for you. Which you can then legally sell/give away under your own name, own all the rights etc. Also handy if you want to test the selling waters etc, or learn what collabrative working is all about. It's a service that many 3d studios now offer at affordable prices, so doing it can help other artists/creators out. OK sure some folks do consider this as a form of 'dark arts'. But after 10 years of content creation, including a few commission pieces, I know quite a few folks who do this. If nothing else it's certainly fasinating to see the reactions of others all because theres a different name on something or even where it's being sold somehow sells better stuff.

Ya know I can see that working at turbo but at DAZ Poser for fame sure but I never really saw a profit as a vender to start with .
so don't know if I would be willing to gamble on spending money for DAZ Poser content.
really the only reason I could see being a DAZ Poser vender was to sharpen ya skills , for fame,for fun . anyways never saw any $$$ in it.
Ya would make more $$$ selling stale fries at mickyD's then ya would buy being a DAZ Poser vender.
At DAZ Poser I always thought making the merchandise was the easy part. especially with 2015 3D App's it ant nothing to make meshes compared to 1998.

ya half to make it all work so perfectly so ya could click n render.
but should I make it for DAZ or Poser should it be for poser 4 or 14 should it be for V4 or V6 .what about Roxie and Dawn.
is it worth it to make all those morphs fit perfectly.wich some where ya missed that one morph that will get posted and ya names dirt.etc etc.a lot of time spent there.
ya stuff has 100 morphs to fit 4 characters but that one characters paris morph didn't work perfectly. so ya stuffs trash.
this is the part I could never get past .cause I knew I didn't half to do deal with any of it with C4D, Max etc etc.

and I knew I was a no name so can I get my stuff in the email,every email ? what's it cost ?
Should I partner with a big name just to use there known name ? what's it cost ?

99.9% of my profits will be first week form the emails and the stores posting my stuff for every one to see.
So I sell 20 outfits and 200 gets pirated.
what if a pirates having trouble with my content ?should I help them ?they might actually buy something someday so ....

============================================================

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

@BadKittehCo -- Nice post! I'm sure vendors-to-be appreciate it.

I see your point. I guess what I'm getting at is an attempt to widen the market beyond the typical Poser/Daz customer. There are corporate and business customers who are shopping at Turbosquid, for example, and just need a little nudge to see what content creators have to offer from this community at less than a tenth of the price. Sure Poser obj's are scaled incorrectly for the apps they're probably using, but that's hardly a barrier. These guys aren't going to be interested in browsing through "what's hot"; nor are they going to be going crazy waiting for a 17% discount coupon. What they will want is to be able to find what they're looking for very quickly. Having products actually show up as one of the first few search results when you search for 3d assets would capture this group. But at the moment, Poser content is all but invisible, EVEN if you search specifically for Poser stuff. The idea behind social media isn't to drive sales directly. I don't think anyone, including big brands like Nike, has figured out how to do that. The idea is to use the link and like juice to drive hits and search engine ranking. AND to let those customers who won't spend a cent, but will happily rave with great enthusiasm, do much of the work for you. In addition to those business customers, there are all the people who don't yet know that what they need most in life is another addiction. In my experience, most people have never heard of Poser or Daz Studio. And many of those who have think it's all about plastic looking people in stiff poses showing off improbable boobs. For all Daz's external marketing, this community is still very insular.

Anyway, absolutely, most sales come from impulse purchases. But is that because that's just the way it is -- or is it at least partly a result of the fact that 9 times out of 10, people who are looking for specific things can't find them -- so of course those sales are lost (forever, or until they stumble on the thing they want during a sale), and it looks like the only people who buy stuff do so on impulse.

Anyway, just trying to think outside the box, as it were.

@MrSparky -- Very intriguing idea. Content creator gets a chunk of cash up front, and vendor tries to recoup the investment. What are people charging typically? $500, $1000, $4000?

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

I hear you. I don't know, I used to be one of those 'business customers' for number of years before making Poser content, as I did architectural and engineering Viz.

I never found useful stuff in poserdom, not because it was hard to find, but because things I needed were super specific, noring every day things.... and because often times, when you are on the clock, efficiency was paramount. At the time I was billed at $120 an hour... if it took me 2-3 hours to convert a single piece of content, I made it cost $360, rather then $12 I actually paid for... so what we would do is buy large packages of models made specifically for arch viz... yes they would cost a few hundred to 1000 per package, but i could plop them into the scene in a matter of minutes. On occasion I bought specific items on turbosquid.

It is possible other 3d users have different needs.

Another thing, even with DAZ, merely opening the website and being bombarded with even somewhat sexually suggestive stuff... well, in stuffy engineering offices that would have easily fall into possible sexual harrasement. Last time I dealt with that is around 2006. I don't know how much has changed since then.

Bringing new users would be great, snd I've seen many discussions about it over the years. Often it comes down to needing big bucks. And in last few years, we have game engines and proliferation of 3d for printing. Seems like Poser and DS are losing ground. One part of it being the learning curve to get into the hobby.

It would be interesting to see some brokerage statistics and market research to see results of current efforts to bring in new users, and come up with some strategies... not being privy to that, I can only guesstimate and speculate.... but, jut like vendoring has peculiarities that seem illogical on the surface, i'm sure briging new users has that too. Beyond grassroots efforts, I'm not sure how I would approach that. If I did, I'd be applying for Steve Cooper's job.

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

As a yet to be vendor, this is all a dark art. Only a few appear to be able to make a living at this but overall the 3D graphics market seems to be increasing. I have heard some vendors say that they now have no time to spend playing with the stuff because all their time is spent making product. Not for me.

The only reason I would be prepared to settle for a low income is if I enjoyed doing it. I take on board everything mentioned about being a 'professional', although I'm not sure I want to put in the hours. I do think that I could come up with something once a month though. Thinking about it, I put in huge hours lol. You just don't notice it when you are having fun ! Anyway as the saying goes - nothing ventured nothing gained.

I do need help in a number of different areas, but it looks like you have to submit a product before you can get access to the vendor community.

also need to allot time to tech support the products.

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

@BadKittehCo -- Nice post! I'm sure vendors-to-be appreciate it.

I see your point. I guess what I'm getting at is an attempt to widen the market beyond the typical Poser/Daz customer. There are corporate and business customers who are shopping at Turbosquid, for example, and just need a little nudge to see what content creators have to offer from this community at less than a tenth of the price. Sure Poser obj's are scaled incorrectly for the apps they're probably using, but that's hardly a barrier. These guys aren't going to be interested in browsing through "what's hot"; nor are they going to be going crazy waiting for a 17% discount coupon. What they will want is to be able to find what they're looking for very quickly. Having products actually show up as one of the first few search results when you search for 3d assets would capture this group. But at the moment, Poser content is all but invisible, EVEN if you search specifically for Poser stuff. The idea behind social media isn't to drive sales directly. I don't think anyone, including big brands like Nike, has figured out how to do that. The idea is to use the link and like juice to drive hits and search engine ranking. AND to let those customers who won't spend a cent, but will happily rave with great enthusiasm, do much of the work for you. In addition to those business customers, there are all the people who don't yet know that what they need most in life is another addiction. In my experience, most people have never heard of Poser or Daz Studio. And many of those who have think it's all about plastic looking people in stiff poses showing off improbable boobs. For all Daz's external marketing, this community is still very insular.

Anyway, absolutely, most sales come from impulse purchases. But is that because that's just the way it is -- or is it at least partly a result of the fact that 9 times out of 10, people who are looking for specific things can't find them -- so of course those sales are lost (forever, or until they stumble on the thing they want during a sale), and it looks like the only people who buy stuff do so on impulse.

Anyway, just trying to think outside the box, as it were.

@MrSparky -- Very intriguing idea. Content creator gets a chunk of cash up front, and vendor tries to recoup the investment. What are people charging typically? $500, $1000, $4000?

luv those coupons.

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

As a yet to be vendor, this is all a dark art. Only a few appear to be able to make a living at this but overall the 3D graphics market seems to be increasing. I have heard some vendors say that they now have no time to spend playing with the stuff because all their time is spent making product. Not for me.

The only reason I would be prepared to settle for a low income is if I enjoyed doing it. I take on board everything mentioned about being a 'professional', although I'm not sure I want to put in the hours. I do think that I could come up with something once a month though. Thinking about it, I put in huge hours lol. You just don't notice it when you are having fun ! Anyway as the saying goes - nothing ventured nothing gained.

I do need help in a number of different areas, but it looks like you have to submit a product before you can get access to the vendor community.

Find vendors who need beta testers and assistnce with things.It's a good way to learn. You give some, they give some. What kind of stuff do you need help with?

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

As a yet to be vendor, this is all a dark art. Only a few appear to be able to make a living at this but overall the 3D graphics market seems to be increasing. I have heard some vendors say that they now have no time to spend playing with the stuff because all their time is spent making product. Not for me.

The only reason I would be prepared to settle for a low income is if I enjoyed doing it. I take on board everything mentioned about being a 'professional', although I'm not sure I want to put in the hours. I do think that I could come up with something once a month though. Thinking about it, I put in huge hours lol. You just don't notice it when you are having fun ! Anyway as the saying goes - nothing ventured nothing gained.

I do need help in a number of different areas, but it looks like you have to submit a product before you can get access to the vendor community.

Do what most people do when they first start modeling and do freebies for the community.

I've done freebies. I don't get feedback. "Wow, that's good" comments are nice but unhelpful. I've spent years honing my skills, so I think I'm now ready.

Connie - checked out your stuff. Awesome ! Very high quality. I'm not an impulse buyer, indeed I hardly buy anything but when I get my act together I'm going to need to buy lots more.

So what do I need now. OK, first thing is I need to figure out is how to produce appropriate injection files. My figures are very heavily morphed. Nothing like V4 really. Eye scaling and position is very important and cannot be done with dials.

I am going to need to figure out how to adapt pre-existing textures as I currently use my own. Well that's just down to me to figure out.

Promo Images. Obviously very important. I am working on how best to light at the moment. I am pretty good at using Photoshop, but where do you get the fancy lettering and patterns you use in the promos ?

Thanks for all your help :)

I've always had the attitude if ya have a problem with nudity ,violence, or what ever then ya don't need to be around Artist. Dang sure don't need to be in my studio.

If anyone cryed about todays email I'd just tell them there fired http://www.renderosity.com/mod/emarket/read/3942/339078/ I can't find the add but there was a big todo over a sexy add at CGTalk one time .no nudity or anything.this email reminded me about it.

oh and your see hot n sex in the public mall every time ya walk buy victoria secrets

-------

EClark1894 is always posting his stuff on the forums. qaz ya could post your stuff on the forums and ask for feedback.

MistyLaraPrincess : different app's are better / faster at different things.

I know the rule is try all the demos but I watch the demo's youtubes etc etc .to try n see if a demo is justified.

Modo had a reputation for being a very fast modeler. and if I'm not wrong is what V5,6 was updated in.

a poser content creator would need a fast modeler, mapper, texturer ,normal and or displacement maps, vector maps & mirrored morpher.

might have forgotten something but I'd cheak n make sure Modo has them all fast.

oh if ya ever thought about being a turbo or games vender probably best if ya have Max

============================================================

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Yes I'm sure you believe what you said is solid advice for other market segments. However, my response is based on what actually sells in this market and the fact that following your advice on how promos should be set up will result in lower sales for that vendor (if the Broker doesn't reject the promos out right because it doesn't catch the marketplace's attention) not because I think it would happen, it's because repeatedly happens. As you said, know your market and it helps to actually sell in that market so that you actually understand who your customers are rather than attempting to apply strategies from other segments to this one that would not work.

You're missing the point. You're only addressing one small part of my post, to the exclusion of everything else that was there. Boob shots are fine, even sultry shots for unrelated products are fine. BUT, you must communicate more than just "boobs" in a good promo shot. If you don't, you're setting yourself up to have your product regarded as just another "boob shot" and what does that mean? It'll be skipped over for a better boob shot, with little regard for the product you've actually produced. There is more to marketing any item, more to creating demand, more to establishing a brand recognition amongst consumer than "boob shot promos." You do not seem to wish to admit that and, if you refuse it, what then can be said about your implied contribution towards helping vendors increase their sales? Is that the extent of your advice? Are boob-shots all that matter? Grammar isn't important? Quality isn't important? Evidenced skill of construction and desirability from the standpoint of a targeted market isn't important? Yet, you ignore these sorts of things that I mentioned, choosing to focus instead on my comments regarding absurd boob shot promos... It's... mind boggling.

I want vendors to succeed. Can they succeed with boob shot promos? Sure, for awhile. But, once a buyer finds substandard quality or discovers that the item they purchased isn't what they though it would be, then that is not just a future customer that is lost, that is a customer who will actively dislike the brand, perhaps even encouraging others to go elsewhere. Eventually, customers will realize that their money isn't expended in buying the promo pic, it's for what's behind it. Customers aren't stupid, especially the good ones who have the money to fuel their desire to purchase e-products.

Marketing and product quality is a holistic beast, requiring the producer to address a full spectrum approach if they wish to maximize their opportunities and their returns. Sultry promos and boob shots should be used to attract attention to the product and enhance the image of a product in the customer's mind, not to replace it.

I hear you. I don't know, I used to be one of those 'business customers' for number of years before making Poser content, as I did architectural and engineering Viz.

I never found useful stuff in poserdom, not because it was hard to find, but because things I needed were super specific, noring every day things.... and because often times, when you are on the clock, efficiency was paramount. At the time I was billed at $120 an hour... if it took me 2-3 hours to convert a single piece of content, I made it cost $360, rather then $12 I actually paid for... so what we would do is buy large packages of models made specifically for arch viz... yes they would cost a few hundred to 1000 per package, but i could plop them into the scene in a matter of minutes. On occasion I bought specific items on turbosquid.

It is possible other 3d users have different needs.

Another thing, even with DAZ, merely opening the website and being bombarded with even somewhat sexually suggestive stuff... well, in stuffy engineering offices that would have easily fall into possible sexual harrasement. Last time I dealt with that is around 2006. I don't know how much has changed since then.

Bringing new users would be great, snd I've seen many discussions about it over the years. Often it comes down to needing big bucks. And in last few years, we have game engines and proliferation of 3d for printing. Seems like Poser and DS are losing ground. One part of it being the learning curve to get into the hobby.

It would be interesting to see some brokerage statistics and market research to see results of current efforts to bring in new users, and come up with some strategies... not being privy to that, I can only guesstimate and speculate.... but, jut like vendoring has peculiarities that seem illogical on the surface, i'm sure briging new users has that too. Beyond grassroots efforts, I'm not sure how I would approach that. If I did, I'd be applying for Steve Cooper's job.

You might indeed do very well in Steve Cooper's former position. But I expect it involves a boat load of stress, and while being a content vendor has its own stresses, as you've described, there must be something to being able to step out of the corporate rat race. :) <--- Please don't disabuse us of this notion; we like to fantasize. :D Sexually suggestive websites... Oh, I forgot about that. I expect it's actually gotten more restrictive since 2006. I wondered why Daz and Rendo were so keen on updating their sites for mobile devices when the overall sales figures for the web demonstrate that mobile visits don't convert into sales nearly as often as desktop visits. People are still browsing on their phones, but buying on their desktops. And this is one industry in which you can guarantee that buyers own either a desktop or a fairly powerful laptop. I guess, though, if you want to browse the Poser content sites at work... better do it incognito, on your phone. Hell, even at home you might not want the site to show up on your monitor while you shop for morphs, lest you risk your kid asking, "Daddy, why is mommy looking at naked people?" :D (If you're a clothing vendor with kids, I'd think they're used to seeing a grey naked Vicki showing up in a modelling app -- but it's not necessarily the case for every customer. LOL.)

@Morkonan -- I agree with much of what you say. But I don't think grammar is all that important, as long as the message is intelligible. At least, it's not important for me. But then I guess I'm used to talking to people who are not native English speakers. I also don't insist that a vendor show their ability to make good renders. Many vendors get someone else to do the promo renders. Many don't even use Poser at all. Does not make their products any less fantastic. But I agree that great renders -- in Poser -- are extremely helpful, and the more, the better.

As for gratuitous boob shots -- well, I'm not sure how well they work on women, gay men, and kids. Unless I'm specifically shopping for sexy stuff, they tend to turn me off a product. After a while, I just start rolling my eyes and clicking away. I guess, if you use the boob as your main marketing strategy, you're targeting mostly the horny teen boy (and a few horny teen girls). Unfortunately, that group is not known for the enormity of its disposable income. Not a bad group to market to if you're selling one $60 video game every four years to millions of horny teens. But if you need your loyal customers to buy just about everything you release, they might not be as reliable as say, retired people, who seem to make up quite a sizable portion of the userbase. Not saying retired people don't appreciate boobs. Surely they do! But boobs alone won't sell a product to someone unless their hormones are raging so hard that they can't think straight. :)

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

I've done freebies. I don't get feedback. "Wow, that's good" comments are nice but unhelpful. I've spent years honing my skills, so I think I'm now ready.

Connie - checked out your stuff. Awesome ! Very high quality. I'm not an impulse buyer, indeed I hardly buy anything but when I get my act together I'm going to need to buy lots more.

So what do I need now. OK, first thing is I need to figure out is how to produce appropriate injection files. My figures are very heavily morphed. Nothing like V4 really. Eye scaling and position is very important and cannot be done with dials.

I am going to need to figure out how to adapt pre-existing textures as I currently use my own. Well that's just down to me to figure out.

Promo Images. Obviously very important. I am working on how best to light at the moment. I am pretty good at using Photoshop, but where do you get the fancy lettering and patterns you use in the promos ?

Thanks for all your help :)

ok, for rigging and poser details, Nerd 3D has loads and loads of invaluable information. Most of what I learned is by sticking my head up his arse and begging! You can see he has a lot of published info here: http://www.nerd3d.com/

Another thing I find invaluable are Dimension3D's poser tools. Poser File editor in particular. I would die without it: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/poser-file-editor-3/62322/ D3D has few other amazing tools, here at Rendo and at DAZ (for DS/Genesis content)

I'm not sure what you mean by adapting pre existing textures? For characters, if you use pre existing, make sure they are licensed as 'merchant resource', or photographs meant for texturing, like what you can get from www.3d.sk. You can't take other textured characters and tweak the images (for freebies or for store items). For your own personal use, you can of course do whatever you want. Promo images are very important of course, spending some time learning how to make a cool catchy render is smart. Look at advertising outside poserdom, fashion, movies, games... whatever may be somewhat similar to the content you are making, That is a learning curve of it's own. Whenever you can afford, hire a promo artist. I do it about half the times, especially for the main promo. You get only a second or two for the buyer to fall in love with your product - it is only after that they most will bother to read techy details - especially until you develop a following and a name recognition. And, well, you have to make sure that the product stands up to the promos, or people will feel like they've been cheated... and poser users can be very vociferous when they don't like something.

Fancy lettering - first, don't overdo it, learn a bit about graphics design and visual hierarchy of things so you don't assault the customer with everything at once and they run off with a visual migraine. ok, ok, i'm exaggerating a bit.... lot of little designs are a combo between layer effects, and whatever fonts you can find out there on the internet, there are tons out there free or for pay (check EULA's on everything, make sure you are allowed to use it in a way you want to use it.) You dont want to get in a hot water copyright wise, not only because of the other party, but if it happens more often, the brokerage starts being nervous about taking your product. Usually when there is a copyright violation they are the first to get the notice.

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

. . . the first thing you need to do to make money in 3d is to choose a business that has nothing to do with 3d.

I hear you. I don't know, I used to be one of those 'business customers' for number of years before making Poser content, as I did architectural and engineering Viz.

I never found useful stuff in poserdom, not because it was hard to find, but because things I needed were super specific, noring every day things.... and because often times, when you are on the clock, efficiency was paramount. At the time I was billed at $120 an hour... if it took me 2-3 hours to convert a single piece of content, I made it cost $360, rather then $12 I actually paid for... so what we would do is buy large packages of models made specifically for arch viz... yes they would cost a few hundred to 1000 per package, but i could plop them into the scene in a matter of minutes. On occasion I bought specific items on turbosquid.

It is possible other 3d users have different needs.

Another thing, even with DAZ, merely opening the website and being bombarded with even somewhat sexually suggestive stuff... well, in stuffy engineering offices that would have easily fall into possible sexual harrasement. Last time I dealt with that is around 2006. I don't know how much has changed since then.

Bringing new users would be great, snd I've seen many discussions about it over the years. Often it comes down to needing big bucks. And in last few years, we have game engines and proliferation of 3d for printing. Seems like Poser and DS are losing ground. One part of it being the learning curve to get into the hobby.

It would be interesting to see some brokerage statistics and market research to see results of current efforts to bring in new users, and come up with some strategies... not being privy to that, I can only guesstimate and speculate.... but, jut like vendoring has peculiarities that seem illogical on the surface, i'm sure briging new users has that too. Beyond grassroots efforts, I'm not sure how I would approach that. If I did, I'd be applying for Steve Cooper's job.

You might indeed do very well in Steve Cooper's former position. But I expect it involves a boat load of stress, and while being a content vendor has its own stresses, as you've described, there must be something to being able to step out of the corporate rat race. :) <--- Please don't disabuse us of this notion; we like to fantasize. :D Sexually suggestive websites... Oh, I forgot about that. I expect it's actually gotten more restrictive since 2006. I wondered why Daz and Rendo were so keen on updating their sites for mobile devices when the overall sales figures for the web demonstrate that mobile visits don't convert into sales nearly as often as desktop visits. People are still browsing on their phones, but buying on their desktops. And this is one industry in which you can guarantee that buyers own either a desktop or a fairly powerful laptop. I guess, though, if you want to browse the Poser content sites at work... better do it incognito, on your phone. Hell, even at home you might not want the site to show up on your monitor while you shop for morphs, lest you risk your kid asking, "Daddy, why is mommy looking at naked people?" :D (If you're a clothing vendor with kids, I'd think they're used to seeing a grey naked Vicki showing up in a modelling app -- but it's not necessarily the case for every customer. LOL.)

@Morkonan -- I agree with much of what you say. But I don't think grammar is all that important, as long as the message is intelligible. At least, it's not important for me. But then I guess I'm used to talking to people who are not native English speakers. I also don't insist that a vendor show their ability to make good renders. Many vendors get someone else to do the promo renders. Many don't even use Poser at all. Does not make their products any less fantastic. But I agree that great renders -- in Poser -- are extremely helpful, and the more, the better.

As for gratuitous boob shots -- well, I'm not sure how well they work on women, gay men, and kids. Unless I'm specifically shopping for sexy stuff, they tend to turn me off a product. After a while, I just start rolling my eyes and clicking away. I guess, if you use the boob as your main marketing strategy, you're targeting mostly the horny teen boy (and a few horny teen girls). Unfortunately, that group is not known for the enormity of its disposable income. Not a bad group to market to if you're selling one $60 video game every four years to millions of horny teens. But if you need your loyal customers to buy just about everything you release, they might not be as reliable as say, retired people, who seem to make up quite a sizable portion of the userbase. Not saying retired people don't appreciate boobs. Surely they do! But boobs alone won't sell a product to someone unless their hormones are raging so hard that they can't think straight. :)

Ha ha, I thought about Steve coopers Job for a minute, but I only have about 60-70% of the qualifications they need at best, and I'm not able to relocate (I think I'd have to divorce first), and my health can be a bit sketchy so I'm not the most reliable full time employee - which is another reason I got out of corporate world. And also, I went to art school full time, couple of years ago, and have couple years to go before I'm done. (even my content releases are part time for now - which is why I don't release more often). Aaand ... I really like the content making and design aspect of things, what I really want to do is build up a small studio of content makers eventually.
Yeah, at home I'm fine with sexually suggestive stuff. Work in engineering offices was, you know, when in Rome do as romans do... and then there is the fact I live in california, the overregulation capital of the world.... everything can be considered sexual harassment in the workplace, and then companies add a fat safety margin to the laws. Now in art school, we're drawing nude people from life all day long, almost every day. Sometimes I barely register if the person in front of me is naked or not.

At home, my poor stepdaughter, when she was a teenager or in her early 20's would bring home her friends (and my office is in the den, just by the front door) and has to go... hm, yea, this is my step-mom, she draws naked people all day long... then she would blush in embarrassment and drag them off. She is 26 now, and moved in with her fiance now.

Clothing vendors and texturers even more so at times, instead of Hi, how is your day going sometimes you go, Hi, how many hours of staring up V4's crotch so far today?

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

{Bad Kitteh} " I really like the content making and design aspect of things, what I really want to do is build up a small studio of content makers eventually. "

Eh? What do you mean by that? scratchhead.gif~original

Poser 12, in feet.

OSes: Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Tunesy quote . . . the first thing you need to do to make money in 3d is to choose a business that has nothing to do with 3d.

Their seems to be a few $'s floating around wallstreet ;)

============================================================

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

moriador - in answer to your question theres no set figure, it all depends on things like the complexity of the project, time, often what both creator and artist think is a fair price.

Tunesy - now theres a general trusim there :)

RorrKonn - I can see how from reading the forums some folks might percive a lot of poser work is often about rendering porn masquerading under the name of art. But the reality is a good building set can sell equally well - or better - than a bit of skimpy clothing.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

moriador - in answer to your question theres no set figure, it all depends on things like the complexity of the project, time, often what both creator and artist think is a fair price.

Tunesy - now theres a general trusim there :)

RorrKonn - I can see how from reading the forums some folks might percive a lot of poser work is often about rendering porn masquerading under the name of art. But the reality is a good building set can sell equally well - or better - than a bit of skimpy clothing.

I was wondering what the range of costs might be -- if you have any idea. I mean, obviously, if I wanted to buy a model of an apple that would not be as costly as, say, your ruined city. :) I understand that much will depend on the particular artist as well. If I were to do something like this, naturally I'd want to make a profit on the deal -- but at the same time, I strongly, strongly believe that artists should be properly compensated, which is why it'd probably be a bad business for me to go into. But I think a marketing model that takes a lot of the risk away from the creators and puts it onto the sellers might well be extremely beneficial to some. At the moment creators do almost all the work, assume almost all the risk, but hardly make close to almost all the money. To me that seems very unfair.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

Obviously I won't go into any specfic things here, but as a typical example say a fully rigged up/textured car might set you say $500 to buy. Lets take the house keeping, like revisions build time as a given, as again that varies.
Now you're more than a little bit poorer, obviously you need your investment back and quickly. As my maths are cr*p :) lets say you set a selling price of $10. Thats not 50 copies you need to sell, but 100. Because you need to factor in the store cuts. 50% being the general average for most places and that covers them marketing your product, handling the customer service etc.
That can be achiveable in a month or two, however that assumes it will sell. Yes while having a good well made product and nice promos helps theres also a big element of luck involved.
Mostly you have to hope it'll be well received by your audience - I've spent 6 month plus on some stuff and (as an example here) because it's too unique it's tanked, other times I've knocked a quick freebie out in a day and been so popular the host has had to migrate my site to a faster rack.
[Note if you self sell thats also an extra cost, not just the techie costs but time to code it , promote it etc. The latter not being an easy task]
Theres also the question of will the site selling will be good with it's promotions. OK sure theres an valid argument ...more you sell, more exposure you'll get. Equally if a site releases loads of new products each day realistically how much they can promote just one person ?
So yes overall your point that ..."creators do almost all the work, assume almost all the risk, but hardly make close to almost all the money. To me that seems very unfair"... is correct a lot of the time.
Then again thats also common in the traditional art world and there you're you've got the complication of being up against those with limited talent but the cash to pay for shows, adverts etc. So why do creators do this, my feeling is it's about the love for the craft and sometimes we just need to make a few bucks to cover costs etc. It's not about making a living because thats not likely to happen for most sellers.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

mrsparky Quote

RorrKonn - I can see how from reading the forums some folks might percive a lot of poser work is often about rendering porn masquerading under the name of art.
But the reality is a good building set can sell equally well - or better - than a bit of skimpy clothing.

I'm a bit confused buy this post .but since when ,me not knowing what where talking about ever stopped me from having a conversation ;)

All I know is even if ya going to render a naked Vicky no matter if ya call it Art or porn think it's more interesting
if ya put her in a environment and not just in a empty white space.and at least some jewelry would be nice.

Sells ,ah ,I don't think it's what ya sell ,but I think the best Artist sells best.
Stone Masson ,Aeon Soul ,etc etc sell different stuff but I think there all big names because there killer Artist.
Why do we know Boris n Royo's name ? cause there killer Artist.

What makes a Killer Artist no matter the medium ? Answer that question ,The Realms are yours.

============================================================

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

moriador - in answer to your question theres no set figure, it all depends on things like the complexity of the project, time, often what both creator and artist think is a fair price.

Tunesy - now theres a general trusim there :)

RorrKonn - I can see how from reading the forums some folks might percive a lot of poser work is often about rendering porn masquerading under the name of art. But the reality is a good building set can sell equally well - or better - than a bit of skimpy clothing.

I was wondering what the range of costs might be -- if you have any idea. I mean, obviously, if I wanted to buy a model of an apple that would not be as costly as, say, your ruined city. :) I understand that much will depend on the particular artist as well. If I were to do something like this, naturally I'd want to make a profit on the deal -- but at the same time, I strongly, strongly believe that artists should be properly compensated, which is why it'd probably be a bad business for me to go into. But I think a marketing model that takes a lot of the risk away from the creators and puts it onto the sellers might well be extremely beneficial to some. At the moment creators do almost all the work, assume almost all the risk, but hardly make close to almost all the money. To me that seems very unfair.

Yes, content makers are definitely near the bottom of the food chain.
I'm not sure where one can find an affordable content maker that is not already working with the store? I tried with various modelers you can find 'out there in the world of 3D, and frankly, most are not affordable, even if you farm things out of the country. Maybe I'm looking on the wrong places. Maybe it works better for a small but already established brokerage, and then you are sort of branding a brokerage. Most brokerages also do this, offer content makers a 'buyout' option, for a set fee. Usually I find those to be much lower then what I can make on sets I make.

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

{Bad Kitteh} " I really like the content making and design aspect of things, what I really want to do is build up a small studio of content makers eventually. "

Eh? What do you mean by that?

Different people can have different strengths even among vendors. If you work as a group and play to each person's strength, things can be made faster. Also if you have a reliable team of people, you can tackle larger commissions or larger more visible projects, for people who can pay professional level fees.
Like a small version of this kind of a place: http://www.blur.com/

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

I was wondering what the range of costs might be -- if you have any idea. I mean, obviously, if I wanted to buy a model of an apple that would not be as costly as, say, your ruined city. :) I understand that much will depend on the particular artist as well. If I were to do something like this, naturally I'd want to make a profit on the deal -- but at the same time, I strongly, strongly believe that artists should be properly compensated, which is why it'd probably be a bad business for me to go into. But I think a marketing model that takes a lot of the risk away from the creators and puts it onto the sellers might well be extremely beneficial to some. At the moment creators do almost all the work, assume almost all the risk, but hardly make close to almost all the money. To me that seems very unfair.

Generally speaking, the average rate for a freelance content artist is usually around $20-$25 an hour. That is usually considered a fair rate on average, but of course some artists will go much lower than that while others will charge much higher. But if you consider the median annual salary for 3D artists and animators in the US is in the $45 - $50K range, it is about right. But many artists don't charge a flat hourly rate. Instead they tend to base their fees on the scope of the project and charge accordingly. An artist that's been working for a while can usually estimate how long it will take to complete a certain job so they'll be able to give you a pretty good estimate up front that compensates for certain unforeseeable issues, assuming there aren't major changes made half way through. But there are other factors to consider too, and the more resources you can provide the artist the less your final costs will be. The more they have to come up with on their own, the higher your costs will be. For the type of scenarios you're talking about, (or at least what I think you're referring to), there are ways to work out agreements where your initial payment for the project serves as a sort of deposit, and then the artist receives a percentage of sales up to a certain amount, which would be whatever amount the two parties agree on. Some artists are fine with setting up arrangements like that while others won't touch it at all and will want their entire fee before handing over the content, because there's no guarantee that the content will have any market at all, so depending on the complexity of the work it can be a risk for the artist. In the end, whoever has the final resale rights to the content is the one most likely to make the most profit from it.

As a professional photographer and graphic artist I'm well aware of how much of a struggle it can be to stay solvent. I latched onto a government position many years ago and have enjoyed a steady paycheck and now an indexed pension while many of my friends in the industry lamented their choice of a career in the field; and occasionally had to take other jobs to pay the rent. It seems that making content for Poser/Daz is much the same. This thread has been an eye opener as I've toyed with the idea of selling my clothes for a few extra bucks. After following the conversation I've decided that I'm not willing to put in the time required, I have too many other hobbies that demand my attention. Over the years I've had the pleasure of getting to know a few content creators and this is what initially inspired me. But between the pirate community stealing stuff (and being dammed proud of the fact) and the low return rate on the time invested, I'll keep my clothes to myself. It's kind of a relief for me as I can now relax and just play with Poser.

Speaking of pirates, I see that KAT has just been taken down. This was the most popular community for Poser thieves. I remember one content artist mentioning that when launching his latest item, he had under a dozen sales over a couple of weeks with many dozens (I don't remember the numbers) of folks putting it in their wish lists. His item then hit the sleazy Asian and Russian sites, followed by the torrent sites. Within days his sales dropped to almost nothing and the bulk of potential customers removed the item from their wish lists. That's gotta be disheartening for an artist after investing all the time to make something your proud of.

I remember when a record was around $10.00 and a concert ticket was around $10.00.
Musicians answers to everything free internet is $100's concert tickets.

It's my understanding Aeon Soul poser path lead to working for a gaming company.

They may give your Art a way but no one not even the Gods can take away that you done that work of Art.
So for Artist ,I think you half to follow the path no matter what and in the end even if ya never get rich at least ya die famous.

Never Surrender

============================================================

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Lots to respond to.

@BadKittehCo -- "Ha ha, I thought about Steve coopers Job for a minute, but I only have about 60-70% of the qualifications they need at best...." It's funny. When I talked to a job recruiter, he was handing me a bunch of job prospects, and I'm saying, "Wait -- this one requires five years experience, this one requires knowledge of x software, etc," and he said, "Nah, they just put all that in to discourage the chumps. No one expects you to have all those qualifications." Then I read an article that claimed that on average men who apply for jobs have 50% of the stated qualifications, while on average women have more than 90%. Could be that women feel they need to overcompensate by looking better on paper; could be that, thanks to our culture's particular method of handling romantic interactions means that men get a lot more practice aiming high and getting rejected; could be something else entirely. In your case, you can't relocate (and art school is cool!). Otherwise, you might be perfect for the job. :)

@MrSparky -- I guess there are going to be different rates for 1. make whatever you want, and I'll buy all the rights, 2. make this precise thing I want (plus revisions if it doesn't meet my expectations), and I'll buy all the rights, 3. make something in this general category of things (a car of some sort), and I'll pay you an advance, plus a percent of the sales, and you keep the copyright but sell me first distribution rights (meaning that as long as I sell it, you can't, but the moment I stop selling it, you're free to sell it yourself or to someone else) -- and all sorts of other arrangements.

The things that would give a seller the advantage if there were to pay a creator up front would be that they didn't need to recoup the costs quickly, and that they weren't making models, so could spend all their time selling. The disadvantage would be that if the model just wasn't something people wanted, they'd lose money. The advantage to the creator would be that if their model didn't sell, they still got paid and that they wouldn't have to wait to get paid. The disadvantage would be that if the model turned out to be a hit, they wouldn't make as much money as otherwise. Of course, the model might not have turned out to be a hit if the seller wasn't personally invested in its success. And that's the thing about brokerages. They need a lot of products coming in in order to get and keep customers interested, but in the end, they don't care what sells, as long as something does, and if that's 10 top vendors, there's little to be gained from putting all their efforts behind anyone else. However, if you've paid up front for a model, you have a lot of incentive to sell it. Paying up front is usually how we sell physical goods., and the risk, cost, and profits are divided fairly equally among all three levels of the system (manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer). But for some reason, with intellectual products, we've latched onto a different process. At least in publishing, authors get an advance -- but they still have to pay it back if the book doesn't sell.

Seems to me like a cooperative would do better. A team, as someone already mentioned, with everyone playing to their specialty, whether that's modelling, rigging, texturing, selling, coding, or customer relations might do better. But to really do it well, it'd have to be a pretty big team. And, of course, the advantage of working entirely for oneself would no longer exist for those artists who really enjoy (and perhaps need) that kind of independence.

@Shane -- A buyer of indie content isn't going to be able to pay studio wages. But it would be nice, wouldn't it, if a creator could at least reliably make a set minimum on each of their products as long as the quality was consistent? To get paid without being completely vulnerable to the whims of the marketplace.

It's my belief that good marketing responds to the demands of the customers, and great marketing creates the demands that the company is prepared to fill. But where is the Steve Jobs of the Poser community? :D

@kljpmsd -- I guess it depends on why you want to sell content. I think (though I certainly don't know) that a lot of vendors decide to make their products available for sale, not because they expect to make a living wage from them, but because they want to release them for people to use (which is its own kind of joy) for the love of simply making them and seeing them rendered -- but at the same time, they'd like to recoup at least some of the costs. Occasionally, such folks will hit pay dirt because the quality of their work is so high and they get lucky by meeting a demand. In any case, it's not an all or nothing proposition, unless you're selling product to pay your bills. I doubt that most vendors are, or even expect to -- but I certainly don't claim to know.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

@Moriador    "I guess it depends on why you want to sell content. I think (though I certainly don't know) that a lot of vendors decide to make their products available for sale, not because they expect to make a living wage from them, but because they want to release them for people to use (which is its own kind of joy) for the love of simply making them and seeing them rendered -- but at the same time, they'd like to recoup at least some of the costs."

      I certainly admire those who make art (of whatever sort) for it's own sake but admit to being a bit greedy and a lot selfish. I like the air of exclusivity and will probably only share my clothes with a small group of like minded weirdos (don't ask).

      It would be interesting to see sales, membership, and visit figures for the bigger sites.

@Morkonan -- I agree with much of what you say. But I don't think grammar is all that important, as long as the message is intelligible. At least, it's not important for me. But then I guess I'm used to talking to people who are not native English speakers. I also don't insist that a vendor show their ability to make good renders. Many vendors get someone else to do the promo renders. Many don't even use Poser at all. Does not make their products any less fantastic. But I agree that great renders -- in Poser -- are extremely helpful, and the more, the better. As for gratuitous boob shots -- well, I'm not sure how well they work on women, gay men, and kids.

As far as grammar, spelling and rendered promos goes, it's more a question of "Implied Quality." Implied Quality is important in a commercial environment where competition is strong. In industrial/professional environments, where quality is spelled out in the contract and in the esoteric knowledge of the users, manufacturers don't have to necessarily put fancy labels on the box. :) Their quality is in the design specs or marketing literature. But, in a commercial shelf-space situation, one needs to push that implied quality as much as possible. Two products, sitting side by side, one that has great renders and emphasizes the sort of product and quality you're looking for, while the other does not... Which one will you pick, all other things being equal?
A note on "boob shots" - Women pay attention to those just as much as men, sometimes even more. Studies actually prove this. :) (Will reference if necessary.) Past that, there are variables that differ, per person, regarding how specific sorts of content will be reacted to. But, for just about everyone, male and female, "boobs" are always an eye-catcher. That is why marketers use such tactics so often, especially with intangible products that have little or no actual physical representation. There's a reason why chewing-gum commercials have buxom babes running on the beach in bikinnis and don't show sets of teeth clacking away at barely maleable tree sap... :) My only argument is that they shouldn't be what is focused on for product promos that don't have much to do with them. Certainly, not for primary marketing promos. Incidentals and inclusions, though, are fine, so long as a basic focus on quality and communication in these sorts of images is maintained.

ok, for rigging and poser details, Nerd 3D has loads and loads of invaluable information. Most of what I learned is by sticking my head up his arse and begging! You can see he has a lot of published info here: http://www.nerd3d.com/

Another thing I find invaluable are Dimension3D's poser tools. Poser File editor in particular. I would die without it: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/poser-file-editor-3/62322/ D3D has few other amazing tools, here at Rendo and at DAZ (for DS/Genesis content)

I'm not sure what you mean by adapting pre existing textures? For characters, if you use pre existing, make sure they are licensed as 'merchant resource', or photographs meant for texturing, like what you can get from www.3d.sk. You can't take other textured characters and tweak the images (for freebies or for store items). For your own personal use, you can of course do whatever you want. Promo images are very important of course, spending some time learning how to make a cool catchy render is smart. Look at advertising outside poserdom, fashion, movies, games... whatever may be somewhat similar to the content you are making, That is a learning curve of it's own. Whenever you can afford, hire a promo artist. I do it about half the times, especially for the main promo. You get only a second or two for the buyer to fall in love with your product - it is only after that they most will bother to read techy details - especially until you develop a following and a name recognition. And, well, you have to make sure that the product stands up to the promos, or people will feel like they've been cheated... and poser users can be very vociferous when they don't like something.

Fancy lettering - first, don't overdo it, learn a bit about graphics design and visual hierarchy of things so you don't assault the customer with everything at once and they run off with a visual migraine. ok, ok, i'm exaggerating a bit.... lot of little designs are a combo between layer effects, and whatever fonts you can find out there on the internet, there are tons out there free or for pay (check EULA's on everything, make sure you are allowed to use it in a way you want to use it.) You dont want to get in a hot water copyright wise, not only because of the other party, but if it happens more often, the brokerage starts being nervous about taking your product. Usually when there is a copyright violation they are the first to get the notice.

Thanks for this.

I bought the file editor in November. Haven't looked at it yet. Hope it helps.

Yes I do mean use a merchant resource. This is of course to avoid copyright issues and to speed the overall process of figure creation

quote It would be interesting to see sales, membership, and visit figures for the bigger sites.

I've wanted all those answers for years.

for the ones that say how many members .cgtalk has around 500,000 members.

daz,runtine has around 100,000 members.I expect most of the cgtalk members have daz poser also.

most don't think of daz as a vender but daz built there empire by being a vender.

============================================================

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

@Shane -- A buyer of indie content isn't going to be able to pay studio wages.

They most certainly do.

Lots to respond to.

@BadKittehCo -- "Ha ha, I thought about Steve coopers Job for a minute, but I only have about 60-70% of the qualifications they need at best...." It's funny. When I talked to a job recruiter, he was handing me a bunch of job prospects, and I'm saying, "Wait -- this one requires five years experience, this one requires knowledge of x software, etc," and he said, "Nah, they just put all that in to discourage the chumps. No one expects you to have all those qualifications." Then I read an article that claimed that on average men who apply for jobs have 50% of the stated qualifications, while on average women have more than 90%. Could be that women feel they need to overcompensate by looking better on paper; could be that, thanks to our culture's particular method of handling romantic interactions means that men get a lot more practice aiming high and getting rejected; could be something else entirely. In your case, you can't relocate (and art school is cool!). Otherwise, you might be perfect for the job. :)

your bills. I doubt that most vendors are, or even expect to -- but I certainly don't claim to know.

I'd actually be much more interested in building a new knockout figure for Poser.... but they know that already... and I don't want to make one as a small time community effort, to have another figure die a slow painful death because of no marketing behind it. I can certainly build something that is technically and aesthetically competitive. ;)

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

I've seen a lot of characters since I wondered in to town .
the one constant I have always seen is DAZ supports there character at all times year after decade.
why don't I see any other Artist or Studios version 6 character ? no one else ever supports there character.
they go, here is my unsupported character, buy I'm leaving town. you 2 are on your own.
so if Ford said here's the model A ,have fun ,I'm gone. how many here would be driving a model A ?
Would you buy a new car with out any support ?

============================================================

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Poser desperately needs a state of the art knock out figure,otherwise the merchants will abandon it for Genesis / Daz Studio. Anyways I'm off to look at promo design !

@Morkonan -- I agree with much of what you say. But I don't think grammar is all that important, as long as the message is intelligible. At least, it's not important for me. But then I guess I'm used to talking to people who are not native English speakers. I also don't insist that a vendor show their ability to make good renders. Many vendors get someone else to do the promo renders. Many don't even use Poser at all. Does not make their products any less fantastic. But I agree that great renders -- in Poser -- are extremely helpful, and the more, the better. As for gratuitous boob shots -- well, I'm not sure how well they work on women, gay men, and kids.

As far as grammar, spelling and rendered promos goes, it's more a question of "Implied Quality." Implied Quality is important in a commercial environment where competition is strong. In industrial/professional environments, where quality is spelled out in the contract and in the esoteric knowledge of the users, manufacturers don't have to necessarily put fancy labels on the box. :) Their quality is in the design specs or marketing literature. But, in a commercial shelf-space situation, one needs to push that implied quality as much as possible. Two products, sitting side by side, one that has great renders and emphasizes the sort of product and quality you're looking for, while the other does not... Which one will you pick, all other things being equal?
A note on "boob shots" - Women pay attention to those just as much as men, sometimes even more. Studies actually prove this. :) (Will reference if necessary.) Past that, there are variables that differ, per person, regarding how specific sorts of content will be reacted to. But, for just about everyone, male and female, "boobs" are always an eye-catcher. That is why marketers use such tactics so often, especially with intangible products that have little or no actual physical representation. There's a reason why chewing-gum commercials have buxom babes running on the beach in bikinnis and don't show sets of teeth clacking away at barely maleable tree sap... :) My only argument is that they shouldn't be what is focused on for product promos that don't have much to do with them. Certainly, not for primary marketing promos. Incidentals and inclusions, though, are fine, so long as a basic focus on quality and communication in these sorts of images is maintained.

Certainly boobs are an eye catcher. Certainly all sorts of people pay attention to them. But an enormously fat and hairy man's butt crack would also be an eyecatcher. Probably far more so in the midst of all the boobage on sites like Renderosity.

But being an eye catcher does not necessarily translate into sales. :D And in some instances, will have a negative impact on sales.

If all you needed to do to make money was get people's attention, a good number of us would just get up in the morning, drink our first cup of the day, travel to downtown, and stand on the street screaming our heads off.

--

For women, babies are a far more potent driver of sales than breasts -- unless the breasts in question are supposed to be a representation of her own, as in clothing sales, where the idea is that wearing the clothes makes one like the person in the ad. This doesn't work in car sales with a sexy chic draped over the hood. To appeal to women, she needs to be the one driving it. Some advertisers understand this basic concept. But a great many seem to think the context is irrelevant. They seem unable to get beyond "BOOBS!!!!"

In TV advertising, nothing seems to be more effective than the sound of a baby laughing. This works on both men and women.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

Ah, found it. I've been looking for this link for a long time.

Anyway, BadKittehCo mentioned something about "getting a following". I think she's really on to something.

http://kk.org/thetechnium/2008/03/1000-true-fans/

To be sure, to get 1000 such fans in a milieu the size of Poserdom is quite a feat. However, if you succeed, you'll make a living.

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

Interesting article Moriador.

Curious, is there a particular benefit anyone participating here can site for restricting oneself to only creating Poser/DS content?

For that matter, is there a particular benefit to only being a content creator? For someone interested in making a living from their work as a freelance artist, is it not more beneficial to take advantage of all the avenues of revenue that an artist has available to them? Focusing the majority of ones time on one or two areas of course has its advantages, but should it be exclusive? If there's a market for rendered images, or animation sequences, or 2D illustrations, if the skills are there, why not incorporate those aspects as well to increase the revenue, and along the way maybe learn new skills? I always try to think outside the box with whatever I'm pursuing. And I think mindset plays a very important part in whether you'll be successful, whatever it is you're trying to do. You basically have to convince yourself that failure is not an option.

Ah, found it. I've been looking for this link for a long time.

Anyway, BadKittehCo mentioned something about "getting a following". I think she's really on to something.

http://kk.org/thetechnium/2008/03/1000-true-fans/

To be sure, to get 1000 such fans in a milieu the size of Poserdom is quite a feat. However, if you succeed, you'll make a living.

I always try to take a critical look at my own buying habits. There are three content creators whose stuff I will by, almost no matter what it is, because I know it will be great, and in part I want to encourage them to make more, when I buy things that I'm a little iffy about. It almost becomes a 'collect them all' game. Those three happen to be three of the most well known and successful content makers in this market.

I spent a lot of time pondering and analyzing this, trying to figure out what made them so successful, and how to take advantage of that in my own work. Why shoot for the best.... well, if you don't shoot for the best you've already reduced your chances of success. Even if it takes more than one lifetime to get there, still shoot for the best.
Best in aesthetics, best in marketing, best in presentation, blah blah... identify components that are needed, and see what makes them great.

Having a following means people will buy your stuff before thinking.. then it will end up on a 'top sellers' list and it may be just enough to tip the scales of the skeptics, or those still thinking about it. you start having some popularity and visibility, it starts to feed on itself, people see other people buying it, and it adds polish to that 'ooog shiny' factor people in poserdom like. Everyone is playing with it, I better get it too, i want to be one if the in crowd.... ir 'it must be special'

Sometimes people say, the leaders are important, you know who else is super important, the first few followers, they are the ones that make other people think the leader is worth following... out there on his/her own, the leader may just end up looking like a lone fool. Followers validate them. (We dissected that concept in one of my sociology classes too, one that analyzes group dynamics. lot of marketing has to do with group dynamics - people do have some influence on each other, we don't exist in a vacuum - even though a lot of us would like to think we are independent thinkers.... eh, only to a degree. We all live in the same society and our brains are made of same human genetic crap - so there is a degree of predictability)

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

Interesting article Moriador.

Curious, is there a particular benefit anyone participating here can site for restricting oneself to only creating Poser/DS content?

For that matter, is there a particular benefit to only being a content creator? For someone interested in making a living from their work as a freelance artist, is it not more beneficial to take advantage of all the avenues of revenue that an artist has available to them? Focusing the majority of ones time on one or two areas of course has its advantages, but should it be exclusive? If there's a market for rendered images, or animation sequences, or 2D illustrations, if the skills are there, why not incorporate those aspects as well to increase the revenue, and along the way maybe learn new skills? I always try to think outside the box with whatever I'm pursuing. And I think mindset plays a very important part in whether you'll be successful, whatever it is you're trying to do. You basically have to convince yourself that failure is not an option.

Once you find a groove there is very little reason to branch out a lot. Being a content creator is like any other business, you find a sweet spot that works... and like any market, you have to follow changes and developments to adjust. Customers in poserdom like frequent releases - coincidentally, there are a few other businesses where customers like a degree of predictability. For example what they are teaching us in art school, for people who want to be gallery artists, and freelance illustrators, and concept artists - having product consistency works, in gallery artists it is expected. Too many different pieces, and it becomes hard for your gallery to market them, and you end up with fewer sales. If you develop a following they will like a degree of predictability... like if stonemason made a character, my first reaction would be huh? Then I would be, it better be really good, now that he is changing things. Other makers who have done characters and clothing and small environments, I'd likely be little more open to a variety.
Same goes for picking up work as a freelancer... it is harder to get work from a first time client then from a repeat client who already likes your work. It is entirely possible to have more than one successful focus of work, but not too many that you spread yourself too thin. Every market takes some time and effort to break into, then when you break in, you start making more money with equal or lesser time investment.... and get to really professional pay rates (like $80 to $100 per hour base for freelance work).

Also what I noticed as you get older, you really need to have that base, as your energy levels are lesser to constantly look at and experiment with a significant amount of new things. You sort of build yourself in the early years of your career, and in later years reap the benefits of that investment. Learning new things need not fall by the wayside in the process. Computer related stuff has enough new stuff even if you stick to just a few choice disciplines. I've always made more money when I focused on achieving a good level of expertise to stand out from the crowd at least a little bit. At the same time, I did retain a hefty dose of versatility.... Finding the balance of the two (and few other things in the mix) is the key. Also people can have a variety of interests and strengths they may want to cater to.

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

lol after reading these threads poor MLP MUSt be getting dizzy

but the underlying thought is that skill/consistently and a willingness to help buyers that have problems is the way to get results, 1 complaint is stronger then 99 sales with no feedback

pretty much everything these days is SPECAILized find what your special at then do it as well as you can

its YOU that makes success not what you do !!

ps theres limits fat peeps don't make jockeys BUT they can own a racehorse ;-)

I want to encourage them to make more,

Glad I'm not the only one doing this. I also email them and let them know how much I enjoy the product and thank them for their work. I'm surprised at how often I'll receive a return message thanking me for the kind comments and sometimes expressing disappointment at how few people take the time to give them feedback. Customers should be taking a little time to bolster the egos of their favourite content creators.

how important are the product titles really?

something basic like "some stuff you might need"

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

In all the years I've spent with Poser, I've only created one freebie (for Antonia at ShareCG). Making the product was a blast! Providing follow-up tech support for an issue that both I and my beta testers missed was very disheartening. NO ONE that downloaded it said anything to me directly! It was by sheer luck that I came across the problem in a random forum post. Without that post, my product would still have the bad issue today. Any new downloaders would probably see it and go "what IS this crap!?!"

This made me realize that being a vendor takes a lot of hard work, valuable time and dedication. Even with that, you're still at the mercy of demographics and a customer base that doesn't always tell you if you're doing something wrong. Honestly, I don't know how all of you vendors do it!

I AM glad that you do though! As for me, I may make more freebies at some point but, only when I know that I will have the follow-up time to support it.

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AMD FX-9590 4.7ghz 8-core, 32gb of RAM, Win7 64bit, nVidia GeForce GTX 760

PoserPro2012, Photoshop CS4 and Magix Music Maker

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...and when the day is dawning...I have to say goodbye...a last look back into...your broken eyes.

Vendor selling for 1.000

That is 500 for the site
500 for the vendor.

Vendor has to declare income.
Vendor pays taxes.

Vendors net income 250. (from the 1.000 his buyers paid)
IF he /she is lucky !

Vendor wanna survive?
He/she needs to sell for 10.000 EACH Month to get 2.500 net each month.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

so much work. eeks. havn't played FF 3 weekends in a row.

maybe, eventually, i could cut my dayjob hours. set the alarm for work at home.

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

Tell me about it. This is a steep learning curve ! I hope my second product takes less time than this !

yeah, making content can be very time consuming. Any tools you can get hold of to speed things up are big necessity.
DAZ studio has done a pretty decent job at making built-in tools that help content makers. Poser - not so much. You heavily depend on third party stuff to speed up your production... and there are so many third party things out there, it can take time to find a good one too.
It is super easy to spend more time making things then you will get paid for them.
You don't get paid for learning curves.

But... most of this is true in any production environment. 3D or non 3D, you have to work efficiently, and strive for competence (competence and efficiency often go hand in hand)

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

Vendor selling for 1.000

That is 500 for the site
500 for the vendor.

Vendor has to declare income.
Vendor pays taxes.

Vendors net income 250. (from the 1.000 his buyers paid)
IF he /she is lucky !

Vendor wanna survive?
He/she needs to sell for 10.000 EACH Month to get 2.500 net each month.

yeah, that's pretty close to how it works. Taxes vary, and vendor percentages can vary, but also sales numbers can vary.... each product is a bit if a gamble too. You think people will like it and they don't, or the other way around.

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

Yeah, I know.
There is a huge gap between what the buyer has to pay and what the creator/vendor gets out of it.

From "3 to 1" to "4 to 1" seems about right.

Would I become a vendor? That would be my second income. And taxes on a second income are HUGE in some countries.

Certainly percentages vary, and populartiy of an item is guesswork.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Didn't think I'd be spending as long as this on the textures :( Not going to get my time back on this one for sure, but I wasn't expecting the first one to do too well.

how important is hype?

i've seen how the big boys do it, what bout the leetl dude just starting out?

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

Vendor selling for 1.000

That is 500 for the site
500 for the vendor.

Vendor has to declare income.
Vendor pays taxes.

Vendors net income 250. (from the 1.000 his buyers paid)
IF he /she is lucky !

Vendor wanna survive?
He/she needs to sell for 10.000 EACH Month to get 2.500 net each month.

yeah, that's pretty close to how it works. Taxes vary, and vendor percentages can vary, but also sales numbers can vary.... each product is a bit if a gamble too. You think people will like it and they don't, or the other way around.

You know what really sucks about that, don't you? The government, not the brokerage, is the one getting half the profit for the work YOU did. Because both you AND the brokerage have to pay taxes.

You know what really sucks about that, don't you? The government, not the brokerage, is the one getting half the profit for the work YOU did. Because both you AND the brokerage have to pay taxes.

Now THAT'S funny. You really believe that the brokerages OR the vendors are paying 50% in taxes on their income? Bwahaahahahahahahahahahaha! You might want to do some research into how much in taxes corporate America pays.

Like this quote "The company's pre-tax earnings from U.S. operations were $5.1 billion but it got a stunning $3.2 billion tax refund, according to the report."

And, this one..."which earned $198 million in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations and got a $249 million refund"

You know what really sucks about that, don't you? The government, not the brokerage, is the one getting half the profit for the work YOU did. Because both you AND the brokerage have to pay taxes.

Now THAT'S funny. You really believe that the brokerages OR the vendors are paying 50% in taxes on their income? Bwahaahahahahahahahahahaha! You might want to do some research into how much in taxes corporate America pays.

Like this quote "The company's pre-tax earnings from U.S. operations were $5.1 billion but it got a stunning $3.2 billion tax refund, according to the report."

And, this one..."which earned $198 million in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations and got a $249 million refund"

Trust me, I'm well aware of how much people pay in taxes. I was commenting on Vilters' example. Which, of course, is why I quoted it.

Watch the police and the tax man miss me

I'm mobile

Oooooh, yeah, hee!

(woww, it let me paste text)

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: making money making content?