Quote - Well Rokket, the cliched standard response seems to be "Find a gap in the market, do your research, market it, release the odd freebie extention pack" and Bingo you are rolling.

Personally I think that gap is so small, and the demand for it would be so minimal that it isn't worth the effort. The solution seems to me to be to take on the big boys at their own game, create the skimp wear with a few added bells and whistles, create the bizzare poses and do really amazing promo images. The promo image has to be the shop window, how many times have we walked past a store in the real world that has a badly outfitted tailors mannequin wearing the latest fashions and thought, urgh, that sucks, yet 6 doors away seen the same items in a modern well lit well thought out display and been swayed to purchase. I'm only coming at this from a purchasers point of view, but so many market place items "turn me off" by really bad promo images. I'm not disputing that the product may be good, but in this era of mass marketing, multiple product choices, we really do more often than not judge a book by its' cover.

If I were even to consider becoming a vendor I seriously think I would have to work twice as hard as in the past, a constant flow of freebie items to keep your exposure up, exemplary textures, pristine uv maps and gold standard customer support are in my mind the difference. Oh yes and not forgetting my latest product is now reduced in price to $3.99, is it all actually worth the effort?

Yeah, I pretty much agree with that. The biggest reason, in reality that I don't decide to do this is what we were talking about earlier in this thread: can't do it full-time, you need another income to get by, especially nowadays. My current full time job is merchant seaman. I am on a ship on the ocean for almost 10 months out of the year. Not much down time while on the job, and internet access is sparse. So I continue to plug away at learning Wings 3D, starting to learn Blender, and still trying to wrap my head around the nodes in the material room.

Every great once in awhile, I put out something I want to share. And I do that by putting in the freebies section. I think I got into the Poser game years too late to want to do this for a living.

At the risk of disagreeing with you Rorrkonn, you seem to be rehashing the Lamboghini dealer vs Chevy dealer argument, the truth is unless you are prepared to sell your Lambos for Chevy prices then it is in my opinion going to be a bleak year.

Yes, the High end store might do well, but at what cost, how many additonal hours modelling and texturing does he put in, compared to the "low end" stuff. So perecentage return must matter unless you accept the fact your working hours are freely given. I'd actually be interested to hear what your definition of high end vs low end is..... I'm not trying to be an ass here, but we've seen vendors who make really high quality products struggling in this current economically changing market, just as much as the "low end" vendor. I'm always interested in peoples perception of what is a good model as opposed to a bad one, if you are a vendor, the only bad model IMHO is the one that DOESN'T sell. No matter how high a quality of mesh, texture etc you put into it.

Although I agree, there's is the other side of the deal. I've got a choice as everyone else, give my content away or sell it. I mainly choose selling it. We all know it takes hours to model and texture, sometimes way too much time. In the beginning I only did props, but my items tend to be collections of props.

Here's how it started, years ago..... I made a set, all made of props, a tropical toon island. Didn't have the intention of selling it, just used it in some of my own images. I was contented by quite a lot of people asking me where they could get this set. So, I added it to CP for a small price. In the end it sold well, just under $500 and with all the extension I made for it, just over $1000. Was that worth it? Do we even need ot ask the question? At that same time, RDNA noticed my work and invited me to join. Stayed with them for about a year, but it just isn't my kind of store, now I'm only selling here (small collection) and the full collection at CP now.

I've looked at the total sales, all stores combined, and last year I sold well over $2500 and the revenue made seems to double each year. Could have released it all for free, but asking a small fee, $1.99 in return for the work I did seems fair to me. If you add all the small fees, it becomes a nice amount, encouraging enough to relese some more items. I know, compared to the big vendors, it's a little amount, but for me it's a nice amount of pocket money, which I would have missed out on if not going this route. If I'm honest, I would not have released as much if I would only do freebies, I would take it a lot slower, so in the end, everyone wins.

Quote - aeilkema : What can I say ,Hope you enjoyed the distractions.

In all honesty, who wouldn't? I'm not sure if my wife enjoyed me enyoing all of the distractions..... oops sorry dear, this link is not what I expected. Anyway not a problem, she was surfing the other night, looking for some information on a topic and ended up on a pornsite, so I guess my distraction was minor compared to that

my spell checker broke & I half to run out the door.
I can not say this CGI Artist is Hi end & this CGI Artist is low end.

if u want to make a $1000.00 a week
your mesh should look like you spent 160 hours working on it.
you alt to set your mesh beside any mesh in any gallery zBrush ,Max ,sites like cgtalk.
and your mesh alt to be as good or better then any mesh out there any where.

your $1000.00 a week mesh alt to be the greatest mesh in the universe.
and ya know it took some real talent to make it.

now if ya mesh looks like ya spent 2 hours making it with out any talent
is it worth $1000.00 a week or 10.00 a week ?

don't know why some think freebies help sells.
But I'm not plaining on making a lot of freebies.

I don't think it's all merchandise quality.
I'm sure it's a lot of factors.
But I do think merchandise quality matters a lot.

I will never get why people at turbo try to sells unfinished meshes.
With no uvmaps & textuers for $ 100.00's.
Talk about a waist of time.

I also think it's important that you do not try to make a million in a day.
There's no such thing as get rich sceems ah,wait ,lotto. ya right.LMAO.
A store full of a 100 pages of crap is still crap.

Then ya get a crappy just trying to get rich fast reputation.
Here's ya coffin nails.for the grave ya just dug ya self.

Your customers are humans.Treat them like humans there treat you human.
Treat ya customers like a money mule and there kick you right out there life's.
With just a click.

The mouse is mightyer then the sword :rolleyes: ...worse pun ever...

Been around since 1998 I watch one of the biggest venders do this to there self's.
Such talent pissed on in the name of greed...what a waist...

Free stuff.It's a waist of my time down loading crappy free stuff.
Give me a wicked kool mesh that I can render a master piece with.
I'll gladly pay you a fair price.
Hows the saying go .you get out of it ,what you put in to it.

I think you just peed off most of the freestuff contributors in here with the unreserved "Free stuff", it's a waist of my time downloading crappy free stuff" comment.

Actually, releasing freebies that are add-ons, textures is cunning marketing, a trail of bread crumbs to your market place

Quote - I think you just peed off most of the freestuff contributors in here with the unreserved "Free stuff", it's a waist of my time downloading crappy free stuff" comment.

Actually, releasing freebies that are add-ons, textures is cunning marketing, a trail of bread crumbs to your market place

I did not say "it's a waist of my time downloading free stuff"

I said "it's a waist of my time downloading crappy free stuff"

I'm not pissed off. To each his own.

Since I don't know what I would price anything I would attempt to sell, I am not sure how much I would have made. I know that freebies get downloaded at least 10 times more than stuff for sale, but I have 8 items in the freebies section here for a total of 2,694 downloads. Even if I only had 1/10 of that, and priced everything like I see priced here, that's a nice reward.

But I don't want to get into the other aspects of being a vendor. For instance, how much do these sites charge to allow you to use them to sell your stuff? I am assuming it's not a free thing. And I am assuming you have to pay whether you make a sale or not. That's the part I don't want to deal with. My wife won't let me buy stuff, which is why I got into modeling to begin with. I am sure she wouldn't want me to venture into this if a sale (especially in this economy) is not a sure thing.

Oh, and my chopper has had 187 downloads already, and it's only been online for a few hours....

EDIT: Actually, it's closing in on the first 24 hours right now.

Quote - I'm not pissed off. To each his own.

Since I don't know what I would price anything I would attempt to sell, I am not sure how much I would have made. I know that freebies get downloaded at least 10 times more than stuff for sale, but I have 8 items in the freebies section here for a total of 2,694 downloads. Even if I only had 1/10 of that, and priced everything like I see priced here, that's a nice reward.

But I don't want to get into the other aspects of being a vendor. For instance, how much do these sites charge to allow you to use them to sell your stuff? I am assuming it's not a free thing. And I am assuming you have to pay whether you make a sale or not. That's the part I don't want to deal with. My wife won't let me buy stuff, which is why I got into modeling to begin with. I am sure she wouldn't want me to venture into this if a sale (especially in this economy) is not a sure thing.

I did not say "it's a waist of my time downloading free stuff"
I said "it's a waist of my time downloading crappy free stuff"

If I'm wrong about this I'm sure some one will correct it.
It's free to ba a vender.
Most site get about 50% of ya sells.

So if you have a $1000.00 sells in Feb
I think
You Get $500.00
Renderosity Gets $500.00

If you have no sells in Feb
You Get $000.00
Renderosity Gets $000.00
But you do not pay any thing.I think.

I knew there was a catch in there somewhere. I think I would prefer to pay a flat monthly fee. But anyhow, it doesn't matter. I won't do the vendor thing.

I think you will find there are different rates of commission that Rendo charges, depending on I presume your volume of sales, or exclusivity etc etc. I've also had a good run as a  freebie creator in a previous incarnation, number 1 freebie volume downloads and was in the top ten for quite some time. The only motivation for creating freebies is the feedback you get from the downloaders and the thought that you are giving something back to the community, very self sacrificing and some might think downright ridiculous. But show me the man who turns down good quality free stuff and I show you insanity.  Oh bugger, I used the C word. Yes the community. If this isn't a community it's just a shop and every gallery submission is just a shop window for one product or another, I'd like to think it is more than that, sort of retrospective to when it started, but I'm probably naive and the artists community days are long gone and we have become just another dog eat dog collection of vendors and purchasers. That is why freestuff matters, no matter whether you think it pointless, a waste of your time etc etc, remember one very important thing, a huge majority of people originally found renderosity by surfing for freestuff, realised they had to join to download it and then spent the next week downloading everything lol...

Freestuff is the Pied Piper .

Most big stores do a 50/50 thing, smaller ones go as high as 70 seller/30 store cut. Which is fair enough as they have to cover costs. So not unreasonable. Personally think thats better than a flat fee. If you don't sell, you don't pay. But if money isn't the important thing, and you want to be recognised for your creations, then Saxon is right.. go the freebie route. That said you still need to create something nice - like Rokket has with his bike - to stand out. It's also a good way to learn about stuff. For example... what other artists want as well, whats likely to popular (or not), copyright/trademark issues, and the community is way more forgiving over a freebies quality/features than with a product. Indeed it's seems that most sellers here started with freebies and moved onto product. Seems to be the default career path :) I also agree with Saxon about the importance of freebies both for the community and the artist. Even when things change big time like the economy or site policys. It allows artists to still enjoy new stuff and for creators to get some exposure.

Ot, but... Rokket, I just downloaded your chopper freebie and I'm seeing alot of smoothing artifacts and ballooning. I noticed that you set alot of the edges on the .obj as hard in wings... This solution does not apply to poser smoothing properly. Next time use control edges combined with bevels (for better specular results) around the various hard edges of the model to avoid this problem and the resulting Poser behavior of the prop. I won't post an image, as anyone who has the chopper can discover this for themselves.

Otherwise, a very nicely constructed model.

After thinking about this thread for a few days, I remembered that I posted some blogs about this issue.

Advice for Online Vendors II: Some Selling Truths Exposed:

I’ve seen a number of articles in graphic artist magazines encouraging artists to sell their models. One of their main points is that, if you’re already making models for your own artwork, why not sell the models to other people? I’ve seen PDF tutorial e-books try to make the point that creating a best-selling product is almost as easy as just finding a niche and filling it. And I’ve also seen discussions in online forums where top-selling merchants talk about how easy it is to sell models and make hundreds (or thousands) of dollars every month. Well, if they’re doing it, so can you!

I don’t mean to scare anyone away from selling their digital products, but it seems that there’s still a lot missing from these discussions and e-books. I’ve been selling products for about 10 years now, so I thought it was past time to add my thoughts to this idea.

What exactly does it take to make a best-selling product and make thousands of dollars in sales every month? Keep reading...

And don't forget the customer service issues you'll have to face: Advice for Online Vendors: Sample Customer Questions:

Here’s a list of questions I’ve received over the years, with my sarcastic answer, which for obvious reasons, I never sent to the customer. I’ve also included a real answer in case some people don’t get the sarcastic one. In many cases, I’ve tried to retain the original grammar and spelling errors in the e-mail, though it’s not the customer’s exact e-mail message.

Oh ,so when I become the vender of the decade I'll Get 70% ,kool.
... well , we all have dreams ,OK ,OK I dream of winning the lotto also.
Good thing dreams don't require any thing that resembles sanity :huh: ...

Rokket : one thing is the software ya need to compete with top venders.
Never messed with Wings.
Blender is killer but just not as fast as app's like Modo,C4D.
Most top venders have app's like Modo,Max, Photoshop ,zBrush. etc etc.

Saxon3d : I would like to live in a free world.

Quote - Ot, but... Rokket, I just downloaded your chopper freebie and I'm seeing alot of smoothing artifacts and ballooning. I noticed that you set alot of the edges on the .obj as hard in wings... This solution does not apply to poser smoothing properly. Next time use control edges combined with bevels (for better specular results) around the various hard edges of the model to avoid this problem and the resulting Poser behavior of the prop. I won't post an image, as anyone who has the chopper can discover this for themselves.

Otherwise, a very nicely constructed model.

Ahhh, thanks. I am still learning as I go. I will take this in to account on the next freebie I decide to put out.

And I didn't notice anything out of whack when I rendered it. Maybe I just don't know what to look for....

Rokket : When we all started modeling ,we had to learn the tools.easy part.
Then we had to learn good topology.the tricky part.
Getting a 100% quad mesh to subdivide the way you want takes talent.
The only way your going to get real talent is to
learn all you can and practice a lot.

There are some any app sites.
Post your wireframe mesh and ask is this good topology ?
On forums that know how to make good topology.

Learn from others that make good topology.
With WIP's they post on forums.

you can also check out topology on other meshes.
See different ways to make frames and parts.

Torbo have some wireframes .jpg's

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/pinarello-road-bike-rigged-3d-model/642164

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/chopper-bike-3d-model/634723

Quote - Rokket : When we all started modeling ,we had to learn the tools.easy part.
Then we had to learn good topology.the tricky part.
Getting a 100% quad mesh to subdivide the way you want takes talent.
The only way your going to get real talent is to
learn all you can and practice a lot.

There are some any app sites.
Post your wireframe mesh and ask is this good topology ?
On forums that know how to make good topology.

Learn from others that make good topology.
With WIP's they post on forums.

you can also check out topology on other meshes.
See different ways to make frames and parts.

Torbo have some wireframes .jpg's

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/pinarello-road-bike-rigged-3d-model/642164

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/chopper-bike-3d-model/634723

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Same on that front, it took me a while to figure out to use control edges properly (without subDing the model too much)... still working on modeling more efficiently and conserving polys. Here's a comparative illustration of how smoothing subdivision works with and without control edges. Also see

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wings_3D/User_Manual/The_Nature_of_Subdivision_Modeling/Subdivision_and_Such

It's just one of the modeling considerations to keep in mind when making things for Poser's smoothing routine and hard edges in Poser :)

back on topic

Quote -  "Ahhh, thanks. I am still learning as I go. I will take this in to account on the next freebie I decide to put out. And I didn't notice anything out of whack when I rendered it. Maybe I just don't know what to look for...."

Same on that front, it took me a while to figure out to use control edges properly (without subDing the model too much)... still working on modeling more efficiently and conserving polys. Here's a comparative illustration of how smoothing subdivision works with and without control edges. Also see

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wings_3D/User_Manual/The_Nature_of_Subdivision_Modeling/Subdivision_and_Such

It's just one of the modeling considerations too keep in mind when making things for Poser's smoothing routine and hard edges in Poser :)

back on topic

This is some of the things I was doing without even realizing I was doing it. So now that I know, I can make a conscious decision to use control edged and bevels, and do it smartly.

Thank you for that.