What About Turbosquid Etc.?

[Finis]

If you have 3d models, textures, etc. for sale on Turbosquid or other sites like that then please share your knowledge and experience with them.

Have you sold anything? If so how many things?

What sold? Models? Textures?

How did you determine the price you would charge?

What fees does the site charge?

Any other info.?

[Prodigy]

Finis,
Few things to know about turbosquid. The most important is Turbosquid gets the 50% of your sales, i mean if you sell a model for 50$ you will receive only 25$ the rest is for TurboSquid.

There's people that sell items for 1$ so imagine they will receive just 0,5$ per each transaction.

From the customer side, seems quite easy to find what you need, Textures, Models etc, but there's not a huge list of items for Truespace, (not sure why..) maybe is a fact of time.

The good point they have a very large list of objects from many different formats, if you are thinking to sell models, i suggest you to export it to any other file format as you can, that will open the range of potential customers..

[Finis]

Thanks Prodigy.

I am thinking about selling models and maybe textures.

50% ouch! What other places like Turbosquid are there? Are any others good?

What is a good way to export or convert to various formats?

How do you decide what price to charge?

[spacekdet]

Finis wrote: "How do you decide what price to charge?"

Sounds like you take what you want to earn and double it.
50%...yeesh, that's quite a cut.

On the other hand, those .99 cent songs seem to be working out ok for the folks over at iTunes...

[First Light]

... What other places like Turbosquid are there? Are any others good? ...

Hi Finis,

I picked up a model from the True-Source Shop (http://www.truesourceshop.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). I also purchased the trueSpace OBJ Importer plugin from them. The transaction went very well.

I checked their "Seller Info" page and it says that the seller receives 80% of the price so True-Source Shop is taking only a 20% cut. That seems fair to me.

On the "down" side, the True-Source Shop's website is not very attractive and lacks the graphic design appeal of the TurboSquid website. Overall, I suspect that TruboSquid attacts a lot more eyeballs---but most will not be using trueSpace so you'll definitely want to make your model(s) available in a generic form.

Perhaps you could offer your model(s) at more than one place. For example, offer them at the True-Source Shop and TurboSquid.

Personally, if I wanted to sell a model, I would probably create my own website so that I would have complete design control. It is easy to create a PayPal button without using shopping cart software. Then I would buy advertising on 3D websites (like this one, if it accepts ads) to promote it.

Best regards, First Light

[First Light]

... On the other hand, those .99 cent songs seem to be working out ok for the folks over at iTunes...

Hi spacekdet,

Truly, Apple has changed the way music is distributed thanks to the success of iTunes. But that doesn't mean that many of us are happy with their pricing or their proprietary file formats. I avoid them because of that and the fact that their iTunes software is so buggy on a Windows system and you have to deal with invasive digital rights management.

But I'm also not your typical music customer because I've worked in the pro audio industry for three decades and my standards for audio fidelity are very high. If I like an artist enough to want most of their collection of songs on an album, then I almost always buy the CD. I'll either get it at half.com or eBay.com at a huge savings and rip the songs myself using a lossless compression format.

You pay the least---much less than $.99 per song---and you get the highest audio quality and avoid digital rights management restrictions.

But I think there is little relationship between the price of a song and a 3D model. If I wanted to sell models, I would begin by checking all the websites that sell them to learn what the price range is. Then I would evaluate the quality of my model compared to the others I found for sale so I would know where it fits along that price scale. That should give you an idea of its fair market value.

Lastly, would be the decision as to whether or not I want to sell it for the fair market price. It may be too low to make it worth the effort. Or I may consider the many hours that I spent creating it to be more valuable than the market is willing to pay. In that case I wouldn't offer it for sale. It can be a tough decision and it requires due dilligence.

Best regards, First Light

[froo]

I put the obj importer up for sale at turbosquid. I have not sold any; though I just checked and it looks like I have
some changes to make to make it more visible.

Support for truespace products at turbosquid appears to have improved. Just takes a little work getting it all setup.

[Finis]

fair market price. It may be too low to make it worth the effort.

Mostly I'm just trying to get a little money from my hobby. If I was thinking of doing this professionally I'd need the skill and speed to make a profit to make it worth the effort.

Personally, if I wanted to sell a model, I would probably create my own website

Although ... I have been thinking about possible Plan B's to Phosphor Gallery since I'm getting no customers there (I can't even give away free service to get a starter crowd). Making my own little Turbosquid business could be Plan B. There's a lot of competition in that business already but a trueSource-like reasonable commission might get enough customers.

evaluate the quality of my model compared to the others ... fits price scale

Sounds like you take what you want to earn and double it.

I'd have to sell for a price that consumers are willing to pay or I'd get nothing or less than I might have with a different price. Research and selling for the price of comparable products sounds good.

Yes, sell on many sites. What others does anyone have experience with?

How about a good format converter program to make .obj or whatever the popular formats are?

P.S. The quote feature of the forum isn't working right. While in reply mode, I highlighted the quote above in First Light's post but it was auto-attributed to spacekdet and one I quoted from him was attributed to me.

[GraySho]

At turbosquid, as far as I remember, if your´not from the United States they also cash in a 30% tax fee besides the 50%, unless you do some paperwork and get a US tax number

[v3rd3]

Yes. Anyone outside the US has to deal with the Tax Issues when signing up with Turbosquid.

That said, anyone selling models or textures etc has to deal with the tax law in their jurisdiction. If you have Federal or State/Provinical taxes to be collected for selling your work and your site provider does not do the tax processing you have to do that work on your own.

What anyone hoping to sell anything online has to understand is that putting an item up for sale on one or many web sites is only the beginning of a sale process, not the end. Having a distribution channel does not create sales revenue. Web sites used to sell product are primarliy a distribution vehicle. Some sites, such as Turbosquid have the additional benefit of attracting the kind of traffic that leads to casual sales (sales made to buyers who did not go to the site specifically for your product).

The marketing of your product is additional work. Marketing without a distribution channel does not generate sales revenue.

You have to gain the attention of eyeballs looking elsewhere to where your product is available for sale. Get one of your objects on the 3D World, or similar mag, web site, hopefully some traffic to where you sell your product. But that traffic will only really come if you have your web site address with the published article ....

Pay for an ad in 3D World, more traffic....

Create models that can be loaded into DAZ3D... more customers....

One of the exercises you need to go through when you are creating a new product for sale is to define who you want your customers to be. When you have decided that then you need to decide how they are going to get what you offer and how you will support them in their use of the product.

One suggestion is to consider creating models within a purpose, for example, medical models or scientific models. You can then deliberately market your product to a specific set of potential customers. Knowing that you intend on selling scientific models to high school teachers is good in that you know your marketing vehicle will be a magazine high school teachers read.

That's my 2 cents for now... good hunting.