Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.Daz 3D is part of
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Yep, you got that right! I can't tell you how many copies of my work I've given away or charged very little for. My first book took a long time to publish, and many years worth of experience to write. But there are people who will gladly pay more for a hamburger or a coffee than a book. Such is life. Most of us create because we can't NOT create. Until I can make a living off my creativity (whether it be art, writing, music or something else). I'll keep my dayjob and be my own patron. It is what it is!
Seems goods in theory, but that only works if there are 500 people willing to buy the product at 10$. If setting the price at $10 instead of $20 only brings you 100 additional customers then you have earned $3500 instead of $5000, and maybe won a few extra future purchases if you're lucky.
And contrary to what a lot of customers seem to think, the market for poser/DS content is very small: products are usually considered successful if they sell 200 or 300 copies during intro period, which is when they will make most of their total sales.
Your post assumes two things: That we don't know our market and that we dont price to reflect it. Just because there are some people in this thread upset over prices being too high, doesn't mean thats the general consensus. There are far more customers on DAZ than is properly represented on this forum.
At the end of the day, the point is to make money. Whether I get there by A or B in your example, doesn't exactly matter.... when the end game is the same amount. Thats basic marketing there. Units is entirely irrelevant, unless your goal is to be popular over making money. Most people who do this professionally are interested in money tho, not a popularity contest. Or to be fair, both. But Ive never heard a single person say... gee, I hope I dont make any money off this thing.
One of the things I find hard to digest, is that I have never once thot gee, i cant afford that tv and then went and complained to Sony that their tv's are too expensive and that they need to lower the cost because *I* cant afford it. In a very public and embarrassing way to boot. And yet, this is something thats very prevalent in this business. And the funny thing is, over the course of 13 yrs... no matter how low the prices go (or how many sales there are, or steeper discounts, etc) there are still some people who will always say its too much, its too much.
And I get it... I come from modest beginnings. There was a time where I couldn't afford to buy content. But I got this idea... Ill make content to pay for my hobby.... which then became my job. And the rest is history.
What on earth? Does that really say 5k to 3.3GHz? What kind of magic did they put in that box? That seems pretty cheap for $13k USD...
That is interesting. I assume that Daz does not do the sales out of pure friendlyness, but for economic reasons. This means that Daz does lower the overall or average price for items by doing more sales; whereas the PAs try to raise their average winning by raising the individual price. In summary PAs and Daz working perfectly against each other.
Another aspect might be that there are more PAs today than there were ten years ago. Double the number of PAs and then each PA would only get half the money. I will not eat more, just because there are more bakeries in my neighborhood than there were ten years ago either. More sellers means less customers for each one. Unless there are more buyers accordingly. So the strategy of PAs should be (or is) to reduce the number of PAs (by forcing their PA-mates into bankruptcy for instance). If raising prices is a good strategy for this remains to be seen. On the other hand, this is not an open market place, otherwise we should probably see the occasional $500-character model pop up in the store (and the $1-model, too) like on turbosquid. But that does not happen, so something's stopping the PAs from doing it.
The best way to "force your competitors into bankruptcy" from MY viewpoint is to do a better product for the same price, not charge less for the same product...
Very cool animations I must say :) , even the sound is very well made.
Yes, it can help sometimes, but this is no 100% reliable, ie. when the neck doesn't have the same angle than on the figure's head. Plus, you can get some "unwanted" effects from face/head morphs into the hair sometimes, when they have strands near the eyes. But sure this is a good tip :) .
... And hairs need a G2F version to be complete :)
It is even more an issue when you have to factor in currency exchange rates.. Case in point that $45 US you quoted in your OP is about $60.50 AUD, that is a fair chunk of change when you have a limited budget..
I have a different sort of ouch......massive file sizes for simple clothing.
Four hundred plus MB for a t-shirt? Oochkabooble!
Exactly.
A few years ago the Euro sat at 1,3 to 1,4 to the dollar (with a top of 1,6 at one point). Nowadays it's closer to 1,05-1,10 (and 1,02 if I use Paypal). That alone is a massive price rise (though admittedly out of DAZ's control - LOL)
I can only assume, that these deeper and deeper discounts DAZ is offering are direct result to rising base prices. PAs increase their base prices, and DAZ gives better discounts to maximize profits, because they know what their customerbase is willing to pay. Early adopters are willing to pay more, and customers with fixed budget are not. I don't think DAZ is making more and more lucrative deals just so that PA's wouldn't make a living or because they hate their PA's and love their customers, but because they will get more money in the end that way. End result is, that early adopters pay more, and those that are willing to wait, get the items about the same price, or even cheaper. Of course PA's back catalog lose value in this kind of process, but maybe that's inflation in DAZland.
As a concept, I think it's a good idea to sell textures and models as a separate package, since that gives us customer more options. Customer can choose if they want both, or just a single product....but, when textures or base model cost about the same as same PA's normal character package ( Anna HD or Michi HD $19.95 vs http://www.daz3d.com/topmodel-texture-for-genesis-3-female-s $17.95 and http://www.daz3d.com/topmodel-hd-morphs-for-victoria-7 $15.95), then I think prices are definitely rising, and fast. Unless Raya's earlier products were grossly underpriced ( to me they look top end priced compared to rest of the DAZ shop ) or much much poorer quality than this new texture or base model, this is huge price increase from $19.95 to $35.90. PA's can try to spin that however they like, but it's a hard fact, that when we are talking about almost 80% increase in base prices, that is a significant increase.
The bundle as a whole, has not gone up so much. For example Egyptian mega bundle was $94.95 with 7 products, so $13.56 per product, while Topmodel bundle is $59.95 with 4 products ( I count textures and model as one since Egyptian bundle also had character and textures as one item) is $14.99 per product. Of course we can debate how much pose set is worth compared to character or hair set, so this was just a rough estimate.
All and all, what we are really talking about here is money. As I'm writing this, Topmodel bundle seems to be #1 in What's hot list, so I assume PA's did well, and we as customers should prepare for higher base prices. Of course DAZ don't want to lose customers to Rendo or other sites, so they will fight that with bigger marketing efforts ( read discounts ). Luckily this is just a hobby for me, so I can wait until prices come to my price range, and then PA's get some extra money from their back catalog sales, and I get their products for the price I see reasonable.
+10 there!
I've been working with this, ( http://www.manuelbastioni.com/manuellab.php ). With Blender seeing a half million (that's right, five hundred thousand!) downloads a month, Blender has become wildly popular among both hobbiests and professionals (like me). The number and variety of plug-ins is mind boggling and becauser it's open source, folks can do anything with it...and they have. I've been making clothes for these figures and it feels so good to contribute to something that's a true international community.
Just about ready to take my Lvl 2 General for Ham. I often wonder how so many young people got into Ham Radio in the past, even though I wanted to I wasn't able to get into either RC airplanes, or Ham until I was well into middle age!
I took my No-code tech back in 1991 at age 22. I have my General, and am trying to get the study guide for the new version of the Extra. I had no idea where to take the test before that, plus I was never able to learn the Morse Code well enough to pass the code test.
This is truly the biggest killer of my budget as well. Exchange to Canadian is about the same at $60 (before bank fees). A far cry from the days when our dollar was at par.
That's actually the reverse IMO.
DAZ started having more and more sales to attract more customers and increase their customer bases, not because PAs started increasing their base prices. As a matter of fact, overall prices have decreased a lot in the past years, or rather you get way more for the same price.
And at the same time, expectations have grown a lot:
So yes, PAs had to increase their base prices to offset the fact that they only sell their products on sale and need to spend more time on a single pack.
The idea is to grow the markets and you don't get that by making it appear your prices continue to go up. Perception matters.
It's not just "high prices" which is subjective at best. It's more that prices keep going up well beyond what you'd expect with normal inflation. The concern is over the price increases year over year. It seems unbounded; the OP said she hopes it's not a trend, though it clearly is. In one of my hobbies, building small robots, prices have gone DOWN or at worst have increased only minimally over the last five years. This is due to a larger buying base, which in turn keeps prices low, introducing more people into the hobby ... and the cycle repeats.
I don't think defending reduced competition, higher prices, and continued low appeal is the best approach, yet many of the responses hint at exactly this. Seems the opposite of a growth market, and that doesn't spell confidence for anyone who has invested more than a few dollars on it.
Well said IgnisSerpentus! Thanks for spelling out the obvious from your unique perspective.
However, if this thread is any evidence, the price complainers here may be vocal, but they are in the minority. So take heart and keep on keepin' on.
I really doubt the 2.5 millions are the numbers for a single version of DS, it's more likely for DS overall.
But anyway, PAs have stated multiple times that a product is considered successful if they sell 200 to 300 copies during the period where they have 90% of their total sales, and that reaching 1000 sales for a single product is basically just a dream. So yes, very small market. It has grown in the past years, but definitely not enough to reach the number of buyers you imagine.
I have to admit I've probably spent as much on PC+ items as for new releases (aka non-PC+, Genesis 2 or later, strictly because they are good deals for a hobby and it's just a minor bonus that I can use them in games. Of course that spending for me is going to wane, I don't want, even at PC+ prices most of the product content in the store or the content is redundant content.
Next big order of business is getting a modern PC that can handle iRay easily as it's sort of a fun challenge to try and make an interesting scene and good render - no as a matter of fact all sorts of beautiful models and horror looking models doesn't make it easy to create a good interesting scene I've found. It is very hard to convey an activity with 1 static image.
I'm surprised DAZ 3D does not have their marketing priced for the EU, US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and China and different economic zones seperately. I know from working overseas for what was seen to be really good salary was actually only average programmer salary (or less really with how expensive that country is) with the exchange rate turning my earning to be about 50% of what I thought they'd be.
REduced competition? Sure, there is one less store now that RDNA is pretty much closed, but that only means that it's no longer a source of products. The vendors there either came here or went to other stores to sell, which actually increases competition between vendors for buyers if they were not already selling somewhere else. You're also assuming that therea are no new people trying to get into selling here. Also, low appeal can apply to some of the content we would like to see in the store, as some vendors can likely attest.
Yes, they do say this! If not in words written to Sony, then by buying something else. In retail complaints about high prices are common. Watch yourself over a week's time. You'll see you do it, too.
Now would you care to re-read what I said? I said these are excuses made by others in this and similar threads. These are rationales I find ring hollow; they're certainly counter-productive to encouraging growth in the user base.
Sure, these numbers aren't great. But on their own they're neither horrible nor terrific. It all depends on personal and project variables. PAs can determine if the effort is worth it, and no one is holding a gun to their heads to make them release a product for sale here.
Let's say they sell 250, at a final cost of $12. That's $3,000. Split with Daz, their take is $1,500. If that product took a week to develop, that's not a horrible 1099 income for someone in the US, though that depends on where they live (obviously, a New Yorker will have a tougher time on $78K a year in self-employed income). Since Daz PAs come from the world over, a PA living in a country with lower living expenses might find $1,500 a very attractive royalty.
Then of course is how long it takes to build that asset. Was it done in 40 hours? 20? 200? There are just too many variables to say whether those sales figures are good or bad. It comes down to each PA making a business decision as to what works for his or her specific situation.
I get that some PAs get miffed when customers complain the prices are too high, that a product lacks a feature they'd like to have, or that something is difficult to use. Welcome to the real world! There isn't a business that doesn't get some complaints from customers. Someone, somewhere, will always want more. The solution is to have a thicker skin, and not think that every complaint needs a response.
LOL, one of my aunts, rest her soul, if a price in a department store or grocery store wasn't to her liking you can but she would hangle the price with the cashier and, invariably the management, when they came. They called shopping 'trading'. We loved it. She wasn't trying to embarass or cheat anyone, but get thegood fair deal for herself. If they didn't agree with her she invariably refused to buy.She just didn't haggle over anything, just things that were unreasonably priced.
Nowadays last year visiting many a used car dealer to buy a used car from a dealer I understand where my aunt was coming from - some prices asked for are totally unreasonable and clearly desired to take advantage of poor people that can't or don't want to pay $50K for a new car (which can buy many a nice 50 year old home and even some 20 year old homes in these parts to put that $50K price for a car in perspective) and I learned if I go to a used car lot and they tell me they don't negociate price, then I leave the lot.
Sony TV or other name brand prices? I don't pay them, as a programmer and being familiar with manufacturing economies of scale, I understand that offbrand TV for $500 is essentially the same as the name brand for $2000. You may buy that gold plated Apple watch if you wish, I'm not insulting anyone for buying name brands. If I were not stretching budget myself I wouldn't so much difference between $2000 and and $500. It's nice to have affordable competition to buy from - that is something that has largely disappeared in the United States, Japan, and the EU and that's a shame.
It's a lot different in something like the DAZ Store. It's a luxury item really whether at PC+ prices or the original asking price, so there is really not a big desire to haggle because you actually need it now. You either want it for that price or you don't.
We can argue about prices all day long.
The underlying issue is that the userbase does not seem to be growing in significant ways.
If we can believe some posts then
- currently most money is made with new users
- for some reasons new users after a shorter or longer period of time stop spending money and leave again
- - -
Where are the new users on the forum? Why is it always the same names that keep posting?
It seems new users never get that attached that they can bring up the courage to actually get involved on the forum and bring in their opinion.
- - -
Instead of accepting this trend and organising sales around it another approach would be to analyse:
- Why do new users loose interest?
-> send an e-mail with a survey to each new user after a few days, a few weeks and a few months to get feedback of their impressions at regular intervals.
- Why do other user groups that spend very large amounts of money on 3d software stay away from DAZ3D?
-> make another cooperation with 3D world magazine and hand out some free 3d models to users who fill out a survey
Then send those who try out DAZ Studio another survey after a few days, weeks and months.
- How do average people with no 3d or computer graphics background react if you show them images of DAZ3D characters?
-> Hire some agencies to ask random people in different countries what they think about some example images created with DAZ Studio.
- - -
You're forgetting something... The massive constant sales and discounts.
We price the item at $12. Most people end up paying $5-6 thanks to discounts as deep as 60%. So those 250 sales get us, say $2.75 each, or $690 rounded to the nearest $10. On top of this, most clothing items take a MINIMUM of two weeks to do properly, and a lot of us work a lot longer than 8 hours a day. Even if that's two work weeks of 80 hours, that's only an average of $8.63 an hour. Barely above minimum wage, and usually not enough to cover all the usual bills.
There are plenty of new users in the forums as I and others often answer questions for them on how to use DAZ Studio (and more experienced users for me).
If new users quickly abandon DAZ Studio it must be because they find DAZ Studio difficult and unsatisfying to work with. A naive hobbyist (hobbyists that don't ever visit the forums) is not expecting to download and install DAZ products and then be told that there results are not good because they are not true artists who understand how to use 3D technology. That's what DAZ Studio is for they were told. What they expect is to be able to create original art that is of technically good quality easily using DAZ Studio and DAZ Studio is still not quite to that level of simplicity yet. It and Poser are the closest but thay are not that easy to get good at creating characters that look original. It is unsatifying to render a portrait or scene that looks like a poor imitation of the better ad copy in the DAZ Store.
Or strike that last paragraph - the truth is people often try new things and decide they'd rather do something else. I've went through many a hobby already.