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That's a good observation and it may well be to do with the encryption of those products, but there is the additional factor that encrypted items are also Connect only. I think Connect-only is also, at least currently, an inhibitor to sales. I don't think there can be any doubt that not everyone has adopted Connect (and some have said they will not). A better comparison for the sales of encrypted products would therefore be between encrypted and Connect only unencrypted. Jesse has all the download/install options open to it so isn't directly comparable.
While I haven't been interested in any of the encrypted items released, I will agree that Connect-only is a bigger obstacle to me (and the general having to upgrade to 4.9 and adjust shaders for its fix etc.)
In the same way as Google's magic formula for which item appears at the top, we can not be certain how DAZ's Hot List is ordered. Having said that, from observation I am 90% certain it is based on actual sales income, not number of unit sales. It may have other criteria, and I suspect it is not based solely on a single days sales. If this method is accurate this means 1 sale of an item costing $1000 will appear above above a $1 item with 999 sales. The sales volume seems to be considered after discounts, so a freebie will never appear on the list, regardless of its base price.
I am also pretty sure (again based on observations alone, I have no insider knowledge) that Rendo's What's Hot list has a similar algorithm.
The content has to be in the Connect directory or in a standard Daz Studio Content directory. Are you saying that the product entry vanishes entirely after instalaltion, or that it is there but empty? If it's there by empty please post a a screen shot of the Smart Content apne in the Products tab with the product open.
Ah, older products do show up in "What's Hot", as Carrara is showing. But only if I'm not logged in. It looks like the "What's Hot" row doesn't respond to deselecting the "Hide Items I Own" check.
Entirely gone. They show as "available" prior to the install attempt, but simply vanish from smart content panel entirely afterwards. They never show up in any runtimes or files besides the original encrypted ones, never show up in products or categores, they're just plain gone. And yes, I acknowledge that it's entirely possible that it has to do with some particular way I've got my content installed or the sheer number of items (around 5000) that I have installed in my two main runtimes, but if it is, there's no way I'm going to go back and try and re-do all that in order to accomodate DAZ Connect when DIM and manual installs handle everything just fine.
It does indeed seem to be related to total sales income rather than number sold. The only reason I brought it up was because when 4.9 first launched and there was all this criticism of it (by us) Daz (by which I mean Steve) were quick to come onto the forums and state that the uptake of 4.9 had been a success and better than expected and all was going to plan. But we've never seen such reassurances for sales of encrypted products or the uptake of encrypted freebies.
Now, it could just be that Steve doesn't feel the need to reinforce that all is going smoothly again and again, but it could also mean that the encrypted items aren't selling all that well and so Daz have no reassurances to give yet.
Make your bets ladies and gentlemen!
You can't really get much of an idea about the acceptance of connect and or encryption based on 4 products. I have no issue with encryption and love connect but none of those were things I though I would really find usefully so I didn't get them so the sales are not a true reflection of adoption. You would need a much broader range of products to really get much from it. Also, going from the assumption that only sales dollars count to get there those products are deeply discounted and would have to sell two or three times more than other new products to hit the list at all.
All very true. Its certainly interesting to watch as things develop anyway
Edit: One would also have to bear in mind that non-big-ticket products are most likely to hit the Whats Hot list on the day they release because 1) Thats usually the day when the coinciding discount offers occur, and 2) Most of the impulse buys and purchases by early adopters/professionals will happen then. This probably means that most of the time the Whats Hot list will at least contain all of the most popular products that were just recently released. This seems to be the pattern it follows anyway. It was interesting to note that a few of the encrypted products didn't even make it onto the list at all on the day of release. Obviously we can't say why that happened, but it might (I stress might) suggest that they weren't as popular as usual.
What do you mean "They never show up in any runtimes or files besides the original encrypted ones,"? The encrypted files are the installed files. Where are they on disc, and where is that in relation to your Daz Connect and Daz Studio Format content directories?
I mean that the only files that ever show up are the folders in the DAZ Connect folder, so it's not a case of the files being re-installed in different folder. The only place they EVER show up as visible within DS 4.9 is in Smart Content pane, and the product icons stop showing up there once I "install" them. It's kind of like whack-a-mole, except they never pop up again. Meanwhile, DIM installs work just great, as do manual installations of products from other sites. All of which has basically taught me that there's no way I'm going to actually risk spending money on products that can't be manually downloaded.
That sounds like some kind of CMS corruption, it's probably worth opening a support ticket.
There we go, see. The Chez Lucille Hair Salon was considerably more expensive than any of the encrypted items released the other day and yet it has jumped up to no.1 position in Whats Hot, whilst the encrypted stuff barely made it onto the list (and only some of them). So... maybe they didn't do so well...
Also the other non-encrypted items released today have all done well in the Whats Hot list compared to how the encrypted items fared, and some of them are very much the same kind of thing.
I reckons the encrypted stuff don't sell so good.
More expensive means you have to sell less not more to get into what's hot. The connect products would have had to sell around twice as many to get to the same what's hot spot. Undies are always going to outsell even a short niche skirt. The only really comparable thing are the poses and they are right at double the price of the connect only poses. And they are for the girl who is a niche product. We really can't tell unless we take all the factors into consideration and know all the variables.
Yes thats true. But you could also argue that the lower the price of an item (or the more heavily discounted it is) the more people who will be willing to impulse buy it and the higher the volume sold, so in theory it should balance out somewhat in terms of the list. Its just idle speculation though (cos I'm bored) and obviously we can't compare exactly like for like - and neither can Daz. Theres also the issue of March Madness being involved with these items, so that'll muddy the water somewhat as well.
It would be nice to know how everything is performing though... I don't really care too much about the whole encryption thing now that the compromise is in place, but I'm a sucker for spotting market trends
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After 10 yrs of studying sales. The higher the price is the more you sell and make. You have to sell 3 times as much of a lower price item. You have 1 high price sale and you have to sell 3 of the lower priced item to make the same money.
Yes, but an item of the same or similar quality that is 1/3 the price of another should, in theory, sell 3 times as well anyway. I mean, surely thats why Daz has all these constant sales all the time to reduce the prices? If it wasn't the case that discounting to lower prices increased sales and therefore revenue then they wouldn't do it. Your theory suggests that Daz is constantly making huge mistakes with all these sales and I'm sure thats not the case. If it were true that "the higher the price is the more you sell" then the best marketing strategy would be to keep constantly increasing prices and never have sales in order to maximise revenue.
Btw I take it you're being specific to Daz sales here. Because obviously the principle of "the higher the price is the more you sell" wouldn't work in most markets unless the product is considered to be a prestige item, like Aston Martins or Levi Jeans, for example - they cultivate a brand image in order to sell their products at a higher price but it wouldn't work for everyone.
I could see a link between the highest priced items here at Daz also being the best quality items (like Stonemason's) and therefore they sell very well. But that'd be more to do with the quality than the fact that they have a high price.
As far as anyone can tell the what's hot listed counts by revenue and weights by age, so a newer product might well be ahead of a slioghtly older one that is nol longer on sale. Trying to read great detail from a marketing tool is probably a dommed effort and best let go.
Yeah, you're probably right. I'm letting my boredom get the better of me
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Keep in mind what tends to drive prices up here.. More volume of items in the product for example. Slosh's product has something like 43 items in it and I don't think that even includes the room. That is 43 more chances that someone will see that one thing they need/want/have been looking for to sell the product. I know I have bought an environment in the past for some dumb little thing that may not be a focal point in the product. That is vs about 12 items and the space in the living room. I get appreciably more and more of it general clutter with Slosh's set. Things like that influents sales just as much as the base price. There are quite a few factors that make things "apples and oranges" even if they are both fruit or in this case environments.
Yeah you're right. But then very few products are alike and directly comparable in that way, so all you can do is go by what you have infront of you. I'm sure the Daz bean counters have the same problems ahead of them.
I know what you mean though - I bought the Recreation Room by Predatron solely on the basis that I needed a vending machine lol
Khory: Good point. What almost sold me on Slosh's product was, of all things, the general room and working blinds. ;)
It seems likely that DAZ has better tools for measurement, and greater wisdom in making assessments. They seem to be taking the long view.
I still think it's worth watching the long term performance of encrypted items in the "Most Popular" view of the store. In the comparisons I suggested on the previous page, the encrypteds have already fallen well behind the products I felt were reasonably close in concept. If the pattern persists on future occasions, it'll be, well, interesting (even if we can't talk about it).
In business, any activity (such as hiring personel, enacting DRM, installing new equipment, etc) needs to accomplish one of three things:
Increase revenue over time.
Maintain revenue over time.
Slow any fall in revenue over time (in comparison to not doing the activity).
I wish DAZ the very best in figuring it all out.
Oh yeah - never noticed the "Most Popular" category before. That one probably is based on numbers sold rather than revenue (that'd make sense anyway). Thats a good one to keep an eye on too.
As of this post, Bryce 7 Pro is more popular than any Connect only product.
Haven't been around much lately but heard this about expiring encryption and had to pop in to say Great Move!
I am obnoxious enough to complain when I don't like things and so I am also polite enough to say Thanks when a compromise is reached.
As with all compromises, neither side gets everything they want. But this seems fair to both parties here.
Now...
While DAZ appear to be listening to customers...
It's long past time...
RELEASE THE MILLENNIUM COW!!
Should be no surprise - the only wonder is that Bryce isn't more popular than any other product, period.
Seriously, you have to allow a little time for the impact of the 60% off DAZ originals (RDNA) sale to filter out of "Most Popular".
Carrara is also often in the hot list/most popular list as well. Difficult to say if the fact that drives the sales is the program itself (which is cheap at $65 for what you get), or the fact that buyers get the V5 and M5 pro bundles for free with it. For any newbies it is a great way to jump into the Genesis platform for a far cheaper price than buying V5/M5 pro packs separately.
Dana
Well, I'm certainly more likely to buy Bryce 7 than anything encrypted. I'd pay cash for B7 before 'buying' a freebie encrypted.