The prices are getting out of hand
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Greetings,
@Serene Night - I'm fairly sure that there's some sort of 'top X sellers get higher cuts' or something in place. Ah, here it is:
From DAZ's Publishing FAQ. There's other parts of the FAQ which seem out of date, so I don't know how accurate it is, but it's there...
-- Morgan
Cool. That's very interesting cypher fox. Good spot!
What? That Daz create a "better" store? Daz already has a better store. It is the one with the most traffic and sales by far. As to rewarding the bigger sellers, well that is not something that would change the store prices. I'm pretty sure that they could ask even higher prices and not take much if any hit in sales volume.
If the PA earned $1000 then DAZ also earned $1000 (50% cut of sales)... multiplied by the number of PA's that made that much money at any given time... hence the profit at the broker level...
I believe Daz does give bonuses to top sellers. The problem with the schema you suggested is that it takes away Daz3D's incentive to promote items, which is part of what Daz3D's split pays for. The higher-selling the PA is, the more it would hurt them. If I were only getting my cut on the first 100 units sold of a Stonemason set, I would charge more for it and only advertise it to draw in more customers who might buy from other PA's. Rather than benefiting the high-sellers it would do the reverse.
Nothing is perfect... And everything can use improvement, the store included.
Im not sure that would work out that way. Even say 40 percent of top seller pa's profit would be well worth the advertisement. Top selling pa's also tend to make quality work which requires less support than a newbie pa whose first or second product has some flaws.
...exactly, The only time you need a special licence to use Daz content in a commercial manner is for game development. I even see many freebies on Share CG and Rendo indicating "not for commercial use".
...thank you and I love your stuff. Have quite the library's worth on my system.
...this is precisely why I like it as I wokled in theatrical costuming. Very "natrual" to me compared to vertex/polygon modelling. Unfortunately I have not been able to upgrade becuase of the price increase on the perpetual licence (not into software by subscription).
...this is an other issue often not taken into account. It usually takes a number of test and proofing renders to get things just right and when you are doing a dozen or more promo shots, indeed, that time adds up. Any vendor would want a promo that shows off the best qualities of their work, and doing so tends to take a lot of work.
Just as an illustrator who uses Daz, I usually end up dealing with performing a lot of renders before I finalise a scene. Some of these can take on average 4 - 6 hours (or more) a pop (CPU based as well) which is a big chunk of time during which I cannot work on anything else until the process is finished as it literally takes all my system's resources, processor and memory. Sometimes you don't need to let the rendering complete to spot issues such as "floating", composition, or with lighting. After this I usually run two to three fully rendered "proofs" to review before I commit to rendering the final image. All this takes a lot of time beyond setting the scene up, and is rarely if ever reflected in the price.
Like Cris mentions, many of us cannot afford a 12 GB Titan-X that wil render 99% of our scenes in GPU mode, some of us have systems that are older which will not even support it (or even a 980 TI for that fact) so we must consign ourselves to CPU rendering when using Iray, and the time involved. True there is the option of multi pass rendering and compositing in a 2D programme, however it also takes time, and depending on scene complexity, sometimes reaches the point of diminishing returns compared to just dealing with the long render time.
...+1, though being retired, it's hard to get one.
No petty faultfinding, please. I think you understood quite well what I mean, and whether this 'sale war' started six months earlier or later is absolutely irrelevant.
I believe that one of the reasons for folks like us to have such a high opinion of today's youth is that we are heavily involved in the art community, where a lot of exceptional young people with great attitudes are very visible.
I've done some comissions, and have to disagree. People are willing to pay exactly what things are worth. It is the customer who decides what things are worth, not the producer.
As far as some of the other comments here asking how much I would charge for creating a product, well, I certainly wouldn't be trying to make my entire payback on one sale! Since the product is complete, and no more raw materials are needed for each sale, I would do my best to balance my asking price with number of sales to gain the greatest income. It's not a matter of "making minimum wage" with each sale, it's a matter of net income vs hours spent creating and marketing. I really don't care what anyone thinks that their product is worth, I will look at what it costs me, and if it's worth it to me, I'll buy it.
Part of what counts towards value is the quality of the producer as a human being. I will pay more for something by Jack Tomlin, Stonemason, Maclean, etc than I will for an equal item from a rare few others, because they are just nicer, more helpful, and more polite to the users here and elsewhere. Think of it as a (green) gold star, if you will.
There is a lot that goes into perception of value, but ultimately, it is the customer who decides what something is worth, and not the seller. I could, for example, build a single-shot rifle in my machine shop that would be just as good as a Ruger #1, but in order to make a decent wage for doing so, I would have to price it so high that no one would buy it. In essence, it wouldn't matter that I thought it was worth five times as much as a Ruger #1, my potential customers would decide that it wasn't. And they would be right.
I love the idea of a DAZ party! I wonder how we could promote it, as a way of introducing new artists to the craft? Maybe some of the vendors could get togeter and put together a starter pack that could be offered to first-time purchasers only (I wouldn't mind being left out, if it would attract new future friends!) consisting of enough items, examples, and tutorials for a new user to get a good solid start on producing a variety of art? If it was kept below $100.00, it might be an easy sell.
By the way, Antman, you're on my list of "will pay more"s.
But the artist isn't getting $2.50 for all of his hard work, unless he/she only makes one sale. I would be happy to make $2.50 per item that took me two weeks to create, if I could sell enough of them.
I might too, IF I was doing it as a side income. If it was my only source of income, and I had to pay taxes, medical coverage, etc. from the income, I wouldn't trust that enough people would be buying it in a month for me to do that.
Yes, basic economic (and common sense) fact. The worth, or value, of an item (or service) is not the same as its cost to produce or provide. But I'm still working on my 3D buggy whip. It's hi-res / HD with next generation Iray II super-shaders. You're all going to love it. Or there will be sulking.
Stonemason said rude things about Bryce. I'm considering boycotting his store, but for now I'm sticking with the earthquakes.
Semantics.
If people are not willing to pay what something is worth, then you have a problem. You can either accept some other more ephemeral pay, try to encourage people to value your stuff more, or give up and go do something else.
No, not semantics. Anything is only worth what someone will pay for it. The difference between worth and production cost is fundamental to understanding trade and economics. The misunderstanding has led to a lot of problems in the world, which we can't discuss here because of forum rulez. If you don't get it, there's a lot you'll just never get.
If everyone in the world suddenly becomes exclusively obsessed with embroidery, the entire DAZ operation suddenly becomes utterly worthless.
Sadly you're right... most vendors are making way less than what I used in my example... at the end of the day unless they sell a massive massive volume of items, the artists/vendors themselves are making almost nothing already... nevermind if they lowered their prices even more. Might as well demand that they give their work away for free, which is almost what they're doing already.
Honestly, unless you are the one running a brokerage it's very hard to make any sort of living at this, which is why so many artists have left, why so many 3rd party vendors have closed up shop etc... they get discouraged and then one day they wake up and decide it's just not worth the effort any more.
And yes I understand that the value placed on an item is in the eyes of the individual consumer, but that doesn't alter the fact that the seller also is entitled to expect a reasonable return for effort expended. As I said in an earlier response, we're lucky the prices aren't much higher and that the artists are willing to provide the items they do at the prices they ask. They all deserve alot more credit than they often get.
I happily invite everyone who complains about the vendors work or pricing to become a vendor... see what it's like on their side and add to the amount of amazing content that's already available in our community. The more the merrier and the more the rest of us will have to play with in our run-times!
Trust me... it's not as easy as you might think!...
It is what it is. I'm sure many writers and authors are also in the same boat unable to make a living writing and making every man hour count in expected sales from single buyers. if we are unlucky and prices rise we simply will use what we have or wait for deep dish sales. No one wants to NOT buy items sold here. There is just a limit to what some of us can and are willing to pay.
The trick is I believe to sell more volume. And that can only be done with more outreach and advertising.
The thing is that this is a limited market, you will bring some people in and some will leave but lowering prices doesn't make people come in, it just makes the bottom line lower.
Lets put it as an example.
Hopefully, you will consider what the PAs do to be above minimum wage rates but we will use the U.S. minimum wage as an example. That is $7.25.
Each product takes pretty much a minimum (And I do mean minumum) of 196 hours, that is about 14 hours a day for two solid weeks. (That is a fairly standard practice, lttle or no days off, from the time you wake until you go to bed with a bit of time for family and food.) To break even you pretty much need to sell at least 100 copies.
This means that the simplest product, at minimum wage rates, needs to be sold at $14.21 per item. And, again, that is for the most simple items. Most items take much longer than that. Everything from the base creation of the piece to promos, to testing, to marketing, etc.
Many times the 100 item mark is never reached. We, generally, don't want to break down the hourly rates because it is, quite frankly, depressing.
And, yes, we do have sales on things for months and years after they are released but they are not something that can be counted on after the initial intro period.
Just a little bit of something to think about.
Interesting thread. Lots of good opinions and it's good that allot of established creator/merchants popped in to put in their 2 cents.
I for one am developing for Dawn and Dusk. Yea, I'm an old old newbie with it comes to content creation. I've released many freebies over the years from morphs to textures. There is allot of time put into developing a good product that you hope will be what the masses want. It's hard to gauge just that sometimes. Other times you just need to think outside the box and do it for the love of the process of creation and again HOPE that others will like what you've created.
Example, I created a mixed pose pack for Dawn. On my system it works perfectly. Beta testers and the in house testers kept finding issues with the hands and some of the arms and a floater here and there when Dawn should have been on the ground. Now mind you, on my system I wasn't seeing any of that. So back to the drawing board in getting the fixes done, learning more about saving poses and all that. Just a pose pack has been a month of my free time to get right and I'm not even sure if Alisa will be contacting me again with more issues (alls quiet so I have hope that it's golden)
So folks that want stuff for very little money don't know how much work actually goes into creating a product. It's not just the product, it's the beta testing that has to happen, the fixes that follow and then more beta testing until it's golden, it's the promo's, it's the learning process to get even better than you were before...... I can't even imagine building a castle with opening doors and finished exteriors and interiors. THAT boggles my mind at how much work that took. Sure the prices are higher these days, life's prices are higher too! When Stonemasons releases new goodies everyone jumps like happy kitties, regardles of what he's done. It's all relevent and where your intersts and needs lie.
As another few posters mentioned if something is out of your price range then try to make it yourself. THEN you'll appreciate all the hard work and love that goes into allot of the offerings at the various stores like DAZ, 'Rosity and Hivewire and other places. No one just WHIPS up a product in a day that's perfect and then slaps a huge price tag on it, I'd like to meet that person! lmao
I did... I call it a "cube" and it retails for 200$... oh wait... it's already included as a freebie primitive... ah well... back to the drawing board... Maybe if I make a "Sphere" instead? LMAO... ;)
HAHAHAHAHA *slap*
If I add googly eyes and stone textures I can call it the "Pet Rock"... that's worth $200 right? LMAO :)
Not on its own, but throw in some outfits, a few poses & morphs, & some skins (or at least some light shale and a few silicates), and call it Pet Rock Pro. There's your $200! Perceived value!