A Couple of Observations About DAZ3D Sales
Fauvist
Posts: 2,224
So many products are on sale during sales that it's impossible for anyone who isn't wealthy to buy everything they want during the sale, so inevitably far far more goes unpurchased than gets bought.
Products that sit unbought on my Wish List because they don't come up for any significant discount very often - after a while I lose interest and I don't even want them anymore and I take them off the Wish List.
Genesis 3 Male and Female characters that are based on DAZ Original figures often go unpurchased during any sale because the price of the DAZ Original figure is so expensive to begin with. For example, Haiku for Keiko 6 is 40% off at $10.77, but Keiko 6 is still $31.47. That's $42.24 just to get Haiku - and that's the price when they are both on sale. So often I want to buy a character and end up just never buying it because the DAZ figure is so expensive. By the time another generation of figures is introduced, all those unbought characters get taken off my Wish List.
I guess this makes some kind of economic sense to DAZ, but I don't know what it is.
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It's all about the bundles. Just the other day, Keiko 6 Mega Manga bundle was selling for $36 which is about $2 per product (17 products in bundle), one of which was Keiko 6.
In that context, getting the base figure is extremely 'inexpensive'. But then you end up with a bunch of 'stuff' you may never use. Still at $2 per product, not a bad deal if you'll use a few of them.
I don't believe I have EVER bought a bundle - on sale or not. I don't want a ton of products I have no interest in. The Keiko bundle was $36 - and Keiko is $31.50. It still means getting Haiku is going to cost me at least $42. What it does is stop me from buying a lot of characters. Even if Haiku was in the Keiko bundle - that's still $36.
Edit: I take that back. I realized I have bought bundles, but they have been like 30 items for $3.00.
Can you share some of your willpower? :)
On a serious note, you raise a good point. My hunch is that a lot of folks buy the bundles, even though they may not use everything in it. I do, but I'm trying to get more targeted, like you. It's just when you see the occassional 80 or 90% off, and you think 'hmm I might use something in there one day', it can be hard to resist.
You, sir, have the willpower of a young Luke Skywalker.
I haven't bought any bundles either, usually there are too many items I have no interest in included in them. I also rarely purchase addon characters since I like creating my own with morphs and my own custom morphs. I am often also perplexed when I see posts about male counterparts to female addon characters, or the height of an addon character since these are just a couple of things that can be easily fixed by the user with morphs and sliders. Then again, I guess I am in the minority since they keep making them and users seem to keep buying them.
my observation to the OP is that we have different buying habits as much of what is an issue with them, is not for me. I like lots of items in a sale, I also rarely take anything out of my wishlist because eventually it will go on sale and it serves as a reminder for me
Haven't bought much (pro-) bundles lately either. Partly because the pro (and starter) bundles usually tend to be a bit of everything. I would prefer more themed bundles...
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/113226/pro-starter-bundles-worth-to-buy-now
I find this SUPER interesting because I find that we/users/buyers/etc fall into 1 of 3 camps. (maybe more as this is off the head)
1) Old user [more experienced or been around a long time]
- has a HUGE library and casually looks at sales as only really supplying something they dont have - and they only buy deep-dish-discounts. They have PATIENCE as they have seen this all before and know 'there will always be another sale'. Very picky and likely to complain that there's nothing good on sale --- usually use phrases like "ho hum" to describe sales.
2) New user or the "enthusiast" [aka Dazaholic or power user or affectionately known as I pay Daz's light and heating bill.]
Exclaims "I can't believe I made this!" after every render. Eyes are bigger than their stomach (and wallet) and WANTS everything, but buys what they can. Believe they will render everything 'someday'. Believes the sales pitch hype and thinks they will MISS SOMETHING if they don't check every day for what's on offer.
3) New or Old and says: I don't think I'm either, but actually I'm both depending....
Depending on WHAT's on sale. That's a person with a narrow genre or interest. They say "meh" to most sales until their favorite subject(s) goes on sale and then Daz is the best. They flicker back and forth and pretend to be neither. They are doing their homework while watching TV. They not doing either fully, but they are making progress. lol
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I flip around. If it's Sci-fi --- I'm probably in. But if I have it (or several) in my runtime, I'll pass. BUT! A great deal is hard to pass up.
With enough imagination I can convince myself I need ANYTHING and I will render it...someday....
Or, when I'm broke, Daz sucks and has no idea what customers want.....lol
I think having many items on sale does several things....it always makes something interesting...keeps something on my want list.
If I check the store for a whole week and it was all products I don't want, I might start to check every-other day...I'd miss the flash grab, but still catch the major sale arcs.
Now, if I check everyday you can find something. Something means money coming in every day. Most can afford a little every day.
That builds a HABIT (hello Dazaholics anonymous) of getting a little gift for yourself every day,
Get a cheaper lunch. Buy 1 less video game. Eat out 1 less time a week. Rent a movie instead of going out...etc....
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Other camps might be those that use products in a commercial sense. They probbaly don't care too much about sales.
If the job requires a certain item, they grab it at whatever price it is. The PC+ discount is good enough. Plus, the client absorbs that investment and the artist gets to KEEP said item. win, win.
I believe it has been said if it doesn't sell in the intro sale there is far less a chance it will actually sell. If something is wishlisted, I usually will not buy it until it is at least 50 percent off. The longer it stays on there and the longer in tooth it becomes the less desire there is for it.
Many new releases are also marked up fairly heavilty to account for the steep intro discount, so when they go off sale, their prices are too expensive for me.
I generally buy bundles only if the bundle price is cheaper than just getting the items I actually want.
avxp - I like your catagories. I would love to be #2, but my budget won't support it, so I have been getting more like #1.
Fauvist - I am in a similar situation with https://www.daz3d.com/mrl-ling since it requires two base characters I don't own. The chances of them all going on good sales at the same time is pretty low, so I made a long term plan which might also work for you. I will be looking for MRL Ling to go on sale for 50% or more off and I will buy it at that time. For the base figures, I will watch fast grab, but if they don't show up there I will wait until the PC and PA sales. In mid August I will get a 3 month PC+ membership and wait until the figures go on sale for a combined 65-72% off. That way the starter pack will be less than $25 and the base will be less than $15. With the figures you want, they would come to about $25 total. However, you do need to be able to use at least four of the monthly coupons to make this worthwhile. Also, by starting the membership in mid-August, we get four sets of coupons instead of three and have the PC+ membership for the whole sale.
I do like bundles, but I compare the prices of the items I want to the bundle price to see if a bundle is worth it. I also try to buy at least one propack for each gender so I can get the gens just in case I need them.
The thing about these DAZ Original figures is that they are expensive, but there isn't a lot of characters made for them. I could understand chaging $30 or $40 if there's going to be lots of characters made - then it would make some sense to charge a lot for the base figure. But if there's only a couple of characters made, then it makes no sense to charge so much for the base figure. The artists who are selling the charactrers for these base figures are losing a lot of sales. Remember when Victoria 3 or Victoria 4 had dozens of characters made for them - and hundreds of pieces of clothes, and hair models? There are only 5 characters made for Keiko. Tween Julie 7 has 3 characters made for it.
Most characters don't really require the base shape. They look closest to intended if you have it, but a fair number of artists use completely custom head morphs, and you can custom dial the body fairly close to whatever you need.
I used to put any and everything I might want on my wish list, but I'm now trying to keep it to those things that aren't genre/project connected. So I've pulled most of the clothing and nearly all sets off my list. There are still sets and clothing I want, of course, but I'm no longer having them on my wishlist waiting for that perfect alignment of sale + project + available funds (especially if something else has managed to eat up the funds first.)
But Victoria 4 was more like Genesis 3 than Victoria 7. Really the idea of characters made for a named model is kind of a legacy thing in and of itself, but it does lend a value add to DO feature bundles.
I don't know how this falls in your camps but I sort of bridge the "been around and have patience" with the "depends on what's on sale" categories and mix them with a little "But I'm indecisive so I put it in my cart for a while to think about it until it randomly goes back to full price and I don't buy". I do the last one mostly because of the "buy one item for 2% off, buy two items for 5% off, buy 20 or more items for 70% off" style sales and I keep thinking I'll pack my cart until I get a great discount and then add more stuff I want whileI have that great discount. Then I notice the cost is too high and I start moving things to the wishlist (and sometimes back into the cart when suddenly that one makes the discount go away) to get within my budget. And then the sale expires and my eyes pop out of my head when the cart price triples and everything goes into the ever expending wishlist until March Madness or whatever that PC club sale in the fall.
In other words I've worn the paint off my shopping cart from all the use but my checkout lane is still pretty nice and shiny.
Just keep an eye on the sales, the base characters are often on sale for 50% or less. Some samples from my own receipts (some of the prices probably include stacking discounts because of purchasing other stuff, PC discount etc., but the regular sale price I see is often $10-15). If I remember correctly Ati has made a script that will email you if selected items go on sale, or something like that.
Who is Ati? It's strange DAZ themself doesn't email us when something we want is on sale. Rosity does it, and so do most of the other Internet stores I visit.
It seems like the current batch of fast grab items been there for about a week now... this makes me wonder what the 'longest listing'' record is for fast grabs.
L'Adair posted this in the sale thread:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2380876/#Comment_2380876
There's a link to his scripts in his signature.
Haiku's my favourite figure and I had the same issue for ages: even if Haiku went on sale, Keiko was really expensive. Eventually I bought Haiku on some super sale even though I couldn't use it, and then waited until eventually Keiko also turned up for super cheap (I think it was black friday or something.) I still don't have the mega manga bundle even though it's been on really tempting sale several times because by the time it was on sale, I'd already bought up all of the characters in the bundle separately on sale. Of course that does mean you have to want a product enough to actually wait it out and hopefully not lose interest before then.
The lack of incentive to buy bundles when you already own the key parts is a bit of a shame, but oh well, less purchasing done! The insane markup on base figures is also a longstanding issue, but that was also solved by just stopping shopping. I really like Thorne characters, but I skipped the past few bases that are basically just a PA character being sold at double the price. On the other hand, since Sage was released the other day at normal PA prices, I bought it straight away even though I don't really need it.
(This is solely personal opinion, but I think Keiko 6 has the best proportion balance for modern anime styles, and Haiku is just Keiko's body with a changed head and additional facial morph options which look a lot nicer to me than Keiko's default face, and it's a shame there's still no Genesis 3 equivalent.)
I'm pretty much the same. But, I'll buy the initial pro-bundle (G2M or G3M) and the occasional extra character, if I like the skin texture - which isn't very often. Also, I like the originality of dialed characters - they each tend to take on a unique personality.
As is mentioned elsewhere, PC+ membership gives you a freebie every week, as well as a whole bunch of discounted items, if you're in a buying mood.
I dislike typos!!
I absolutely understand and agree with op.
I usually buy a ton during the big sales. I got Keiko in the mega manga bundle in November for $6. But, that was with a lot of stacking discouns.
Btw I don't see that haiku is on sale. Which deal was that?
I fall into the category of "liberated power user"
I never buy bundles or so called "original characters"
I buy every face & body morph available and dial in my own and now have even more unique options with facegen artist pro.
I have aquired the modeling skills to create ALL of my own unique custom clothing content both conforming an Dynamic
The only thing I would ever spend money on is a major Stonemason sci- fi genre set.
For those of us that are building up our 'baseline' content library, bundles can be very attractive, IF they have a fair amount of stuff I can use. Hair is probably the most useful product to me, in that it isn't easily modified (at least as far as I can tell). The various hairstyles and hair length make these more attractive to me, if I don't have a very similar hairstyle in my library already.
Original characters usually don't attract me, but if they have some skin textures, etc. that look significantly different than what I already have, and the price is really cheap I'll grab one.
The number of clothing outfits in a bundle (if I don't have very similar clothing already) can also help attract me to a bundle. Finally, if it's a 'baseline' character that is used a lot (Aiko, Girl, etc.), that can help make the sale as well. Props can make bundles look more attractive too (jewelry, etc.), but again, only if they are something that I'll put to use fairly quickly. Same for shaders, although I don't see these in bundles very often.
Poses pretty much don't interest me at all. Enough pose sets seem to trickle in via freebies, piggybacking on bundles, via freebies on other sites, etc. that I don't even consider buying pose sets separately. Plus I like posing characters myself to begin with, and the poses I already have usually get me 'within the ballpark' for any pose I'm setting up.
Character morph products initially were a priority to me, but at this point I think I have enough morphs for my colection that I don't pay as much attention to them. 'Wear them al/autofit' situations aside (still watching for a few of those). That being said, if they are in a bundle and do something interesting that I don't have several other ways of doing already via other morphs, they may make a bundle look more attractive to me.
So while I usually ignore most bundles unless they are on sale for some insane price (read: Cheyenne Bundle for $2), I don't dismiss them out of hand. They can be a great way to help fill out your wardrobe, props, and hair library, but only if the bundle has enough clothing, hair, etc. items to make them sufficiently attractive, and if said items bought separately, even when on sale, are collectiely higher than the current (sale) price of the bundle.
Probably the one exception to all of this was the Centaur 7 bundle that I ended up with during March Madness. I didn't really have any need for most of that bundle, but as several other sales were going on concurrently, and by adding Centaur 7 stuff to my purchase, and with the gaggle of other items I was buying due to the piggybacked sales, I ended up saving even more money by adding Centaur 7 stuff. The 'pro' bundle was well within reach, and I think there were a couple of products in the pro bundle that weren't specifically Centaur related. I also needed 3 extra texture sets as part of the Centaur 7 sale to maximize the disoucnt stacking even further, so I felt I should get the 'baseline' items for those textures, so I ended up buying that pro bundle. But only because it was a 'free' purchase (counting in the discounts it gave on the other products I snagged) that saved me even more money overall (this ended up being a $200+ purchase counting all the items from various sales, including the G2F sale).
Of course, my 'baseline' collection of stuff was pretty sparse before this, so this all made sense. I've since built up my library of stuff considerably, so a similar situation probably won't be as attractive the next time. I've passed on a number of sales now because I already had suitably similar items in my library thanks to the March Madness disocunt stacking madness.
So while bundles aren't my go to for stuff, what they have in them (that I don't have already and have use for), and the total price of those items I have use for, and how they affect other concurrent sale prices, well I at least give them a quick look.
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As I'm sure a few of us here have experience with, another site (gog.com) has sales all the time, pretty much weekly. They include timers on their sales, so that you know how soon you need to move on a purchase. This is helpful in that you have a timeframe to work with, should you need to move any funds around or whatever to make the purchase (say you are between paychecks). The Daz sales team would do well to take a page from GOG's book on this, as GOG has a number of very happy customers, due to them keeping their customers 'in the loop'.
Every game site gives timers for all sales. It's standard practice for any semi-reputable site in the field. GOG is special for offering DRM free products, not for sales tactics.
I was thinking about the high prices on the Daz main character releases - maybe it's meant to be to recoup costs for developing the base Genesis 3 figure (which is free and is worth far more than any of the character things you buy,) The only problem with this concept is that it becomes less of a justification the more of the figures you buy.
Customers with some experience that have been here awhile know that morph packages get you the most bang for buck, however new people that stumble across the site tend to think that figure bundles are the way to go, because those are always highlighted in the store and often they don't even know what they are meant to be looking for or what each type of component does. Going off personal experience, I thought I was quite wise for buying a PC+ membership and then a pro bundle as my first choice, because the discount it gave paid for the membership. However I didn't know about the regular sales or about the key main morphs until I'd already bought several characters.
These days I like full characters because it saves a lot of time to not have to shape every character from scratch, with a wide range of textures at hand. Morphs are great too, but I have so many that even trying to navigate the panel has become unpleasant with no apparent way to fix it.
Also, you think it's perplexing that customers may want a male version of Keiko or Aiko (which was the main one that people wanted) instead of easily dialing in a stylised male figure with a few morphs?
I started out buying figure morph packages, actually; Daz offers the basics as near-freebies so often and it's easy to convince yourself that you can save money by just buying morph packagaes.
THEN you discover whether you actually enjoy morphing or not....
Regarding Keiko, I wonder if you could get Haiku, transfer her morphs via GenX to G3 and then use them on the Legacy Keiko figure for G3 from Sloshwerks, which is much more affordable even at full price...
I didn't even think of this. Thanks!
Always buy in bundles. Always wait for the right moments. I've had several bundles in my wish list for several months, even a year... I check the prices once a month or so and wait for the moment.
It also helps if you set aside 200 a month for daz stuff. Thats what I do. Some months I spend nothing, other months I have 4-600 to spend on what ever and go on a shopping spree. :)
if 200 is too much for you. At least aim for 100.00 to put in your paypal accout each month. even if you dont spend anything. Thats how I ended up buying Zbrush.
I hadnt spent my money in several months but I always made sure to store the money. I have 216.00 right now if I wanted to... but I've not found anything of interest.
in 6 days from now I'll have 416.00
And always have 100.00 as backup... And always save at least 120.00 for photoshop. and refill the charge once every 10 months. That way I always have photoshop at my disposal.
just some friend stratigy tips from a fellow artist. :)
makes life a little easier cause i can almost impusivly purchace things cause i know i have a few hundred to spend. I'm basicly exploiting a natural phenomenon. we are adaptive creatures, my personal life has adapted to that loss. so now it dont feel like a loss to me anymore.