Black Friday sale is BORING... Thank You DAZ
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Same as well. With the upcoming mule deer release from Hivewire, I figured I had better get the HW horse since it is required and now on sale.
Hopefully Daz won't be adding any flash or blink sales in this weekend as I have spent to much already for Black friday, LOL
This isn't accurate either because it assumes the number of potential buyers in this market is infinite or at least very high. If I could sell at 10 cents to 1 million people I'd be all for it.
Probably because it's not traditional product manufacturing?
No, but there's a thing called "minimum wage" giving at least a minimal value to the time you used to produce it.
That's your opinion. They're tools to produce art, and that has a value.
Nope, sorry. The number of people willing to pay 1$ on an item doesn't mean the same as the number of people willing to pay a fair price for it, especially in a market where the total number of potential buyers is very limited like this one.
When you do that professionally and need that revenue to pay your rent or bill then it's definitely not just semantics and psychology...
I think when people say "lose money" they mean "get less than the maximum possible return" - if a lower price brings in less than a higher price, because number sold increases by a smaller proportion than the decrease in price, then the PA has "lost" the difference between actual income and potential income. It is of course impossible to know exactly what the potential best income is, but daz and experienced PAs have the experience to make an informed estimate.
Sorry, no. Your statement doesn't work unless DAZ is a free service that donates all of the retailing, advertising, accounting and customer service for free, that internet storage and data transfer costs nothing, and that products are generated in zero time on freecomputers and software. Needless to say, none of these is true and PA's pay a large percentage of sales to DAZ in order to cover the first set, and have to fund the latter on their own. Moreover, if the cost of maintaining an item in the store over the course of time proves to outweigh the money taken in by that item, then it is automatically in a state of losing money as far as DAZ is concerned. And yes, this happens often and you can actually see it occuring more transparently by tracking products in Renderosity's clearance section.
I bought the most the most expensive item on my wishlist at Rendo's Black Friday sale. I still had my Prime voucher too.
I REALLY wanted to purchase Reality 4.3, but I also REALLY needed the UV Swappers for G3 and G8. So I settled for Luxus.
I'm LOVING Luxus
. It'd be great to find more materials and shaders for it (especially skin). But my quest hasn't been successful.
Thanks for the sale, Daz. But my pocket didn't really have the chance to recover from your PC+ Sale.
I dread to think how long it will be before Reality is in another sale, at that price. It's the first time that it's been on sale since it has been added to my wishlist.
I laid out exactly what I meant 'losing money.'
If there's two ways to sell something, one will be less profitable and 'lose money' compared to the other.
Of course Rendo's clearance section is "clearance" in name only. From what I have read, they have changed their policy and never remove any products unless the owning PA requests it.
Now I'm somewhat more miffed about yesterday's deal. (And, to translate British into American, "slightly miffed" means "really quite cross").
Even though I was sort of expecting that Daz would extend the "Today only" deal (because they do regularly, to the point that I'm questioning its legality*), 50% off some things that are otherwise almost never on sale was reasonable. The fact that there's now a better deal on the Saturday where I could have topped up on discounted store credit to cover everything I wanted is taking the proverbial.
* Seriously, what is the situation on this kind of thing in the US? Under UK sales law, if you say a sale is limited, then it has to be limited. You cannot say "At this price today only" and then sell it for the same price tomorrow, because that's misleading the customer, and may cause them to make purchasing decisions they might not have otherwise.
If Daz were a UK based website, it could have had the book thrown at it multiple times over in the last few months alone for this kind of thing, and I guess I'm surprised that there's no similar consumer protection in the US.
sales get extended in the UK, and certainly a lot of US online stores do it - just had a Sale Extended email from Corel pushing their Black Friday discount.
Well, no, it's not enforced with an absolute rod of iron, as the definitions are deliberately a little bit flexible because they need to be interpretable to cover any possible range of circumstances... and technically I suppose a lot of the rules are not technically "the law".
(In a strict sense, the Advertising Standards code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules, but everyone follows them like they are the law. No one wants the bad press, and if anyone started genuinely flaunting it, then the government might well step in and actually make it law).
Still, a site extending sales nearly as often as they actually run for the specified time is certainly the kind of thing that the ASA would be looking into.
To determine if PA's are making a profit, lost or break even, we have to consider all of the costs involved in producing products. PA's need to sell enough products to cover expenses for the whole month even if the creation of a product only takes 2- 3 weeks or they cannot produce a product in a particular month due to health issues or for other reasons. That is because companies that offer their software on a subscription basis always charge the whole month or the whole year.
I am not sure how many PA's create their products with free software; but many need to cover some or all of the following costs:
Photoshop monthly subscription = USD $9.95
Mudbox monthly subscription = USD $10
Marvelous Designer monthly subscription = USD $50
3d.sk subscription for 250 Purchasing Credits = EUR 99.90 = USD $113.28
3ds Max or Maya Annual subscription = USD 1,500 each ( USD$ 125 each - monthly)
ZBrush (One time cost) for a Single User= USD$ 895
Hair, clothing, jewelry, poses, lights and other props used to create promotional images - and/or - base models to create add-on for them = around $USD 1,000 per year
Accounting services (at least to fill tax documents) = USD $300 - 400 annual
Brokerage commission = 50%
USA Minimun wage $7.25 per Hour (USD $580 per 80 hours, some projects require more than 80 hours)
Others: Computer maintenance / electric bill ($$$ long hours developing, testing and rendering) / online security/antivirus software, monthly fee for Internet Services, other $$$$
Why are PA's still creating content? ... Can work from home, flexible working hours, have a 2nd day job, love creating content, making some profit from popular products ...
In the case of DAZ and other brokerages, they also have to pay their employees wages and benefits, pay for office expenses, advertising, and many other expenses.
Sad fact is many customers don't really care. It's all about them and what they want/need.
Everyone has the right to have their own opinion, I'm just bringing some facts that sometimes go unnoticed.
Thank You for pointing those things out Virtual_World. I don't think people realize that for many PA's this is a second job and it takes a lot of time and effort in order to generate some profit. If you're a slow creator like in my case and you make maybe 8-10 products a year all your profits from at least one of those products will go into covering your production costs.
...not sure about mainly being a "fashion boutique "as they also have more real world planes, cars, and other transprotation models than here.
My point was that the info you posted has been posted many times by other PAs and it hasn't really changed customers views on the matter, they still demand what they demand. I do lots of commercial 3d work and feel your pain and totally understand your point of view.
Imagine having to work the front counter of a business. That business sells a particular product that serves no purpose, like insurance against breakage for a second product that doesn't break and no one could prove it was the customer's fault even if it did break. Pay the extra cash on your transaction and we won't hit you with a charge we never use because we can't prove it was you. But you, as the line worker, still have to sell it and hit your quota of sales because if you miss one week, you get a warning. Miss two weeks, you get sacked. All to make money selling false promises based on fear to customers who don't know any better. And that's perfectly legal in the US.
That's how we roll across the pond.
I know Michael; I just wanted to make it clear that I didn't want to offend anyone with my comment.
I'm usually a bit slow at creating, although lately I've got programs that make it easier for me to work. I started to create content after my mom had a stroke and became bedridden. I could not continue working in my previous job and I had to stay at home taking care of her. It was then that I decided to stop being a user and move on to develop content and that was the solution to get some income from my own home and in my spare time after having attended her during the day. She passed away several years ago; but I am still trying to make a modest living with my creations.
+1
I know I have monthly subscriptions, yearly maintenance costs for software, updates, etc. My profits need to cover those costs or it simply wouldn't make sense to continue submitting any products to the store.
Ah, yes. I suppose I did know about the US's strong penchant for "At Will" employment (at least I think that's the right term?), so I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that consumer protection law might also comparably favour company over consumer. It's easy to forget just how different the US is to the UK; the similar language is really quite deceptive - even if people often forget it, the UK has far more cultural similarity to its European neighbours than to the US.
But anyway, that's drifting into politics, and we all know what they say about talking politics...
+100
This sort of thing goes on in the UK as well.
Why should we care, are our circumstances and our wages/incomes less important than vendors? Some of the expenses Virtual World listed could be reduced; do your own taxes, buy a perpetual license for MD its just been reduced greatly, use GIMP rather than photoshop etc.
With the constant sales Daz have created the sense that its silly to pay full price for something as the full price is possibly inflated to cover the constant sales: don't berate your customers for looking for the best deal rather blame Daz for the conditioning of the consumer.
Not less important, but if you want the vendors to continue producing content then yes, you should care if they make enough money to go on. It's a matter of balance.
Once again it's a matter of balance: Doing your own taxes (assuming it's an option, in some countries using an accountant is required for businesses) means you don't pay an accountant but you spend lots of times on it, time not used to produce new content. Using a cheaper software saves you money but may mean that you need to spend more time on a product if the more expensive one usually has additional or more efficient tools.
Or simple a matter of 'I can't afford it', perhaps I should pay some one to do my taxes then I would have less to spend here, like you said a matter of balance; but just because customers look for the best deals does not mean they are heartless and uncaring.
But that argument of "I can't afford it" goes both ways. And it is a balance, vendors have to meet their costs and customers have to be able to afford it. So there should be some caring and some give an take on both ends.. that's what the free market is. But telling vendors to cut costs is kind of out of bounds in this discussion; customers would have a fit if the response to this thread from vendors was "just save up and run me my money"
The thread would have been locked by then. 
The "door buster deals" are good if you want victoria 4 items. If you are a pc+ member and get 5 or more
Its over 90% off most of the items.
You forgot: handle refusal of item; I've had a couple of those, and still working on another couple.
Glad I do this for fun and not my day-job