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It's an interesting question, but I think the answers will be many and varied. What one person considers an essential and is happy to pay $40 for, another person will consider a great item but not essential and not willing to pay $40 for at that time. I can tell you my personal shopping habits and wants, but I may be in the minority, and my opinion and my money may not factor into your creating at all.
20 buying customers may think $20 is a fabulous price for something, whereas me as the 1 non-buying customer may think it's a bit high. LOL. Your creations are different and unique and original, and damn good. I adore them - I'm not sucking up to you here, but simply stating a truth. More than three quarters of your store is on my wishlist. But there are three main reasons why they are on my wishlist for "later", and not in my cart immediately:
1. Disposable income. I have very little. Three years ago, it was nothing for me to drop $100+ a WEEK on content from the daz store. And sometimes I'd buy a product simply because I liked only part of it - for instance, I would love the boots, but not like the rest of the outfit. But because at the time i HAD a disposable income, it was easy to buy the product knowing I'd at least use the heck out of the boots. Now, nope. I'm lucky if I spend $25 a MONTH, simply because we don't have it.
2. Currency conversion. Nothing can be done about this. It's just a fact. I'm in Australia, so I'm paying in Australian dollars. And it's not good. Another reason why I spend less and less is that it's become more and more expensive for me. Case in point - the recent new figure release. Pro bundle plus three more items, PLUS a $100 of free stuff that I really wanted! Awesome, comes in about $60 (with my PC coupon). Fantastic deal, right?? Until I realize that $60 (which if i made it my ONLY purchase for the month, was do-able), is actually more than $90 in australian dollars. Uh, ok. Nope, can't do. It's a big jump from $60 to $90. I simply can't do it on our tiny income. And if the release drops on our off-pension payment week? Nup, can't even consider it. LOL. So yeah, my spending has dropped considerably simply because what's a good price in american dollars, is too expensive in australian dollars.
3. Products are more and more less likely to like my computer. LOL. Particularly environments/sets. Poor ol' Albie (my computer) just can't handle them. I've done all the tricks - making non-seen stuff invisible or deleting them, using the script to halve textures on stuff in the background etc. And if i can't afford to buy stuff anymore, then I certainly can't afford to buy a new video card and ram....especially when here in australia we pay MORE for computer components and software. (it's stupid, but there it is).
So while I adore your stuff, and throw everything you release onto my wishlist for when I have the spare cash or there's a sale, it's "niche" as dreamfarmer mentioned above and I try and figure out when I'd use it, and often can't. But the problem is this - I WANT them anyway. LOL. Cos your creations are awesome and even if I'd never use it, I still WANT it. And I sure as hell DON'T want to see you changing your stuff to become less "niche" or less unique and different and original. I'd cry my eyes out if you released something that looked like everything else in the store. LOL. Remember your Base Camps? The display stands? You were the first to do those. And I remember you showed one in the promo for those GravBoots and I said something like "that is awesome, I'd love to see more of those stands" and you went ahead and created them and sent me one! I was blown away. LOL. I was so excited. And then I bought all the base camp stands you did. LOL. SO many of your products I fall in love with and then just can't figure out when I'd use them - I mean, Buggy Styles? And Bug Hunt? I bought them. And never used them cos I never had a reason to. LOL. But I bought them anyway cos they were great and no-one else was doing stuff like that. Zip Speedy? Man, I love him. I've actually used him a few times fortunately. AB3K - actually my FAVOURITE robot.
Alright, I've rambled on enough and probably haven't even answered your question. LOL. Blame it on the fact I haven't been awake long, haven't had enough coffee, and am feeling a bit sad that your Land of Iron Orcs hasn't yet done enough that you felt prompted to even ask your question. Personally I think the $22.95 for that environment is a damn good price. But again, for me personally, $22.95 US is actually $32 Australian, so a bit steep for me...but ONLY because we have very little disposable income. So yeah, damn currency conversion kills a lot of my purchases.
Ok, i've rabbited enough.
Jakiblue always happy to hear what you have to say, like you mentioned I've used more than one of your ideas for products. I feel everyone has less money to go around, But if you're rich please buy two of everything in case you lose one. I would rather sell 200 units at $10 than 100 units at $20, the reason I like making the stuff is seeing what other people come up with. I'm doing a set right now that's crazy big and I worry about people's computers but it kept growing. But I wont double the price for double the pixels, that was my choice. As for the input it's all good and helpful, Thanks!
For me, it is about functionality for my projects. I teach elementary school and what I create are age appropriate scenes and graphics. I have purchased your B-Bot and Glitch because they hit the students in the "cool" zone; and the humpback whale and piranha for water related scenes. There are many products that are released that catch my eye, and I used purchase them whether an instant creative idea came to mind, but I have seriously tapered off from my eye candy purchasing. Part of the is the increase is cost and part of that is because I have so many products and so little time to actually "play" with them.
So ... instant buys are based on my general usage; love the product, but have no use for it - wishlist for a sale and then make a decision based on what is on my list.
I totally get that! I often do projects that interest me personally on some level and only later hope that there is a handful of folks out here that will find it meets their needs as well. It's a horrible business model and one I may need to adjust in order to continue doing this full time. That's not a bad thing, it makes me step out of my world more and see what everyone else is looking at. I see many PAs venturing into other genres, I imagine that means they are thinking the same thing... That is not a good thing if it means sales per vendor are down. I know Daz is going strong so no worries there, but there are a lot more sellers and we all are sharing the same pie. I know I speak for other vendors as well when I say we are all very fortunate to have such wonderful people supporting us as we try to do the same for you. So thank you, to everyone who comes here, to buy, to wish list or to window shop.
My focus has always been on sci-fi, but since iray emerged, my scenes have gotten smaller and smaller, because everything from the eyelashes to the hair has to have super large textures. I use scene optimizer, but if I have to tweak something, I factor that into my usabiity. Scene optimizer can take about 15 minutes to run. Given an average weekday I have about 2 hours to do daz as my one relaxtation activity I don't want to spend it tweaking textures.
I am quite satisfied with many of the older environements as well. I don't really think bigger is always better. Some of my favorite environments have been yours and the textures are entirely doable on my computer. What boggles my mind is the big texture sets aren't always that good either. Many have repetitive shader looking textures. So big and bulky can be just plain ugh. And I don't care if the trash can in the distance is high res.
How I gauge whether something is too big is if someone complains it makes their computer lag, or if I notice my computer lagging, or taking a while to compile. If I Can't have a couple of characters and an environment in the same scene, without my computre gasping, its really too big. Not scientific I know. If certain pa's make sets that are too big, then I am wary of purchasing again. Since I end up hiding a lot of what the camera doesn't view in a scene, I actually kind of like the smaller vignette style sets.