About PA's Sales and Revenue

Mekrooh

Hi,I'll try to make it simple since english isn't my native. When I discovered Daz Studio and hexagon back in 2011 I knew right away what I should be doing for a living but my passion for the army made that impossible, after completing the service i worked different jobs trying to make a stable income which I did and i never felt comfortable doing what I do best so I keep telling myself to make a product and see what happens, but I always hesitate thinking that making a living as a digital artist ain't worth trying. What I want to know is the number of sales and revenue of the worst and best selling product for a PA. For example which product made the least and which one was and still on top. It doesn't matter what type it is (Character, Vehicle...etc). Hopefully someone won't find this too personal but I truly understand if no one is willing to answer since most people consider it a holy part of success in life.

Emo Sludge

Lucky for you, Sickleyield has written about this very topic a lot and answered a lot of questions. 
 

https://www.deviantart.com/sickleyield/journal/Making-A-Living-at-DAZ3D-407828896

https://www.deviantart.com/sickleyield/journal/Making-a-Living-At-DAZ3D-Part-2-The-First-Product-565231074

nonesuch00

They're not going to directly tell you that but you can figure out the highest selling genre of items in the last 1000 products (they are numberically given consecutive larger product numbers) by getting a product listing and calculating the ratio of the different genres. Examples:

a) Genesis 8 Female Characters & Morphs of all sorts

b) Genesis 8 Male Characters & Morphs of All Sorts 

c) Genesis 8 Female Clothing of All Sorts

d) Genesis 8 Male Clothing of All Sorts

e) Genesis 8 Female Hair of All Sorts

f) Genesis 8 Male Hair of All Sorts

g) Vehicles of all Sorts 

h) Natural Environments of All Sorts

i) Architectural Environments of All Sorts

j) Architectural Props of All Sorts (eg furniture, ...)

k) Genesis 8 Female Poses

l) Genesis 8 Male Poses

 m) Non-wearable Props of All Sorts

n) Animations of All Sorts

j) DAZ Studio Scripts and Plugins of All Sorts

Get the Product Number of Victoria 8 (the 1st Genesis 8 Female) and then use that to get a product listing of all products released after that and categorize them of above or using the categorization check boxes in the product menu listing with is roughly equivalent. Count the number of released products in those categories and that would almost surely be the most popular product genre (it's going to be Genesis 8 Female characters I can tell you but maybe you have better talents in other generes than sculpting females)

You can sort by "Most Popular" or "Trending" too but doing that won't really help as much as counting the total number of individual products released in the product genres. Don't count bundles as you'll be double counting some products.

Mekrooh

That's half the answer (for me at least) although I've read it before. Thanks.

FSMCDesigns

i would suggest just creating a product while still at your other job(s) and see how it goes. if the process works for you and you get the results you want, then keep going at it. If you spend all your time analyzing it you will miss out on the expreience of actually doing it.

FirstBastion

Don't give up your day job at first. Make a product,  submit it, see if it gets accepted by Daz or rendo,  see if it sells. See how much you make. Decide if you want to go through the process again.

Repeat about 25 times,

then decide if you are making enough money.

If yes then quit the day job.  If not,  it can still provide some extra spending money.

 

shg0816_13461e8196

I'm not a vendor, but I can tell you what I have seen on various posts, and I'm sure others will correct me (if I mis-state something)

If you are going to start out, I'd suggest doing some things and giving them away as freebies. This will give you the experience, let people know about you, and you should be able to figure out what has done well and what has not. As you are learning, try to develop a workflow and style that work for you.

Once you are ready to go into the foray of selling products, try to appeal to a wide range of buyers at first, or vary your offerings to appeal to a broad range of people. If you need suggestions, wish the wishlist forums (hint, hint).

azcraigrr

Although not Daz3d, here is an article about an artist who made Photoshop Actions into a full time business. I think there are some very sensible ideas in there that might help.

https://community.envato.com/sevenstyles-went-become-first-australian-author-earn-1-million/

 

3Diva

FirstBastion said:

Don't give up your day job at first. Make a product,  submit it, see if it gets accepted by Daz or rendo,  see if it sells. See how much you make. Decide if you want to go through the process again.

Repeat about 25 times,

then decide if you are making enough money.

If yes then quit the day job.  If not,  it can still provide some extra spending money.

 

+1

Also to make a living from this you need to be very fast at it and pretty productive. I only do this part-time, so I'm really slow at releasing content, but the PAs who do this full time usually recommend being able to release at least 1 or 2 decent selling products a month - consistently. Those who live in areas where the cost of living is lower can probably get away with 1 decent selling product a month, if you live in a place where the cost of living is higher then you'll likely need to release 2 decent selling products a month. "Decent Selling" is the key. Some items just don't sell as well as others. For instance, things like poses often won't bring in as many sales numbers as some of the other types of products can. Having said that, some PAs seem to make a decent living off of poses, but I think you have to be really fast at it and release quite a few pose sets to make it a viable living. Also, things like how long a figure has been out can impact the sales numbers on things like poses and characters created for a specific generation of figures.

 

I would recommend: 1) Start out releasing a freebie or two. I think many PAs start out that way. It helps to familiarize ourselves with the file structure that is needed for the proper distribution of a product. It also helps to get feedback from the community on perhaps what needs to be worked on, areas for improvement, etc. 2) Once you're comfortable with creating a product for distribution you can present your best one to Daz3D (you need really good promo images or they won't look at it. So make sure before you submit anything that you did a series of really nice looking renders to show them - I can't stress that enough). 3) If they bring you on as a PA and you want to be able to eventually do it full time, keep submitting regularly if you can. If the goal is moving to 3D content creation as a full-time job, you want to find out if you're fast enough and productive enough to make that a viable option. Shoot for at least a dozen products before you seriously evaluate whether or not you think you can do it full time. And once you reach that point where you can evaluate that as a possibility - be completely honest with yourself. Will you be able to consistently put out products from concept to finish fast enough to make a living at it? That's something you probably won't be able to know for sure until you've released several products.

If you're not able to move to doing it full time, that's TOTALLY ok - There's nothing wrong with that. I think probably the majority of PAs don't do it full time. If you enjoy 3D content creation, then go for it. Whether or not you eventually do it full time, I hope you do what you enjoy doing.

Mekrooh

Thanks for the interesting answers everyone, guess i'll be making something eventually. Thanks again.