My math vs. Daz math
run4real
Posts: 94
Why is 70% off for a product still a ridiculous low discount and pretty expensive?
or in other words:
Why would someone like to buy a product for $44.95 (100%) or even $13.49 (70%) if the same product was $1.99 (95%) a few days before? (see an example attached)
This is true for almost every product in the store sooner or later.
In order that anybody understand my thought bubble, here is my short background:
Although this is only my 21st post in 12 years, I read almost every post of importance here in the forum and therefore I know the most writers and stories in this regard pretty well. I know there are a few DAZ-alcoholics with several thousand posts (omg...what are they doing all day long? obviously not rendering :-)
I call myself an experienced user and I'm here at DAZ since 2008, my first experiences as a buyer was at Rendo since 2005. Meanwhile I own nearly 20'000 single products from different 3d stores and bought from DAZ store alone 214 pages (Product Library) these are nearly 8'500 single products at the cost of $$$K omg... I know there are a few poeple with the same amount or more and Cbx has even more than 600 pages.
Anyway, here is my thought bubble:
Would you pay $5, $10$, $20 or even $30 for a single music title or song? These days a single music title costs about $1.90 - $1.99, if it's expensive!
A single 3d-item without any discount costs from $5 - $50 on average.
You could argue more people buy music than 3d-items and it's a question of supply and demand, but should we pay for the work hours or the artistic value as a single individuum? Nobody could afford this in general except the few millionairs here at DAZ. I guess to produce a successful song or music title is at least as hard as to produce a successful 3d-product that sells well.
DAZ claims that more than 3 million people downloaded their Daz Studio and I believe them. But if at least only 100'000 people would use Daz Studio then it could be expected that at least a ridiculous low number of 1000 people would buy a single product on average (at least if a product sells well), otherwise this business modell wouldn't make much sense.
The "WOW" effect:
A few years ago DAZ decided to raise the bar as a new business model and increased the prices dramatically from e.g. $2 to $20 per item on average, this is an increase of thousand percent 1000%! Rendo did later the same. I don't know any other business with a price increase like this. When this happend a few years ago I reduced my spending drastically and everytime DAZ makes a hidden price increase I reduce my spending further and further.
Today DAZ advertises a "Mega Sale" e.g. 50% off, many users (especially new users) could think "WOW" DAZ is very generous today, but frankly speaking, it isn't of course.
Why?
As you can imagine a 3D-artist (or 3D-animator like me) required hundreds if not even thousands of items to fill-up different 3d-scenes and as a serious 3d-artist you will typically not produce only one scene in your lifetime. During the first days of my 3d-life I paid almost every price in case I liked a new product, but those days are long gone, my wishlist is flooded with almost 450 items on average and I will not buy any product before I get an item for an reasonable price, say at least 75% - 80% off and as long as I'm not allowed to dramatically reduce my wishlist, because of the permanent high prices, I will not buy any new product, regardless of how I like this new product. Since most of us are not born as millionairs this is the world we have to deal with. Needless to say that I'm not willing to buy a new product first, only to get a better deal for old wishlist items etc.
Here is my math:
Let's assume my whole wishlist costs $6'750 ($15 per item), since I would never buy at this price, this means zero dollar $0 total revenue for DAZ or the PA's.
Let's assume I get the wihlist at least for 75% off, this would be a real revenue of $1687 for DAZ or the PA's.
Let's assume a ridiculous low fraction of the 3 million people who downloaded Daz Studio, e.g. hundreds or even thousands people, would be real customers and buy products to an affordable price, this would lead to a better experience for both sides, DAZ and the PA's and the users.
This means I would still spend thousand of dollars for new products or my wishlist, if I get this to an affordable price, but I spend nearly $0 if I have to pay $5 - $50 dollar per item. In my opinion, a single product has no better value than $2 in general, this doesn't mean that the work of the PA's has no value of course, their work has the same value like a song writer or a film producer or any other artist or worker etc. but in order that both sides profit, the PA's and the customers, this should be reached over the sheer number of sells and not the high price for a single product (like the music industry), since we require hundreds or even thousands of products for our scenes and most of us are probably not millionairs.
Fortunately this is the end of my 21st post, did anybody understand what I wrote? Is it of interest? It's just my thought bubble and has probably nothing to do with the reality of others.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Hi - while I fully comprehend and largely agree with your post, I believe that 22Jun2020 was actually the day (night) when a short-lived glitch offered all Daz Originals for $1.99.
The license you are getting with the purchase of a 3D item at Daz provides you with unlimited royalty free commerical use of said product (within the EULA, of course.) The $1.99 you pay to Apple to get the latest Justin Beiber song only gets you the rights to play it for your own personal enjoyment.
This is a valid argument I have to say. Very good!
Maybe, I don't know really - it was just an old example (probably a bad example) since a lot of products get this price tag $1.99 somewhere along the way.
Time for the OP to learn to model, Blender if free, have at it
I have been in the 3d world (outside the DAZ bubble) for many years and DAZ prices are a bargain in both cost and functionality compared to the other stores that sell 3Dcontent or the prices commission work cost.
I agree, Daz prices in this context are better compared to other stores, but it's impossible to model all the content and requirements for every movie or scene by myself, although I do a lot in this respect, but I'm rely on all the other artists, because my lifetime wouldn't be enough to model all the things by myself, there is also a life aside the 3d-world. Anyway $2 - $5 would be a realistic price for a product, I guess more people would buy something and therefore the license would be covered as well, but I could miscount of course, because we don't know the real number of buyers or the real sales volume.
2-5$ would totally not be a realistic price for a product. If products took only a few hours to create and had the potential to sell thousands and thousands of copies then maybe, but that's absolutely not the case.
Products will usually take weeks to create, and the market for Daz content is really small despite the number of individual downloads for DS. A successful product will usually sell a few *hundreds* copies (on which Daz takes its cut).
And setting dirt cheap prices to boost sales is only interesting if the number of extra sales more than offsets for what you lose on each individual sale. For example if you take a $20 product and sell it at 5$ you need 4 times more purchases to make the same revenue. That usually doesn't happen.
All DAZ Original items went to $ 1.99 that day due to a bug. They only had that price for a couple hours.
On the other hand, there have been sales that reduced prices of items to nearly that level.
And yes, as 3D rendering is only a hobby for me, I am quite close to what You wrote in Your post. I very rarely buy an item unless it's discounted at least 70% nowadays. I did before, but now I learned that every item will be in a sale sooner or later. So now even when an item is reduced for 70% I still think "meh, I wait until it's in a PC+ sale for $ 1.99"
Yes, with lower prices (and less complicate deals) DAZ and the PAs could probably make more money - or not... depends on the items the PAs make, as there probably is a limit to the number of items with slight modifications one needs. Or to the number of people that have a need for special figures. And on the other hand, there's the artists that have the money to buy whatever they need at full price, because they make a living from doing the renders and can get a tax reduction for buying "work material" or whatever..
So it seems there's quite a few different angles about the prices...
If PAs do not make enough money from content creation then they will do something else. No one is under an obligation or compulsion to do this, at best if too many people stop paying viable prices we will see only the content people make in their spare time, and probably it will be less polished since a lot of the finishing up is pure chore.
I use a translator, so I'm sorry if what I say seems incomprehensible.
I understand what you're trying to say in your first post, and I agree with you on some points, but in absolute terms what bothers me about paying so much for certain products is that I have the impression that daz has no quality criteria other than esthetics, there are lots of clothes without morphs, lots of buildings without opening doors... It may seem futile but when I buy something and I have to export, modify and then reimport it into daz... I don't see why I'll buy, and I don't see any notable improvements in the daz studio software, or even in the forum, I feel like a cash cow when I see the astronomical amount of genesis 8 pro bundle, so in the end, yes, it's too much for what it's worth.
and several things annoy me, the fact of having to go through googl to find an info on the forum, the fact that the sales pages do not respect the choice (example: by new arrival) the fact that there is no more category in the filters (example: props)
edit : and what I find a pity are the interactive licenses which limits the creation via daz, without it I could create a real game in 3d, but it's too expensive even with the best promo, but I grant to daz that it's my problem ^^
Thanks for your input Leana, I agree "dirt cheap prices to boost sales is only interesting if the number of extra sales more than offsets for what you lose on each individual sale", well I know how long it takes to produce a product, since I do this all day long, but I don't know how a single product sells in fact. My thought was, if the price is too high there is a tipping point where someone wouldn't buy, this means $0 revenue, even if a PA works several weeks on a product. Where is the tipping point? You can observe this by yourself, would you by for 0% discount at the full price? My tipping point today is between 75-80% off, a few years ago my tipping point was 50-60% off. What is the use if the price is too high and fewer people or nobody buy the product. But I also agree, probably this can't be compared one to one with the music industry, where a song costs $1.99 only for the right to play the song. Obviously you have the experience that only a few hunderds copies sells like hotcakes, I don't know it really. I can only speak for myself, if the price isn't in my range I simple don't buy. My wishlist includes about 450 items, if the price drops into my range I would buy all the 450 items immediately, but if not, there is no revenue for the PA's, so which approach is better now, e.g. $1600 revenue or nothing? Hope you understand what I mean.
I'll chime in too.
I have issues with Daz. In no way is one of them the price they charge versus the work involved in producing items for sale. I agree with anyone saying they think QA is lacking, and would emphasise this as a main issue I have.
Option:
1) Pay the asking price of newly released items.
2) Create your own - Blender is free and excellent.
3) Wait untill the price falls to a value you think an item is worth, and that you can budget for.
4) Find freebies that suit your needs.
5) Do something else.
Great! A lot of very good points and opinions here from all of you! At least this let me rethink some of my own point of views. Many thanks to all above!
Yep, that's what happened on 6/22/2020. I transcribe the daily promos into a spreadsheet (I have alot of free time.. LOL) and that glitch was during the PC Anniversary sale, $1.99 Platinum Club for a Day offers. Here's what I recorded:
Compare the price and the functionality (in DS) of the Victoria 8 probundle https://www.daz3d.com/victoria-8-pro-bundle
with this single female sold at a 3D store at market value which doesn't even work in DS without rerigging https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/alena-skinning-hairs-3d-model/914313
and tell me you are not getting a good deal on the V8 pro bundle
Agree but ... if we had to pay TurboSquid prices, most of us would not be buying at all. The DAZ idea of providing the software for free was genius (although far from original) and the fact that it was, IMHO, better than the paid alternative (Poser) is also to the credit of DAZ. As to their weird marketing fun & games, I have less to commend them on, especially since the store software seems to be broken most of the time.
I've gotten the impression the person who created that mouse put forth a lot of effort to do it. And I spent over $20 for that. I've also gotten the impression some of the people who make human female figures have just taken previous models and slightly altered them to make a new model. I just pick my favorite version of the character they're making over and over, and pay for that one. Some people seem to make products so basic that it's little more than a "merchant resource" given the amount of work one has to do to use it. I won't pay for that unless I need a merchant resource. But I'm one of the people willing to pay what I can afford, to not have to know what a metallic flake has to do with human skin.
How does one use metallic flakes to simulate wet skin?
I think DAZ is responsible for their store reporting incorrect prices. Nobody would complain about the price increase if the products had the right price in the first place.
Sounds like you just missed a super amazing sale and have to settle for just an amazing sale
An amazing deal is still amazing
before daz I create my characters, environments etc... I know very well the time it takes to create, I love daz and daz is a big time saver for me and it's clear that it's cheap compared to what we can find elsewhere but it's not a valid excuse to explain the defaults stated, and I'm not saying this to criticize daz studio, I'm saying this because daz could be a lot better and it's by understanding the critics that things can change.
once I asked if daz had a function similar to blender in edit mode allowing to move vertices, according to the answers it didn't exist and it was a bad idea (from what I understood) some time later "mesh grabber" was released and it became one of the must-have features of daz... and indeed "mesh grabber" brings a significant improvement for the creators, not everyone has mastered third party software (blender, hexagon etc ...) to correct any defect and for me daz studio lacks basic functions that would greatly improve its capabilities, it is not normal to have to use a third party software or a plugin to correct a poketrough ...
and for me the pro bundles are not advantageous, in the sense that what the bundle contains is imposed and that I will not buy it outside the bundle
all this is obviously only my opinion ;) I just wish the best for daz studio
Your comparison of Daz assets to songs is invalid, because a Daz asset is a tool that you use to create art rather than art unto itself. A rendered image is more analagous to a song, and how much have you ever paid for one of those?
Agree your argument, you could easily see Daz assets just as a tool as well, in an analogous comparison a Daz asset would be then e.g. like a guitar and Daz Studio maybe like a recording studio, but you could just as well see rendered images as a tool and pay for rendered images in a breeze, if you intend to use someone's art to create your own art, or commercial, or book cover, or template, or background image, or storybook etc., e.g. shutterstock, istockphoto, pinterest etc. and yes, I paid already for these kind of rendered images.
Since I use samples from songs for remixes and for sound recordings of movies, you could easily pay for this as a tool as well, in case you intend to use these kind of material commercially.
In the end I pay just for a product, whatever you intend to do with it or how you like to call it, it's nothing more than a product with a price tag and it's EULA, whether a song or a 3d-asset or a rendered image and in this regard a comparison should be valid, but this is just my opinion and as I said, you could easily see Daz assets just as a tool of course, I wouldn't pay more anyway, whether it's called a tool, art or anything else, it's just a product with an assigned value and as outrider42 said above "The value of something is more often determined by those who purchase it", this is exactly what I meant in a short sentence. (thank you outrider42!) But this means, I have to think about whether my post was waste or not, since this could be summarized in a short sentence, on the other hand all the great comments and opinions above are appreciated and an enrichment to enhance the own point of view or perception.
Ok, I guess the Premier Artist Festival 2020 is of more interest now then my post, have fun! :-)