Poser support being run down?
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Members is one thing. Paying customers is another.
I probably shouldn't chime in since I find this an interesting thread and I seem to be a thread ender, but here goes. Around the time Dynamics for Daz Studio came about, this same topic occurred, and I say now as I said then, the companies had to diverge in some fashion. In order to progress DAZ3D could not continue imitating Poser and had to strike out in their own direction. The seperation is painful for some, but it was inevitable or eventually they would very likely begin to fail. There is a reason there is not just one brand of car and no monopoly on what jeans we wear. Progress in almost any given business means differences in products and competition for the consumer dollar.
As for which program the vendors decide to support, you CANNOT take it personally if your program of choice is not their program of choice. They do this for a living and every minute spent making things for a multitude of programs is a minute they cannot make the next product and contrary to what you may think, that does lose money for many of them, since within a couple of days their newest item is pushed down the list and folks forget about it unless they happen to have great need for it in the future. So the faster they can get something new out there, the more often they can earn money off the initial release period. For years, many vendors at other sites and even this one, did not support DAZ Studio, but I didn't get hurt feelings over it, they had to make a choice. Letting them know they lost a sale, really makes little difference, since the few I mentioned it too, never changed and a some were a bit rude about it. I say KUDOS to the vendors who are replying in this thread and helping us understand the decisions they make.
It's a hard decision to make and the return on the extra work anymore doesn't pay off, so more and more people are only making products to their product of choice.
I don't know where you got that number, but I doubt it. RDNA gets less traffic than Rendo, and Rendo never has more than about 5000 online at one time (as you can see by the front page; it's 3809 today). Not all of those people use one app. Some of them don't even use Poser OR DAZ Studio. Some use Vue, Carrara, only 3ds Max, only Maya, etc. And of those, there are the people that won't buy sci fi, won't buy male, won't buy fantasy, or just don't like a given item.
I'm not saying that to put down Rendo; I sell there, and I'm happy with them as a bonus income. But nobody is selling 90,000 copies of any product in its intro period anywhere, ever. Probably not even Smith Micro selling Poser itself.
http://forum.runtimedna.com/forum.php
near the bottom under Runtime DNA Inc. Forums Statistics
http://forum.runtimedna.com/forum.php
near the bottom under Runtime DNA Inc. Forums Statistics
"There are currently 2378 users online."
I suspect the 94K is a lifetime figure on total logins, not a current figure on active users.
Greetings,
So...membership numbers are a hard thing to actually quantify. For example, DAZ could probably make as strong a case for approximately 1.25 million members as Runtime could make for 95K, but because of signup bots (non-activated spam accounts, etc.), and gallery/forum/other-only users, etc., it's...well, it's a very hard thing to quantify.I'd prefer a rational statistic like 'made a purchase in the last 30 days', excluding freebies, or anything which doesn't actually cost money. ...but that's something no private company is going to share voluntarily, and very few public ones do.
-- Morgan
[Edit: ...re-edit deletia...not going to fan those flames...]
Agreed. I'm included in their membership number. However, I think the last thing I bought there was about 2 years ago, possibly longer. Nearly the same with some other sites.
well if they have had etc etc a million members and ya sell something for $10.00 and only have a 1000 sells.
that's 10 x 1000 = $10,000. I'd be good with that ;)
So would a lot of Vendors... But those kinds of number a few and far between... I'd gather there are a lot of vendors that 1 product (if that) that has sold even close to that many units of a product. This is a very small market.
lol this reminds me of one of those fb memes where it shows expectation versus reality.
I used to broker there. And yeahhhhh... not gonna say much, but thats definitely not realistic.
So would a lot of Vendors... But those kinds of number a few and far between... I'd gather there are a lot of vendors that 1 product (if that) that has sold even close to that many units of a product. This is a very small market.
Not to mention that not all of that money goes to the vendor/creator. I think half goes to the store.
So would a lot of Vendors... But those kinds of number a few and far between... I'd gather there are a lot of vendors that 1 product (if that) that has sold even close to that many units of a product. This is a very small market.
Freebies can do that... and supersales for me have come closer to the 1k units margin or slightly over (but really units means diddly squat... the $$$ for those sales were meager) and maybe a few arch folks like Stefan and Jack (and thats purely speculation) and that's prolly the list LOL
It always strikes me funneh... the public's idea of what we are making.
Not to mention that not all of that money goes to the vendor/creator. I think half goes to the store.
I wasn't going to pick nicks there, but yes 50/50 split between Vendor and Broker... And don't forget the 30% and 50% off sales (That's were the Vendor has most of their sales).. So, for example last month here at DAZ. A product price of 14.95 with 50% off is 7.48 (rounded up), DAZ gets 3.74 and the vendor get 3.74... So your 1000 units sold (Reality is much, much less) your looking at 3740, not 14950.
Not to mention that not all of that money goes to the vendor/creator. I think half goes to the store.
I wasn't going to pick nicks there, but yes 50/50 split between Vendor and Broker... And don't forget the 30% and 50% off sales (That's were the Vendor has most of their sales).. So, for example last month here at DAZ. A product price of 14.95 with 50% off is 7.48 (rounded up), DAZ gets 3.74 and the vendor get 3.74... So your 1000 units sold (Reality is much, much less) your looking at 3740, not 14950.
lol and thats on a good day. Honestly, I think the most I have ever sold out the gate, on a single item, is in the 400 unit range.
I wasn't going to pick nicks there, but yes 50/50 split between Vendor and Broker... And don't forget the 30% and 50% off sales (That's were the Vendor has most of their sales).. So, for example last month here at DAZ. A product price of 14.95 with 50% off is 7.48 (rounded up), DAZ gets 3.74 and the vendor get 3.74... So your 1000 units sold (Reality is much, much less) your looking at 3740, not 14950.
lol and thats on a good day. Honestly, I think the most I have ever sold out the gate, on a single item, is in the 400 unit range.
200 to 250 seems to be about average during the initial release period from my side... There's been exceptions in both directions.
I recently had a set of products where one was for poser and the other for studio. The studio version sold more than 3 times as well as the poser version. Even so, I was planning to support Poser with Cases for Curiosities till I realized I would have to add a slew of extra polys so the poser version would behave properly. With studio I could do per surface smoothing adjustments and I have never been able to figure out how to do that in Poser. Between going back to add extra poly's and the added set up time I just couldn't see it being logical when you look at time vs money.
Can someone elaborate on these extra poly's for Poser bits I'm reading throughout this thread from the merchants? I'm working on some packs for another site and I really don't want to be in a quandary wondering why the Poser version will not work correctly.
I will add it's really refreshing to read these very upfront opinions and getting sales feedback from you good people. It's an inside not many of us are aware of. Thanks for being so open!
Freebies can do that... and supersales for me have come closer to the 1k units margin or slightly over (but really units means diddly squat... the $$$ for those sales were meager) and maybe a few arch folks like Stefan and Jack (and thats purely speculation) and that's prolly the list LOL
It always strikes me funneh... the public's idea of what we are making.
Well, when you have people seeing numbers like 94,803 members at Rendo or 1,280,216 members at DAZ... And thinking we get full price for the products that are brokered for us.... I don't blame them for thinking that...
At least we can share some of the reality of being a Vendor.
I wasn't going to pick nicks there, but yes 50/50 split between Vendor and Broker... And don't forget the 30% and 50% off sales (That's were the Vendor has most of their sales).. So, for example last month here at DAZ. A product price of 14.95 with 50% off is 7.48 (rounded up), DAZ gets 3.74 and the vendor get 3.74... So your 1000 units sold (Reality is much, much less) your looking at 3740, not 14950.
lol and thats on a good day. Honestly, I think the most I have ever sold out the gate, on a single item, is in the 400 unit range.
200 to 250 seems to be about average during the initial release period from my side... There's been exceptions in both directions.
Yep, thats my average too.
And to your other reply... yeah... it does create a misconception for sure.
You also have to figure, some of those other stores have, in the past, inflated their traffic no's to purposely make it look busier than it actually was. There are a large no of inactive users who havent touched 3D in years. Also, round robin ip's (such as aol has) often creates multiple sessions. That also artificially inflates those no's
Yup, a brilliant coder that could create a utility that can be sold to both the Poser and DAZ Studio vendors and freebie makers that could do as close to exact conversions as possible would make that person a very good profit!
As far as I know Poser gives you the option to have smoothing turned off/on for the whole render and on/off per object but not per surface. If you use smoothing in Poser and all the corners are not set up properly then things start to bend. In my case the flat part of the sides of the cases was bowing. To set corners up so they don't bend you need them set up so that they are not really corners so much as a tiny fillet . I should mention that this was the third incarnation of these cases and the last two actually did have the extra poly's at every corner to keep things smoothed out but this last time I skipped it. I could have gone in and added the extra poly's or set the object up to not use smoothing but then the half rounds would all have been less round.. Or I could have added more poly's there so they looked right in close up. In the end I deiced I didn't want to spend the time going in and redoing so much since the time was unlikely to get paid for sales wise. In studio the solution was to select the surfaces I wanted to have sharp corners on and turn the smoothing down or off and on the surfaces that I wanted to smooth more I increased the amount of smoothing in the surface tab.
Thanks to DraagonStorm, Khory, IgnisSerpentus, and others for real-world indications of sales volume.
I'm going to stick my neck out here and summarize what I'm seeing to address the OP's observation/question/complaint.
1) It is possible to make a living creating 3D content for DAZ Studio and/or Poser.
2) An efficient workflow and creativity makes it possible to earn better than minimum wage when creating content.
3) DAZ Studio and Poser have diverged sufficiently that the additional effort to support BOTH platforms causes effective wages to drop toward (and possibly below) minimum wage.
And the swag I'm working with here is defining 'minimum wage' as the gross sales during the introductory period, minus about 30% for overhead, divided by the hours spent designing, creating, and packaging the item as well as the time spent working with the broker QA group - effectively, all the hours spent on the product.
The key point here is #3.
The impression I've gotten is that a lot of content creators don't even make minimum wage. Many of them have full-time or part-time jobs that pay the bills. In that case they don't have much time available for mastering both programs and making content work in both, and while they aren't depending on their content creation work to pay the bills now, I assume most of them would like to eventually get to the point where it does.
It really varies. Its completely dependent on pack popularity, and how regular you release and how many times in year. But on average... yeah, min wage for sure.
Based off what I have currently made this year, a single person could do it. 2 is getting tight.... 3 is really tight, but doable (I have before) But in any case, its definitely not my only income.
Well 225 during the initial release period ,guess it would be the first week.
225 * $5 = $1,125 a $1000 a week is not that bad.
At one point DAZ was just a vender just like everyone else.
I don't know what DAZ Company is worth today but I bet it's worth a lot.
So if DAZ built a empire buy just being a vender ,then why can't anyone ?
Mike has nailed my situation exactly.
Rorr yeah $1000 a week would be great. That does assume that the selling price of an item is $10, to make up for the broker's cut, and that you are able to get a new product released every week. That is a very unlikely combination.
I do this part time (I just finished doing a sculpt.. while fixing cocktails ;) ), and even though the store is leaning more towards female-based products, I've been able to bump a few of these female products out the top 30 with my male products ;). I've been able to finance my vacations with my sales... at least i've been fortunate to get 27 days of vacation from my main gig.... though the way I've been traveling overseas, I don't need to put too many days in. ;)
It's how many weeks it takes you to CREATE the product, not how many weeks it takes to sell 225. You'd have to be creating and releasing a new product every week to get that $1000 a week. And if you could get a product out every week, how many of them would bomb? 225 may be average for some vendors who put out 4, 6 maybe 10 products a year, but can you really create 52 products of that caliber a year? And you certainly don't have time to learn two different programs (I find it hard to imagine you could even keep up with the innovations in one program). If you've only got a week to make each product you don't have time to learn anything new or try anything new. Each product has to run like clockwork, no time to try new things, no time to do rework if there are problems. And you'd better have several computers so you can be rendering promos for one product while working on the next. And every one of those ideas which don't require any new techniques has to sell. And if you're working 80-hour weeks to do that instead of 40-hour weeks, your hourly rate gets cut in half.
What if you want to take a vacation?
What if you can't think of an idea?
What if your hard drive crashes? You'd better be backing everything up daily at least, losing a couple of days worth of work isn't an option.
What if you get sick? Your self-employed, you don't get paid sick days or holidays.
Even if you could maintain that pace when everything is running smoothly, a couple of glitches here and there and you're in trouble, because you've got no margin for error.
Out the gate infers the 2 week intro period. This is when a vendor sells the most units (of course, we do have residuals... but sales are strongest during sales and promotions)
And as DG said... if one could release every week. Sadly, that is rarely the case. For example, it takes me a month to do an outfit. I rely on residuals to carry me to the next.
And I guess anyone prolly could. Would they be as successful? Probably not. DAZ is made up of marketing experts, people with degrees, contacts, real world advertisements (as much as online) and they've been in the biz for many years. They have in-house modellers, programmers and such, and probably had a decent startup capital to invest in the biz lol Its not that easy to build up a company like DAZ.
DestinysGarden or anyone can you explain to me what's a likely combination would be ?
Regarding "$1000 a week" - Here is the reality. After each day the sales numbers are halved. So first day is your max total, next day it will sell about half of that, and next day half of that. After those first 3 days sales really taper off and you start getting daily trickles. That is how fast the sales falloff of a product is. In a week, your product is already considered old and is not selling as strong as it's first few days. It will only get a boost again via store discounts or flash sales as a back catalog item later down the line. So xxxx a week is wrong..It's more like xxxx for the first week lol.
And anybody can do what Daz does, but it takes a hell of a lot of resources & talent to do it right. Most just do not have the same amount of manpower, experience, funds and marketing to reach Empire status. Basically what Ignis said...