I hope this isn’t a taboo topic here, but y’all are my people and I figure someone might have some advice: I’ve been approached by a couple of users on MW and Reddit about licensing some of my lamps for commercial use, these lamps are doing horribly on MW lol, probably because they are very niche I’m assuming. But what methods have y’all found that are trustworthy and a good way to sell for commercial use? It would be great if Maker World had a subscription or paid model marketplace but until they do, not sure what to do.
Thoughts??
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I received around a dozen requests for a Patreon commercial licence for my models a week.
I added one. It appears people are less interested in signing up for it than they were asking me to agree to create one.
It appears Patreon is a common way to allow people to license your work…
You set the terms, decide an amount subscribers pay monthly and they are allowed to print and sell your models (never give the source files or allow then the right to do anything with them or the 3MF & STLs) and hope honest people pay.
As you have likely spotted, there are far more thieves than honest people given the stories on here.
You need a way to differentiate those who license your work from those who stoke it. Require they add something to the listing that makes it clear to you they are legitimate and you can tie those sales to a valid subscription.
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This is what I struggle with. Do you have any suggestions?
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You mean where I gave a suggestion?
If they wrote “Model by BMD” in their listing, it wouldn’t jump out to their audience they are 
and need other people to do their work for them because they can’t design, and if you stumble across the listing you know it is legitimate as you can look up the email address against the company name and see if there is a match in Patreon. Now you know that seller is legit or the location it is is being sold is legitimate.
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Yeah, your suggestion didn’t make sense to me. So I was really just asking for clarification.
If it is a standard thing to add to the posting, someone could just copy it and look legitimate. I meant do you give each user a unique code or something? But then if someone copies their listing they still have it…
I was thinking about requesting that each member give me the specifics of where they are selling, so if it isn’t on my list it gets reported.
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As I mentioned, you cross reference the company name against the email address.
If you find a model listed on a website you haven’t noticed before called Acme.com and they have the tag, you look up your Patreon for an email address like.
If they are a seller on Etsy, and they have a shop name called RoadRunner and they have the tag, you look up your Patreon for an email address like.
Now you don’t need to worry about those.
Unique IDs sounds great, but, managing them and trying to issue them isn’t easy. If you get someone reach out to you, that is one thing, if they just sign up to Patreon that is another matter entirely.
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Unless you do your homework (due diligence) to determine which business/distribution model suits your needs best, and ensuring a secured revenue flow, you should not launch yourself yet. As for keeping track of your sales, one way would be to include inside or on the bottom of your models an identifiable “trademark” (say a small logo followed by one or two letters and a 3 or 4 figures number, where the letters identify the model and the numbers refer to the buyer. e.g. WW1724, meaning Wonder Woman and 1724 is “1” version number and the rest is the client identifier). Make sure the files are securely protected against unauthorised changes, and hope you get to sell enough models to use all 4 digits.
Obviously, this could be adapted or you could come up with your own approach. The above is but a suggestion. Your models, your work, your call.
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