Everyone wants a (FREE) commercial license

MakerWorld
21

I’m not saying that people are bad, I’m just saying that most people aren’t going to pay you for something that’s free. Those who sell models are a minority, and of those who sell, those who will pay you for the license are another minority.

It’s great that your priority is to do something incredible and inspiring, but at the end of the day, if you don’t receive adequate compensation, you won’t be able to continue designing. We may care more or less, but without money, there is no progress.

As for YouTube, I speak from experience. My channel has over 200k subscribers, more than 1.3 million across various networks. Between them all, in three years, they have generated less than $4,000 for me. Great exposure does not translate into instant profits, and on the part of Maker World, what we all see is a reduction in rewards, not an increase.

The reality is that the creators who generate a lot of money are few and far between, and the rest, with thousands and hundreds of thousands of followers, if they want to make money, have to create a course, a private community, a valuable product, or any other PAYMENT system that generates constant income. Because it’s practically impossible to live off the crumbs of advertising (in the case of Maker World, that would be points and boosts).

1 Like
22

Id would of suggested a full profile photo and description , just with/without a downloadable link , which could only be accessed by subs, but if that is already part of the exclusive program , i can see why some would complain , you should make the request anyway , the community dont make the rules

23

I guess the perspective of each person matters quite a bit. I’m a hobbyist and am creating models because I enjoy it. When I stop enjoying it, It’ll stop doing it :slight_smile:

I’m happier making models available for free for personal use and getting a small number of users who support me with commercial license subscriptions. If that means I get taken advantage of occasionally, that’s still preferable to locking everything behind a paywall.

Once again, I’m just stating what works for me - I don’t expect that to be how everyone approaches it. We’re all free to take our own path!

1 Like
24

About that. I saw this post the other day and meant to reach out to you about it https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GD4reMadh

image

Their entire account showcases a lot of very familiar models. Drilling into the comments or going into their bio links to their website where you can purchase the models. :expressionless:

1 Like
25

I might. Ha. I mean, I’m not unrealistic either. There’s no guarantees with any of this. There’s any number of reasons why it could fall flat, get gimped beyond being anything useful, or whatever.

I like to think I see the glimmer of something amazing, as long as this ship can keep from crashing into any ice-bergs. There’s enough there though, that I don’t just write it off.

This can be true of art focused work in general. In the video game industry, the ones that are paid the big bucks, aren’t as common as all the people just struggling to get by.

I remember once getting a peak at some of my coworkers paychecks, and it shocked me how little they were paid. I remember being up in Washington, and it just shocked me a little bit about how the gangs of artist up there operated and worked. Game production work generally isn’t stable, and doesn’t always pay that well. They formed communities up there where they would go from one company to the next. Really made me realize how fortunate I am with my position.

The reality is, being an artist can be difficult, no matter your medium.

I mean, to succeed on Makerworld, you need to make a product with value too…?

I was being a bit of a knob. If you want to look at the cold hard cash facts though, Makerworld has gone a long ways to compensate my time and efforts. Through hard work I pushed pretty far up that ladder. At some point I made it to the number 2 spot of designers! (I’m not there anymore).

I’m fortunate, but I’m also in this position because I put a lot of hard work into it, backed up by nearly 2 decades of experience in general 3d, and 1 decade of experience in 3d printing.

It’s practically impossible to live off any one given stream of revenue. You think my day job pays for all the things in life? I’ve realized those truly getting ahead usually have a bunch of stuff going on.

It’s something I’ve considered with various youtubers. I think there’s a lot of those guys that are diversifying, and getting more irons in different tires. I think that’s kind of the key to it all. Not leaning on any one thing, but the whole of what you can build up across multiple ventures.

I try. Ha. I’ve actually thought about making some custom Josh-3d merch. I know, that’s a little silly, and maybe I’d only sell one t-shirt, but meh. Why not. These days it’s easy enough to throw one’s branded hat into that ring. On demand printing has made it super simple, after all. There’s other ways I work to diversify, inside and outside of 3d printing.

2 Likes
26

Then bare in mind bambu lab/makerworld have also given users an option to support without the need for either subs/exclusive (boosts)

1 Like
27

Some already did this. Not sure how much traffic they got from MW users.

The overall tune of the complaints feels like entitlement. Success is never guaranteed just because one has put in the efforts. The world, including MakerWorld, doesn’t owe anyone anything,

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image

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I was just joking :smiley: didn’t want to be serious.

30

I agree with you; the best way to obtain stable and consistent income is through diversification, rather than focusing on a single project.

1 Like
31

Exactly – everything is worth exactly what people pay for it.

Here is one how doing well with minimum of skills needed (think he is a hobbiest but ding at least well):

One of the most hardest traded currency on the internet is the “link” or the socalled “Back link” espacally if the link is places on a high ratet Subpage with high traffic. These come in follow and no-follow forms. Then it all comes down to the so-called “web spiders” or “web crawlers.” So the first rule is: get your work listed and make sure it’s unique and damn good. And good is a far away from what most people ever can imagine :wink: YouTube is owned by Google, getting listet there isn`t easy but this what you want to get and actuall still everything all about since if it get liestet there, it get listet everywere…

And just by the way and about Frean’s bottle labeler (on the YouTube account noted) - I was also thinking about drawing one. But you can get them so cheaply on Aliexpress and the suppliers on Europe build there machines so well so they running for decades for millions of buttols over it, so there’s no reason to draw anything :wink: He may can do a littel money with but thats it…

32

jeez, both of you walked uphill to and from school every day too. Even in the blizzards that occurred every winter.

33

I am not against buyung a license. My problem is the monthly fees. Let me pay you a few dollars for the design i want. If i paid ever person $10 a month a i really only want 1 or 2 designs i would go broke. This makes more sense to me.

34

Different thoughts come to mind. Let’s say you get 10 people interested. The standard license is $5. That’s $50 right there. And you got $200? You have 40 people interested. That’s quite a lot if you think about it.

There’s a timing issue. If they asked for the license, they wanted it then, and if you didn’t have it, they already found something else more attractive to sell, and it’s not viable for a seller to get several commercial licenses. They want to focus to maybe 2 or 3.

What about seasonal sales? If you make Halloween models, you may get a handful interested from September to November, and then their membership gets cancelled until next year.

Selling 3d prints has relatively small profits. You must sell high volumes. Not many sellers will hit the jackpot. Most will only earn a few bucks per month. The market is very competitive with everyone selling the same model, and it becomes a race to the bottom in terms of margin. This puts a virtual limit on how many sellers will offer that model. And if you don’t pump out models more frequently, you’ll get “saturated” pretty quickly. Meaning you can’t get more subscribers because all your models have too many sellers already. (And we haven’t even mentioned those who sell without a license).

Anyways… My conclusion is that you have an organic upper limit of subscribers based off how many viral models you can generate.

My suggestion, which I don’t know how feasible it is, is for there to be a commercial license per model. Repeated subscribers can get a discount or something.

For example $5 commercial license to sell model X. If you want to sell model Y you can add it on for $1-2.

If I was a seller, and you had 100 models, I really only care about 3 Max, the rest of your models I wouldn’t care about. So the commercial license working per model should be an OK option. This will help unsaturated your subscribers for every of your models, and instead concentrate it on the models that are actually popular, leaving the door open to bring more subscribers for the less popular models.