Hello all!
Greetings! While I have been modelling for a solid 8 years now, both hobbyist and professionally, I only recently joined makerworld about a month ago. While I have been posting models and joining contests, i noticed something that i feel could be improved.
Consistently, I see an average variety of top-lister profiles all the time. While it’s great that they get the recognition they deserve for such awesome models, I do wonder if bambulabs makerworld could give more support for budding or not very popular modellers out there as I feel they would inject more variations of models in the popular zone.
I’m not saying the top-lister models are bad, but I feel that more could be done to help new modellers become more popular rather than “perfect” models all the time everywhere. Some things that could be done are:
- Contests or even better, contest categories for less popular models under a certain view/download count. For example, for every “Tank” contest that is held, there could be another set of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners for “Under 30 downloads” or something like that
- Could we also have a featured “Not Yet Popular” panel on the home screen? Like the featured panel, but for the best not very popular models say, every week.
- We could also maybe trade points in for self boosts: or a spot on the home page, even!
I’m still thinking of more ways to help not yet popular modellers get more connected, but feel free to share more of your own ideas. Although some might argue that being popular is not the point of makerworld, I feel that that is exactly the main driver to encourage people to post their builds and models to the world and not just keep in in their computer files
What do you think?
I am relatively new here as well and I have observed the following which may be helpful
- Contests are the best way to get visibility on your models. It’s still definitely possible to have a popular model outside of a contest, but I’ve had the most luck with models that I entered into contests.
- Unique and novel models will do better than yet another model which there are already many options on makerworld. For example adding yet another fidget spinner probably won’t get much visibility unless it is unique in some way.
- Time and effort spent on a model does not necessarily translate into popularity. If it’s not something that people are looking to print then it’s just not going to be popular no matter how much effort you spent on it.
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Hmm, that sounds like good advice. But in contests, I’ve only managed to get the sparse few likes though. Winning one would definitely be a different matter though!
I try to make original models as much as I can, but how do I gauge whether it is something that people are going to print? For context, I design armoured vehicle models, and although Bambulabs has mentioned to refrain from making few-gram models (which i find controversial coming from a model sharing platform), if not few gram, then what do I make? 3 kilogram prints?
Thanks for your advice and feel free anyone to chip in!
Contests aren’t a guarantee by any means that your model will catch on, but they help especially if you enter the contest in the first day or two before there are a ton of models.
In the creator center in makerworld you can see what searches are trending. If your primary goal is to gain points and gain visibility this should be your focus.
Ultimately though there’s no certain way besides just keep adding more models that you think people will like, stay ahead of seasonal trends, etc.
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