Again, this is not extra money. This is an incentive.
If you go for a Thangs, Printables, Patreon or whatever Membership.
This is extra money.
The rewards, are just… nice to have.
To put it in other words.
Your Business Model is flawed and not sustainable.
You need to change your strategy.
Sorry, I can’t let that stand and I’ll tell you why.
In the time I’ve had the X1C, I’ve spent at least €1000 on filament and accessories, if not more. Das Meiste Material ging in Projekte für Makerworld, für Testdrucke, die teilweise 1 Woche pro Modell in Anspruch nahmen. On the other hand, I have redeemed 360€ in gift cards. I recently ordered 4 extra rolls of filament of different colours (about 80€) to create a multi-colour model for Makerworld and show how it looks when printed. So far I have invested about 25 hours in this model. Now this change in the point system and other things related to Makerworld have come up (like flooding with spam uploads), which is why I haven’t pursued this one project any further.
How can something like this be profitable?
I think Makerworld is not a profitable business for many designers, but rather an unprofitable business and, above all, costs their time (because we haven’t even factored that in here).
It’s an interesting thing, because in theory the top end would be an income comparable to what someone could successfully live off of. (as someone pointed out) The full stated value of said gift cards isn’t really fully there though. Makerworld has their own markup, so a 40 dollar purchase really doesn’t fully equate to that. If someone wanted to live off of the gains of those gift cards, they’d also have to go to the additional step of reselling them or goods they got with them.
A capable designer can make more than what Bambu offers in rewards though, and best of all, that’d be real income that could bring in money that can buy actual food.
I think a lot about time vs reward (Not just point rewards, but all the rewards of doing something, like the satisfaction of making something). It does cost me money in a way to sit down and design and all all of that. My time is the most valuable thing I have, afterall, and there are certainly ventures I could focus it towards that’d make more and actual money. The point rewards do help balance that time cost, but it can never be just about the point rewards, because the value of the points alone doesn’t compensate the time fully.
Now that is a YouTube 3D printing channel format I would watch!
I have to say this is the most active post ive seen in a while… I think this whole idea is going to end up like temu groups by people trading points with each others… people will start creating fake accounts to gain multiple boost such as having multiple printers and multiple accounts as you can only gain 1 point per week… so the idea of farmers i guess will be getting multiple account and therefore they will just trade their points ??
Well, they have to either buy printers first or be somehow active as a bot on the site. To my limited knowledge in this field, I think it’ll stop some of them, if not most.
But I’m loving how this change is bringing out the true colors of some in our community 
only time will tell us… but i personally think it wont be as rewarding as it used to be… same with printables back in the days and now day 
but thats just what i think
I think that is exactly what will happen. At least for the active designers and contributors. If boosts are money you try to get the best result. And there are already Trading Groups out there. I will do the same and I think every active user will do so.
You can only hope that normal users that occasionally search for models will spend their points also. But I think that most of the tickets will just expire. And more inactive users who only download/consume will not even get boosts. So we will see how this ends up …
What I foresee coming… (prediction)
China gonna make this into TikTok… designers gonna be asking for users roses 
, cakes 
and corn 
.
True. I also already see the “boost for boost” requests per chat incoming. 
If we’re not careful, It’s all just gonna descend in chaos! Designers will start eating each other to survive!
Man, give some credit to people. Not everyone is on here trying to game the system for points. There will always be people that try and weasel their way ahead, or to bigger gains, but there’s a lot of talented designers that don’t play those games and will continue to contribute to the hobby they love.
You know, like the boost I gave today were to lower key models that I personally like and hope that they get more attention. I also gave to a more established designer which made something I really like. Boost aren’t only going to be given to major players. A lot of popular models will probably get them, sure, but that’s because they’re popular and people like and appreciate those models. They like and appreciate less popular models too though, and will share that same love. To the person giving the boost, it’s not about what’s popular on the platform, it’s about what they personally like.
I understand that you’re upset about the change that happened before you could score a load of gift cards, and it’s going to be even harder for you going forward. But saying things like “China gonna…” is kind of racist, to be honest.
This change is the worst BLab could have made.
I won’t say what my accounts are, but I am a content creator and between all my networks I have over 1.5M followers. It would be extremely easy for me to send a bunch of followers to give me their boots every week, and make a few thousand dollars a week.
This change is lousy. So far I didn’t show a single one of my designs on my networks, and I got about 40k points. With the new Boots system influencers or creators with a large mass of followers can literally scam BLab and it will be completely legal on their part.
100%
These are the people that are in it for the right reasons. The people that are complaining and stomping their feet about the rewards are in it for the wrong reasons. If you’re only in it for the monetary gain then gtfo as there are much better places to monetize your design skill.
The problem is the lack of skills, MW was a place where you can get points for no skills at all, now that’s it’s changing, they’re rightfully upset, because, you know, entitlement 
L take
I agree but it does not have to be reliable to be profitable.
Not even, plus I’m filipino… I’m a minority myself. and what taboo to say the words “China” now? You do understand that’s where everything you’ve purchased from Bambu Labs is coming from correct?
Dude we went back and forth on MakerWorld directly arguing… I’ve seen the work you do and your catering to a following aka trend… That’s not what my company does and therefore is why you grow within this platform…
Where do you stand outside?
Mostly on the ground. I had a step ladder I’d stand on sometimes, but I lost it in the separation. It’s harder to reach higher up things now.
