A client sent me a link to an amazon page, full of A.I generated 3d models of weird animals mixed with things. wanting me to do something similar. I told them to get on maker world and do it your self with their a.i tools. I did promise to print anything they come up with so we’ll see.
It’s a mix of quality, need, speed of print, lottery, niche and bias towards the super popular creators.
I’m kinda weird, I stopped looking at suggested models because it kinda makes me want to iterate rather than create original stuff. I made a thing that stops a vacuum robot from riding over a folding clothing rack, which is a perfect example of a simple print that people in Europe need. United States, not so much.
I also made a super intricate board game, that made me use Pi and some intricate interlocking stuff for the year of the snake contest, 5 days of design and various prototyping. It was 4th place!.. and didn’t even break 10 downloads.
So basically, you’re probably not doing anything wrong. It’s 80% luck and algorithm in my experience, so all you can do is focus on niche and necessity.
You wanna farm points easy mode? Spew optimized Ai slop and copy other successful models. Being original can pay off extremely well, but more than likely, will not.
It’s seems like it’s really hit and miss. I’ve run across some extremely cool and detailed models that had only a handful of downloads and had been uploaded months ago. It’s a shame because I know those probably took a very long time to make. And then a lot of this AI slop gets tons of downloads.
I’ve made a few things that I thought were pretty cool, but they didn’t do well, only to have someone else do something similar a month later and get thousands of downloads. lol
But I have gotten really successful with a number of models too though. My biggest surprise success was the Socket Buddy. I think that little socket was a big part of the reason why the flexi leg models were so prevalent 6 months ago.
Keep it up though, it took a bit for me to find my groove, I’m sure you will too.