Are your overall sales down the last two months?

Discussion started by bernhardvanderhorst

Hi guys
I've been growing here on CGTrader for the last 4.5 years and all going well. This year is tough for everyone, with Flipped Normals reporting their overall sales down 17% in 2023, and fellow sellers reporting similar figures or worse. I am about 14% down this year. However - August and September so far has been drastically down on CGTrader - 50% down from even this year's poor performance. Of course we have the holiday season and so on, Summer time in the Northern hemisphere, but I have never seen sales drop this much so quickly two months in a row. How about you guys?

Answers

Posted about 1 year ago
4

Yes. Quite a few members have posted similar complaints, as far back as a few months ago. It’s difficult to say why the sales have ebbed, but many are saying that it is because of a change that CGTrader implemented which coincided with the slower sales. It could be that, but also a number of other factors which are too numerous to mention. CGT has not addressed this, so anything we say would be speculation.

But if you look back to the early history of the forums, there were several complaints about the same thing….way before AI. It could be just a cyclic thing.

TazMan2000 wrote
TazMan2000
I suppose. If you believe in coincidences.
Westman01 wrote
Isn’t there a saying “There are no coincidences.” ?
Posted about 1 year ago
0

Yes that are quite a ton of possible factors. My sales have been growing steadily month-on-month from 2019 up to December 2022. This year of course the cost of living crisis really started to bite. I would guess that is the biggest factor. I track sales on all marketplaces on a daily/monthly/weekly/yearly basis in a by-now very long Google Sheet. But August and September being hugely down is a first for me in all my time selling. I also track the percentage of all-time sales each marketplace is of the pie. Artstation is 64.88%, and has not really dipped much in relative terms. But CGTrader is now dipping for the first time ever to 19% of the pie, from 20%, mainly due to the last two months specifically. Oh well, just curious about others' experience. Seeing as it is out of my control, I don't fret too much about it, and just carry on making and selling stuff.

TazMan2000 wrote
TazMan2000
From 20% to 19%? I think some would envy only that much of a drop.
Posted about 1 year ago
2

Tazman2000 - my point is, it has been at 20% for the last 4.5 years. The last 2 months more than FIFTY percent drop is highly unusual, and something I have not had before - and this alone has caused that drop.

TazMan2000 wrote
TazMan2000
When you put it that way, a 50% drop is of great concern. Out of curiosity, has anyone here addressed the concern with the administrators of the site? We're their vendors...shouldn't we have some sort of input? I know there have been a lot of posts recently regarding the change. Is this an experiment, or is this change here to stay? Or perhaps this has nothing to do with the change. Perhaps this is just a blip.
bernhardvanderhorst wrote
bernhardvanderhorst
Yeah, it is weird, being the only marketplace that is down THAT much, whereas the others are all roughly equally down, which leads me to believe something is very wrong at CGt. It may very well be a blip as you say. I have emailed support about this a month or so back. I just looked for the response(s) but cannot find it sorry. I think she stated that the new changes should not have affected sales, and that the reason August was down was due to significant website slowdown, which has since been fixed. But That was back at the end of August, yet no change in sales.
bernhardvanderhorst wrote
bernhardvanderhorst
I just looked at my lifetime graph. Up and down but stable the last year, But complete nosedive into the ground from beginning August. I am emailing support again, this is crazy.
TazMan2000 wrote
TazMan2000
I'm not a big seller here, but I have noticed a dramatic drop in sales as well...that managed to be right about the time that change came in. I'm hoping this is temporary. Summer may have had a lull, since many customers may have diverted funds to vacation, then back to school. I'm hoping October to November for things to pick up. If not...not much I can do. Perhaps find another website to market my designs...which I should do anyway.
bernhardvanderhorst wrote
bernhardvanderhorst
It does seem to be site-wide. Let's hope it is indeed temporary as this is my second-biggest site for selling income. I have emailed support and am very curious as to what they will say, with graphs from my Dashboard clearly showing a pretty sharp dive suddenly.
Posted about 1 year ago
2

So my main point is, there is something wrong here at CGTrader with this extreme 50%+ sudden drop for two months straight now, for the first time, in 4.5 years of nice n solid growth, as the other 4 marketplaces I trade on have also dropped, but have kept the same percentage of the 100% pie, CGTrader has not.

madefun3d wrote
It is indeed weird that if the whole 3D market is crashing Cgtrader does in a different percentage...
Posted about 1 year ago
2

I've been a purchaser of models on CGTrader for about 5 or 6 years now. I maybe buy 1 every two months depending on the project I'm working on. Always found the purchasing process to work well with no issues. However this week I have been unable to purchase anything as I keep getting a refused error. I'm also having issues with logging in. I'm not looking for a resolution here I just thought this might be relevant to this topic if other purchasers are having the same issues. I have contacted Support but an still awaiting a response.

TazMan2000 wrote
TazMan2000
A good possibility. There have been a lot of posts here complaining about the same thing. If a customer can't buy something at an online store, they will most likely either buy it someplace else or not buy it at all.
Posted about 1 year ago
0

I'm going through the same thing, before my sales on cgtrader were always higher than turbosquid, but the last few months it's been the opposite, there was only one sale every month in July and August, and no sales so far in September Sale

Posted about 1 year ago
0

i am worried too..I am struggling since april 2023.I knew something happened after new AI search feature..or its a market slowdown...Or my models is a bite higher price....But i have tried everything..nothing is working right now..its blank....i sell jewelry and some cg stuff...How its possible that both the industry suffer same drop??at the same time???its really a super massive black hole...cant escape this hole in the near future...its a sudden drop after april month...dont knw why???

Posted about 1 year ago
0

Last month wasn't too bad, but the early summer months weren't great. This month is ok so far but slower than August.

Posted about 1 year ago
1

As I shared in other thread, my sales have been in a downward trend since about one year ago, being more noticeable in the first months of 2023 and onwards, as others have noted. To the point where I am projecting this year I will be earning about 45% less than 2022. This, after 6 years of constant growth, which is really worrying.

I don't think the changes in the search engine are the problem, at least not in my case, since my models still appear on the first results of the searches.

I think it is the global economic uncertainty, inflation and recession finally catching up to us, people are just less likely to buy silly 3d models when they think they better save that money for the hard times to come. I myself am restraining from buying many non essential things... THE END IS NEAR!!! lol >D

Posted about 1 year ago
0

I am not a regular modeler here. Last year I posted 12 models and had 1 sale. This year I kept on posting models. I had sales increase this summer. 1 sale in June, 1 sale in July by higher price, 4 sales in August. I thought, that I can have sales increase by posting new models. This month I posted 4 models, however had 0 income for this month. I don't know if my case can provide accurate statistics, but I started to believe that I can get some dollars each month.

Posted about 1 year ago
7

Not sure if it's related to recent sales slow down, but if you have published new models recently, you may notice that there's something odd going on. Usually when you publish new model, it appears somewhere near the top of your own feed and then depending on how it performs, it may stay there for a while, or gradually sink towards the middle of your models pack. This behaviour has changed since couple months, now whenever you publish new model, it is placed right at the very bottom of your page and it stays there no matter what. It is also true that newly published models now attracts dramatically less views that they used few months ago, so i assume that they are also appearing at the bottom of the search results when viewed by customers. Needless to say that it's almost impossible to get any meaningful sales when your models are out of sight of potential buyers.

I've been neglecting publishing of new models for a few years, but recently decided to update my shop. I'm putting significantly more effort in producing new models, i'm making them better than i ever did, but it's very hard to keep motivated when you see how situation in cgtrader is degrading month after month.

Abelian wrote
Abelian
What do you mean under "your own feed"?
LemonadeCG wrote
LemonadeCG
@abel-x, i mean your models page: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models?author=YOUR_NAME
AKS-3d-art wrote
AKS-3d-art
hiii Lemonade...thats exactly what i posted few days back in the forum..the new search engine and also publishing mechanism is something i am not able to understand....if you type anything for example cartoon character....there are lot of things which is not related to cartoon is visible on the front page of the site...like realistic shoes,realistic clothes..even environment too..i am sure cgtrader may be knowing this and currently working on this search engine problem..lets hope it will be rectified soon...thats why views are less as compared to earlier...where very specific models appeared when we searched a particular model..now if you type even two or three words...15000 plus model appears right away...even customer may be facing problems finding there specific model which they are looking for....see the example below..I typed cartoon old men...and what are the things coming there... https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models?keywords=cartoon+old+men ......we can clearly see jewelris,realistic young women,environments,etc....this is flooding the search with lot of models...
LemonadeCG wrote
LemonadeCG
@AKS-3d-art, i don't think it's exactly the same. Search was always the weakest link in cgtrader, it always has the tendency to show tons of irrelevant results and promote completely unrelated products on first pages. It's just after all that AI shenanigans the search become even worse. Which is a shame of course, but has little to do with the issue that i brought in my previous message. It's something that was working fine until recently, but now is broken like many things here.
Abelian wrote
Abelian
@LemonadeCG but is that connected to general search field results? I don't see any connection between your models list and search results. I searched my models several times and they are placed in normal way according to search parameters.
LemonadeCG wrote
LemonadeCG
@abel-x, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, we don't know. Since it seems that cgtrader took the vow of silence, we are left by ourselves to figure out roots of the problem. Maybe my theory is built on wrong assumptions, but i think that poking at things and looking what comes out of it is still better than doing nothing but crying out loud.
Posted about 1 year ago
0

My situation in all this is:
Sales decreased by 35% in 2023 from last year.
New models don't get views, it was great when new models appeared in trending models, sometimes when upload a model after 1h was sale, but now last 100 models don't have any sales. And if i take last uploaded 200 models, there is 6 sales.
Now Trending models like frozen, there same models all time. Who got there with good models must be happy :)

LemonadeCG wrote
LemonadeCG
You should report this to cgtrader. The more people will complain, the more chances that they will do something about it, instead sitting on their hands and watching how their site is falling apart.
HQ3DMOD wrote
HQ3DMOD
Ohh they know all this, such big company have lots people checking traffic and sales and other stuff. Maybe they have other projects more important than this.
Posted about 1 year ago
2

This month so far nothing short of catastrophic. If this month's average carries on like it has the last 11 days, I'd be 75% down from This year's average (excluding August and September, when the sudden downward trend started, and also when their new algorithm or point system started. It is 85% down from last year's monthly average, this month. Something is seriously wrong, after 4 years of consistent growth.

bernhardvanderhorst wrote
bernhardvanderhorst
And it is weird - as many of my products often feature on the front page in sales etc. Also when searching relevant keywords, my models come up pretty quick. Weird. I'm thinking perhaps a great portion of people switched to Artstation, which to me is the slickest marketplace with the best features. I have no idea, just pulling stuff out of my ass.

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