This is getting to be a little bit excessive, isn't it?
Thank you for explaining more, LemonadeCG. What is the point in participating in a site where there is a massive discount sale every single week? Essentially, this says to all customers that most of the products the site offers will ALWAYS be half their advertised price, or even just a third of their advertised price. If they aren't priced that way today, just wait until tomorrow. In effect, CGTrader, starting three months ago, just devalued their entire inventory of products by half. This means for all of us. I wonder how many of us vendors have given thought to this. ........ So, looking forward, this new practice of CGTrader creates maybe some confusion, but certainly imposes a new, rather significant "opportunity cost" on the business of making and publishing 3d models and tools. If I know, as I do now, that CGTrader will regularly price my models for half of what I believe to be their fair value, should I adapt to the constant sales by simply pricing them higher so that I receive a fair return? For the long term- this is a poor advertising strategy for any vendor who works on the basis of establishing a good reputation (as any vendor who is in the business for the long-term surely tries to do). That is, all my models now must be priced too high. Most purchasers of models probably have a good idea of what a model of reasonable complexity and artistry should cost. So, my regularly advertised price is always going to have to be much more than the model is rally worth. Not good - and my professional reputation suffers. ... Also, for those of us long-term professionals, the CGTrader practice results - over time - in creating a broader differential between our good, well-made models and those that look similar, but are priced more cheaply and are more poorly made. Our models are consistently priced higher, driving the bulk of naive buyers to purchase the cheaper models often made by more transitory vendors. OK, my simplistic strategy of just doubling the cost of my models doesn't really work well. So, maybe, I consider a strategy of making constant adjustments to the price of my models so that I continue to receive a return commensurate with the costs to me of making and publishing them. However, this is the new "opportunity cost" just added to the expense of building models in the first place. Is this reasonable? Already, I bear the costs of software, hardware, research, constant self-tutoring to keep up with changes in technology and the need to continually expand my skills, plus the normal time and effort investments. So, if I am business-minded, my best bet is to simply move my products to another brokering site that has stable pricing and vending policies - policies based on occasional sale periods.
So, as you can see, I have at least a basic education in economics. But, I don't understand this new change in CGTrader's sales policy. The nearest competitor, Squid, has just attempted to protect their location in the marketplace by simultaneously continuing to offer their best vendors only 40% of the sale price, but making it significantly easier and less time-consuming (i.e., less-costly) to "publish" a model. The price differential between typical models offered by Squid and by CGTrader continues to grow - similar models are significantly cheaper on CGTrader. So, this is kind of an economically strange move. - to substantially devalue the entire inventory, and at the same time, impose new opportunity costs on the vendors that provide that inventory. ..... I can understand attempts to re-price some of the inventory - a lot of the old models are surely too expensive by Today's standards. But, a better way to re-price the old inventory would be to contact the vendors and ask them to re-price their old models. Or to arbitrarily reduce the prices of really old models across the board. Maybe using some arbitrary date - all models published before the year 2010 should go to half-price, maybe. ..... Anyhow, I just don't understand this.
My guess is, CGT is just trying to reanimate the dying market... It's already dead for me and I see zero sense in making new models for sale.
The undervaluing that is going on for years has already hit the bottom and it looks like as a result the customers had developed an understanding that 3d models are a cheap commodity and all should be priced max $20 no matter how complex or high quality they are.
Everybody is seeing the consequences of that already and it's not only on CGT. The whole market is royally f...ed and I'm not sure that's fixable now.
Principally someone could go this mainstream way on CGT and price a model at $20 in order to get that $10 when enabling 50% permanently, and according to my observation, the very most vendors do so, above all when you look at the first pages, or at most selling products. However, it is a very complicated thing, because most of us have also accounts on another marketplaces, and there, permanent sales are not allowed, or possible. You can´t simply enable "permanent 50% off" on Sketchfab, and even not on RenderHub. So when a buyer checks the item price on CGT with 20 bucks down to 10 bucks, and he views the same item on Sketchfab at 10 bucks (without discount), he probably is pissed off. It looks like fraud, scam or at least quite nasty.
So... it seems (I know Lemonade won´t agree with me, but it´s still my observation) all marketplaces do something or don´t something in order to keep a totally UNcompilance and UNharmony with other marketplaces, to all costs. But this makes the vendor´s life even harder.
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