Congratulations to TurboSquid artist Zivcg, who recently reached the Diamond level at TurboSquid. Although Zivcg has been selling at TurboSquid for quite a while, about six months ago he decided to make a concerted effort to improve his catalog to see how far it would take him. Since then his sales have taken him straight to the top tier of sellers.
I asked Zivcg to share with other artists the keys to his success. “I can sum it up in two obvious factors: quantity and quality,” he said. “But keep in mind is that one unique high-quality product can be worth more to you than 10 ‘regular’ products.”
Below, Zivcg outlines the 6 specific factors he worked with to improve his sales.
- Uniqueness. By now, TurboSquid has a very large collection of models of anything you can think of. When you consider adding a new model, first check what is already available at TurboSquid and see if what you offer is in any way new or different. Perhaps a different design, different textures, or the fact that your model is rigged differently, or ready for other renderers, or has the option to easily edit the colors. Adding similar models with nothing unique about them doesn’t pay off for you, the potential client, TurboSquid, or the competition. Be original and emphasize the advantages your product has to offer.
- Quality. Good, detailed, correctly made models can be priced much higher than other products and still sell more! In each model you publish, make sure you’ve always pushed the detail level to a certain high standard in every aspect (modeling, textures/materials etc.) On the other hand, it is also critical to be efficient on the poly count. High detail level doesn’t have to mean high poly count! Clean topological flow is a big plus for any model, and it’s always a good thing to demonstrate that in your preview images with a wireframe.
- Presentation. This includes smart choice of keywords, good description and full preview images/videos. Make sure your description is not too long (many customers won’t bother reading through many paragraphs of irrelevant information). You should focus your description on what the product has to offer and its selling points (high details, clean topology, clean scene with everything named logically, high res textures, ready for many render engines etc). You should always include many preview images to your product as long as each image shows some different aspects of it and they don’t all look the same. This part is critical for your product so take it seriously and invest your time in making the preview images as if you were making them for your own portfolio. Things like lighting, background color and composition can make the difference even if you wanna sell a soda can. Adding high-resolution preview images and videos can only help too.
- Price. You might think that the lower the price is, the better chances it has for selling, That’s not always true at all. If your model is indeed good, setting a low price could very much create the wrong impression for a potential client and make him think that the price is low for a reason. I’ve personally seen people screen their searches according to “Higher Prices” to find the best models right away, regardless of price. Setting the “right” price can often be tricky. What you should keep in mind is that if you make the price 3X lower than comparable models it doesn’t mean you will sell it 3 times more. Many times the price isn’t the main factor in a sale and you would have sold it at a much higher price anyway, so even if you might sometimes “lose” sales to cheaper products, it is usually better to keep your prices within a reasonable range and not contribute to undercutting the market which makes everyone lose – including yourself.
- Formats. The more file formats your product is available in, the better chance it has to sell.
- Render engines. Much like with the file formats, if you make your model ready to render in several render engines, it can mean the difference between selling or losing the sale to another similar product that supports a render engine you don’t.
Thanks to Zivcg for taking the time to share these great tips, and best of luck to you in your quest to become a top seller!