Blender Market Progress in 2016
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Written by Jonathan Williamson
On June 10th, 2014 we launched the Blender Market. Our aim was to create a platform for selling Blender products, enabling artists and developers to start and grow a business based on Blender.
Two and a half years later we are making good progress towards this goal: providing a viable livelihood for Creators all over the world.
Throughout 2016 our sales numbers improved and the rate of top-notch Creators and products continued to grow. This post is a brief report on our growth.
Progress in 2016
In no particular order, here are some stats on our progress in 2016 compared to 2015.
- The total published products grew to 676 from 403.
- In 2016 we processed 7,489 orders, whereas 2015 had 4,879 orders.
- Revenue grew ~25%, grossing $182,349.64 USD in 2016 compared to $145,020.54 in 2015.
- We paid out $119,880.38 to Creators and the Blender Dev Fund in 2016 while 2015 paid out $91,689.84.
Below is the graph of monthly sales over 2015 and 2016. Only one month in 2016 failed to surpass the previous year, which was due to the 1.2x release of RetopoFlow.
Note: the sum of monthly sales will vary slightly from the reported gross revenue. We track gross revenue via bank transfers, causing an offset in actual values.
In addition to improving numbers, we also made some big changes to the architecture that powers the Blender Market. More specifically, we completely rebuilt the site from the ground up. We switched from using Wordpress and a myriad of plugins to a custom Ruby on Rails site, giving us much more flexibility and control over the experience. This rebuild was sorely needed and a long time coming.
Goals in 2017
With our new architecture running smoothly and solid growth from 2016, we're focused on kicking it up a notch in 2017. There is a lot we want to do with and for the Market, but below are three general goals for this year.
Creator Autonomy
Give Creators more autonomy to not just sell through the market but build a business through it. This includes providing more privileges to proven Creators, enabling them to publish new products and interact with their customers more easily.
Trend Insights
Do more to analyze sales trends and market insight for Creators, giving them the data they need to make informed choices on where their time is best invested. For example, it makes no sense to invest hours of time into a product if there's no chance for that product to sell. We need to do more to help Creators know what kinds of products provide real value to customers.
Break even
To date, the Blender Market has not made a dime of profit. The market is a CG Cookie project and one we believe in whole-heartedly. We have invested quite a sum of money, energy, and a lot of time into making the market a reality. We continue to stand by this.
As we near our 3rd birthday (June 10th) a key goal of 2017 is to break even. We are not in this for the money but the long-term future of the Market depends on it paying for itself, as a viable and sustainable business.
Get involved
Are you interested in selling on the Blender Market, helping to grow the ecosystem for all Creators?
Arnaud Couturier
over 6 years ago
How about letting creators choose the license they feel best suits their needs and interests for their products ;) instead of imposing "freedom" GPL on addons.
Jonathan Williamson
over 6 years ago
Hey Arnaud, separate licenses is something we're open to exploring. The primary reason for pushing the GPL is to put the emphasis, and to encourage more development, of the same freedom-based development that has made Blender so great in the first place.
There's a common argument that the GPL is incompatible with commercial products, which I believe to misguided and wrong. An intention of the Blender Market is to prove that commercial products within a GPL ecosystem are not only viable, but beneficial to the whole ecosystem.
Arnaud Couturier
over 6 years ago
Hi Jonathan. Thank you for your reply, and I've always understood this approach, since Blender itself is under the GPL in the first place, and I am glad it is the case :)
I'm just saying: freedom is about choice, for both users and creators. You have proven GPL addons can be sold, it is more about the philosophical approach to GPL being imposed, which in my humble opinion is a lack of freedom of choice for creators. Perhaps GPL for addons could be encouraged rather than forced?
But anyway, I salute your approach, and also believe you're doing great for the Blender ecosystem as a whole. Keep it up :)
Jonathan Williamson
over 6 years ago
That's a very fair point! To play Devil's Advocate, though, you're never forced to use GPL as you're never forced to sell through the Blender Market.
Regardless, licensing will always be a difficult issue on any market place and one worth constantly revisiting.
Cheers! I hope Scene City is working out well for you; it's great to see the development continuing.
markswaine
over 6 years ago
Hey guys, I'm happy to see things are going better every day. Thanks for your hard work.
One thing I really miss are the comments. Although they were misused to discuss product bugs and features, which I didn't like in particular, I feel they were the type of "casual connection" the customers needed. Contacting me directly seems to be more of a hurdle for customers. I'm not sure how to solve this, I just recognized it.
About the licencing: I've been struggling with that myself in the beginning. I don't have anything against GPL, I just wasn't sure if it fits my product. I put a lot more man-hours into my product than I expected to get paid for. I mean, I get Blender for free and I love it. Still it didn't feel right on my side that someone could just copy my hard work and share it for free without my consent. So I simply left the GPL-paragraph out of my code. In the end my fears weren't justified, my product paid off very well. But I absolutely understand the need of other creators for different licences and support that request, although I'm fine with GPL atm. Keep striving!
Jonathan Williamson
over 6 years ago
This casual connection is important and a tough problem to get right. The previous comments function worked great for this but it also presented major support and pre-sale issues, where the two became very convoluted. For example, the old RetopoFlow product page had upwards of 300 comments on it, yielding lots of casual connections but also making it very difficult to provide adequate support. The line between support, pre-sale questions, and general feedback became very blurry very quickly. Unfortunately this then degraded the experience of all three parts.
I'm not yet convinced that our Inbox solution is a great answer to these problems, but I think it's a step in the right direction.
At the end of the day there needs to be a way for Creators and Customers to interact while also enabling customers (and potential customers) to get direct answers to their questions without having to wade through pages and pages of comments. I'm also thrilled to hear your GPL concerns proved unjust, that's encouraging. It also suggests to me that we need to more to help assuage these concerns for new Creators.
Merlin
over 6 years ago
I agree with artunchained. I needed to create a support ticket today just to tell a creator I really appreciate the latest update they made, as it is amazing.
I understand it can't be a regular comment page as you would end up with a lot of people posting issues on it. (like the ratings atm)
Merlin
over 6 years ago
I am so glad I discovered this place, the plugins I bought here are helping me a lot. I hope we can see this place grow more next year! I will def. let other people know about it.
Jonathan Williamson
over 6 years ago
That's great to hear! There's a lot of updates coming down the pipe so stay tuned!