Hello. I'm a professional texture artist. I've spent months making a set of 450 high quality, 256x256 textures that I want to sell. I will start building my website soon, but I can't decide a price for the collection. I've heard that the people here are experts, so maybe you can help me out. I need to decide on a price.

Well, professionals would do a google search for similar products ;)

If you're going to sell over the 'net, you may as well make good use of it. Instead of selling the collection as a whole, why not place thumbnails and descriptions of each texture online and offer punters the option of purchasing individual textures? You could provide discounts according to how many textures are in the 'shopping cart'.

Offering themed collections on CD-R (or, hell, DVD-R!) should be considered, but I'd research this before you take this route. (On the other hand, it is a useful way to show your creativity in areas like packaging design.) You may find it easier and more popular to package textures together thematically in an archived file format such as RAR or ZIP and offer these for download alongside the individual textures.

As for costs: that depends on your choice of ISP, bandwidth requirements and e-sales technology. (In the UK, I'd recommend a pro-quality ISP like 1&1 Internet, who have their own e-Shop package that integrates with NetObjects Fusion 8.)

Consider your own production costs and living expenses as well as your intended market before settling on a price. It's unlikely you'll make many sales to professional developers, although some smaller outfits may choose to buy your textures if they're a good fit for their project -- it's a rare businessman who chooses to reinvent a wheel when he doesn't need to, especially in this age of middleware.

You should also consider the licensing aspects. A 2D texture is just an image file and these are, unfortunately, spectacularly easy to duplicate. You'll need to keep on cranking out content if you want people to keep coming back; once you've released a texture, there's precious little to prevent people using it for whatever they damned well please.

This is NOT, however, an excuse for draconian EULAs and the like. The trick is to just accept that this will happen and plan your business accordingly. A monthly subscription model with higher prices for higher resolution textures, for instance, may prove more useful than a per-texture pricing system.

I suspect your main customers will likely be in the "indie" development field initially, as well as amateur developers looking to break into the industry, but lacking an artist to provide pro-quality content. However, you shouldn't ignore other media: Games aren't the only products that use 3D graphics and textures. You may end up seeing your textures used in other media, such as television and maybe even movies. Bear this in mind when deciding on which resolutions to offer your textures in.

Remember that you're not creating a product, you're offering a *service*. This is quite possibly the single most important point to remember and one to keep repeating to yourself. Consider what your site *enables* your customers to do. It will be seen as offering to save them both *time* and *money*. If you want to charge $1K per texture, feel free, but you probably won't get (m)any sales; you can hire an artist for a month for that. Longer, if they're still in art college!

In other words, your site will probably not pay much initially, but as you build up your collection and user base, you should find the flow of money increasing rapidly.

As for specifics about pricing, this is difficult. I've no idea how good you are at it and there are existing sites that offer textures and other content. Look at your rivals, research their content and pricing, then consider how you can make your site stand out. For instance, you may want to consider finding a fellow professional willing to sell 3D models through your site. And why stop there? Textures are, fundamentally, 2D art. Why not offer other forms of 2D game content too? (Look at the sales of mobile phone games if you want a good reason why!)

Finally, if you do go for a subscription model, make sure you give people a good reason to keep on paying those monthly dues. If the new content stops coming, so will the money. It's a good idea to have a couple of months' worth of updates available at all times so that you have some leeway if you should fall ill or decide to go on holiday.

Regards,

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

Quote:

Original post by stimarco If you're going to sell over the 'net, you may as well make good use of it. Instead of selling the collection as a whole, why not place thumbnails and descriptions of each texture online and offer punters the option of purchasing individual textures? You could provide discounts according to how many textures are in the 'shopping cart'. Offering themed collections on CD-R (or, hell, DVD-R!) should be considered, but I'd research this before you take this route. (On the other hand, it is a useful way to show your creativity in areas like packaging design.) You may find it easier and more popular to package textures together thematically in an archived file format such as RAR or ZIP and offer these for download alongside the individual textures. As for costs: that depends on your choice of ISP, bandwidth requirements and e-sales technology. (In the UK, I'd recommend a pro-quality ISP like 1&1 Internet, who have their own e-Shop package that integrates with NetObjects Fusion 8.) Consider your own production costs and living expenses as well as your intended market before settling on a price. It's unlikely you'll make many sales to professional developers, although some smaller outfits may choose to buy your textures if they're a good fit for their project -- it's a rare businessman who chooses to reinvent a wheel when he doesn't need to, especially in this age of middleware. You should also consider the licensing aspects. A 2D texture is just an image file and these are, unfortunately, spectacularly easy to duplicate. You'll need to keep on cranking out content if you want people to keep coming back; once you've released a texture, there's precious little to prevent people using it for whatever they damned well please. This is NOT, however, an excuse for draconian EULAs and the like. The trick is to just accept that this will happen and plan your business accordingly. A monthly subscription model with higher prices for higher resolution textures, for instance, may prove more useful than a per-texture pricing system. I suspect your main customers will likely be in the "indie" development field initially, as well as amateur developers looking to break into the industry, but lacking an artist to provide pro-quality content. However, you shouldn't ignore other media: Games aren't the only products that use 3D graphics and textures. You may end up seeing your textures used in other media, such as television and maybe even movies. Bear this in mind when deciding on which resolutions to offer your textures in. Remember that you're not creating a product, you're offering a *service*. This is quite possibly the single most important point to remember and one to keep repeating to yourself. Consider what your site *enables* your customers to do. It will be seen as offering to save them both *time* and *money*. If you want to charge $1K per texture, feel free, but you probably won't get (m)any sales; you can hire an artist for a month for that. Longer, if they're still in art college! In other words, your site will probably not pay much initially, but as you build up your collection and user base, you should find the flow of money increasing rapidly. As for specifics about pricing, this is difficult. I've no idea how good you are at it and there are existing sites that offer textures and other content. Look at your rivals, research their content and pricing, then consider how you can make your site stand out. For instance, you may want to consider finding a fellow professional willing to sell 3D models through your site. And why stop there? Textures are, fundamentally, 2D art. Why not offer other forms of 2D game content too? (Look at the sales of mobile phone games if you want a good reason why!) Finally, if you do go for a subscription model, make sure you give people a good reason to keep on paying those monthly dues. If the new content stops coming, so will the money. It's a good idea to have a couple of months' worth of updates available at all times so that you have some leeway if you should fall ill or decide to go on holiday. Regards, -- Sean Timarco Baggaley

Thanks, you've given me a lot to think about. I'll probably sell my textures in a set though. I don't expect to become a large corporation or anything, I just want to sell my professional textures to indies and programmers. About the licenses, graphics are stolen, but registration security and licenses can cut it down. Most graphics rippers are afraid of companies that are willing to sue. You don't see Microsoft getting ripped off much.