Avoid These 6 Mistakes to Boost Sales for Blender Creators
If you’re considering launching a Blender product, you may be thinking what you can to do to give your content the best opportunity for a positive impact to the community and sales.
After reviewing tends of thousands of products on the Superhive (formerly Blender Market) over the last nine years, there are a few common mistakes I see creators make when they first start selling; from not understanding GPL licensing, product page organization, supporting customers to simply being to new to all of this.
In this article, I'll outline the six key factors you should keep in mind to ensure a successful product launch in the market.
1) Not following the market’s guidelines for uploading products
You want your product to look it’s best for customers when they visit the site, this is why we put together our General Product Guidelines for Uploading Products based on our experiences of selling products ourselves and helping thousands of Blender creators.
There are a few minimum requirements for putting forth a good-looking product for your potential customers.
- Ensure it works within Blender,
- Pack textures and internal files,
- Models must be render ready,
- Upload at last five product images,
- Add-ons require installation instructions
Read more about the upload requirements to the Superhive (formerly Blender Market).
Following these guidelines will not only result in fewer rejections, but will help set your product for its introduction to the Blender community!
Here are a couple example products that did this very well.
2) Not considering what you’re building as a viable commercial product
Most commercial products are created out of doing something fun, or scratching our own itch. Though, what you create for you, may not translate into a commercial product and all that comes with it.
Make sure to put some time into thinking about what would make a good commercial product.
Generally, more generic, multiuse products that solve a problem or improve a workflow tend to sell better here on the Superhive (formerly Blender Market).
Here are a few creators that really understand making great commercial products.
3) Not following GPL compliance (Add-ons)
All add-ons created with Blender must be licensed under the GPL (or MIT) and follow the GPL guidelines. Jason over at Orange Turbine has created a fantastic blog post on just this topic. How to Make Your Blender Add-on GPL-Compliant. Make sure to give it a read and understand it before you submit your next add-on.
4) Not spending enough time on your product page
I think many new creators get so excited to post their new product to the world that they can often overlook the importance of a nice looking product page. Your product page is the landing page for your product, make sure to spend the time making great featured images, for either products or add-ons.
Also, don’t overlook the importance of a well crafted product title and product description.
Clear, concise information is always more attractive than a thrown together product page. So make sure you take the time to make every aspect of your product page stand out to your potential customers.
Here are some examples of wonderfully created and informative product pages.
5) Not providing documentation and/or tutorial
Providing thorough documentation on how to use your model, add-on and geonode setup is a vital step in the selling process. No matter how easy you think it is to use your product, having in-depth documentation is ultimately helpful to the customer, and great for SEO.
Take your product one step further and add a tutorial of how to exactly use your product. This will solve many support questions before they reach you. Saving you time, headaches and ultimately money in the long run.
6) Not promoting their products
I think many creators, new and veteran creators alike, still think that if they create a product, the customers will come breaking down their door for the new product. This is typically not the case unless your Aidy and Gleb of Creative Shrimp, though even they had to start somewhere. Creating a product is just one step in the process of selling products, arguable the easiest. You need an audience for your product, and now is as good as anytime to start building that audience. Don’t create your products in a vacuum, share your work, get input from other Blender users, start a Discord community, share on whatever platform you prefer, but starting to inform users of your coming product is one great way to promote your products.
There are many ways to promote your product, I cover a bunch of them in this blog post, Tips for Promoting Your Products.The main takeaway from that article is to get your products in front of as many eyes as you are able too, by whatever ethical means you see fit.
Considering selling what you’ve created with Blender or for the Blender community? Become a creator on the Superhive (formerly Blender Market) today.