The thing I’ve found in my several years of trying to sell stuff… the first weekend pretty much tells the story about how sales are going to go. Roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of all the sales I’m ever going to have for an item happen within the first week, and the bulk of those during the first weekend. I was hoping for forty buyers of the CAD drawings. I got 4. The idea would seem to not warrant any further effort. Remaining grasping-at-straws notions include selling them as digital drawings, and selling them aimed specifically at modelers, with the drawings resized for standard scales, perhaps with several versions of the same drawing on the same sheet, but at different scales (1/144, 1/72, 1/48, etc) . That seems like a pretty dry hole too, though.
Anybody have any ideas, I’m open to suggestions.
7 Responses to “About the “CAD prints” idea…”
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For what very little it may be worth, the ones I wanted were Orion, Icarus/ROMBUS, and A-4/11/12. Of course, my tastes are probably even more niche-y than most and probably not capable of sustaining a market, so my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it.
Also, I am sure this *has* to be a stupid question, but is there a reason that the top of the APR page is still featuring V2N5, released 12/6/09, when I clearly have V2N6 already on my HD since 6/4/10?
Anyway, sorry to hear the prints aren’t working out. I did however send you an order for some other older stuff that I inexcusably hadn’t bought yet.
Well, if it makes you feel better I just sent the money to order the BWB print.
I said that would probably be the first thing I’d buy from you and as it turns out it was.
That’s gotta be worth something right?
I tried giving away free 3d CAD models ready to print or SLA, gave them links to several free programs that could be used to view and create your own models, did a tutorial on how to build a Mercury Redstone model in 3D using Rhino and still no one that I know of was really interested or took advantage of what I was doing. I couldn’t give the stuff away!
Even the real mainstream stuff like the large Apollo prints, XB-70 and X-15’s will only reach a limited market here. Have you tried ebay?
That’s depressing news. I think they’re awesome and have bought two. Not sure how to goose the demand but I agree with the eBay thought. I definitely don’t think you should cut the price though, it’s a small sum for a very nice product.
1) I’ve put together ZIP files with both high-rez (300dpi) grayscale GIF versions and PDF versions. Irritatingly, AutoCAD would only save them as 8.5X11 PDFs, and Adobe wouldn’t read the DWG files at all, so I had to walk it through a few extraneous steps to get ’em to save as full-D-size PDFs. But they’re done and they seem to be just fine. I had not wanted to do these electronically, given how easy they would be to crib/steal/whatever, but I guess it’s better than that have them sit here and never sell. Should have them available in a day or so.
2) If the electronic versions sell, I’ll make more, and continue to offer ’em both ways.
3) If I can find physical outlets (booths at air/model shows, that sort of thing) maybe the physical versions would sell better, dunno.
> That’s depressing news.
Have I had any other kind since 2010 started?
> Have you tried ebay?
No, but as it seems I have some spare stock, I’ll try ’em there. After I get the main website updated.
> is there a reason that the top of the APR page is still featuring V2N5
Yes. I release V2N6 prior to getting the page updated… and just never got around to it. Adding a blog post is easy. Updated HTML coding is an annoying pain in the ass of a process.
For me the problem with paper prints is that they would only lay rolled up in a closet, collecting dust. A digital image I can use for 3D modelling purposes.
Fact is, our market is depressingly small. Four sales seems lousy, but you actually sold more prints in your first week than I did when my aviation art first became available! Years later it is still going very slow.