Creative Pirate
by Chuck Thomas · in General Discussion · 03/25/2003 (10:24 am) · 10 replies
Just wanted to let everyone here know about a new site I've been working on for the past few months called Creative Pirate. It's a site where you can sell your creative digital assets online. The types of assets that can be sold on the site are textures, shaders, 3d models, audio, plugins, software, motion capture, vector art, backgrounds, photography and illustrations.
www.creativepirate.com
Creative Pirate has only been online for a few days now and we are just looking for people who would like to upload and sell their products. We have not yet started our PR or advertising, we are waiting for more content to be available for purchase on the site before we begin that. So just keep in mind that if you visit the site and don't see very many products it's because we just launched.
For game developers, Creative Pirate could be a good place to "part out" assets you've created for your games to help generate a little extra income. You can also sell your games on the site if you'd like, although the target market is more for creative professionals who can use the products in advertisements, presentations, games, etc. So until the site gets going I'm not really sure what kind of market there will be for selling games. I personally would like to see a nice selection of indie games for sale on the site though.
Creative Pirate is a little different from other sites out there like it. We are an open marketplace that allows anyone to upload and sell their products, but we only accept high quality products that are suitable for commercial applications, this keeps consumers from having to filter through low quality or useless products. Products that don't meet our quality requirements will be declined. We allow the artists to control their own inventory and pricing, we will not alter prices set by the artist. It's free to upload products to the site, and when a product sells the artist gets 70% and we keep 30% of the product's price.
We would love feedback of any kind from anyone who visits Creative Pirate, positive or negative. We want to create a high quality and fair marketplace for everyone involved and if you have any suggestions or comments we'd love to hear them. This is the time for us to make adjustments to the site since it is still new and not officially launched.
Thanks,
Chuck Thomas
Creative Pirate
http://www.creativepirate.com
www.creativepirate.com
Creative Pirate has only been online for a few days now and we are just looking for people who would like to upload and sell their products. We have not yet started our PR or advertising, we are waiting for more content to be available for purchase on the site before we begin that. So just keep in mind that if you visit the site and don't see very many products it's because we just launched.
For game developers, Creative Pirate could be a good place to "part out" assets you've created for your games to help generate a little extra income. You can also sell your games on the site if you'd like, although the target market is more for creative professionals who can use the products in advertisements, presentations, games, etc. So until the site gets going I'm not really sure what kind of market there will be for selling games. I personally would like to see a nice selection of indie games for sale on the site though.
Creative Pirate is a little different from other sites out there like it. We are an open marketplace that allows anyone to upload and sell their products, but we only accept high quality products that are suitable for commercial applications, this keeps consumers from having to filter through low quality or useless products. Products that don't meet our quality requirements will be declined. We allow the artists to control their own inventory and pricing, we will not alter prices set by the artist. It's free to upload products to the site, and when a product sells the artist gets 70% and we keep 30% of the product's price.
We would love feedback of any kind from anyone who visits Creative Pirate, positive or negative. We want to create a high quality and fair marketplace for everyone involved and if you have any suggestions or comments we'd love to hear them. This is the time for us to make adjustments to the site since it is still new and not officially launched.
Thanks,
Chuck Thomas
Creative Pirate
http://www.creativepirate.com
#2
www.creativepirate.com/products/photography/nc_viewproduct.php?pid=2694
45$ for a pic of a 1980's phone ;) I got one of those in my basement *snicker* wonder if I could toss it on Ebay and make 45 from it....
03/25/2003 (10:43 am)
even betterwww.creativepirate.com/products/photography/nc_viewproduct.php?pid=2694
45$ for a pic of a 1980's phone ;) I got one of those in my basement *snicker* wonder if I could toss it on Ebay and make 45 from it....
#3
03/25/2003 (11:01 am)
I agree, that's extremely excessive. Heck, you could take a digital camera and take these pictures yourself...
#4
03/25/2003 (11:06 am)
well the photos were professionally shot, you wouldn't be able to hire a professional photographer to take those photos for less money than that. Of course, you could take the photos yourself for a lot less and depending on what you would use the photo for that would be a good solution. A consumer digital camera would not take the same quality of picture.
#5
You may be onto something here, but I would encourage you to rethink your pricing strategy.
In short... two words TURBO ... SQUID
=/
03/25/2003 (11:35 am)
I hate to say this Chuck, but these prices are insane.You may be onto something here, but I would encourage you to rethink your pricing strategy.
In short... two words TURBO ... SQUID
=/
#6
Sure, an amateur could crank out stuff just as good with access to a darkroom/camera and scanner, or a high price digital cam, but who wants to spend the cash up front for all that equipment?
03/25/2003 (11:43 am)
Guys, give 'em a break, would ya? Those are fairly high quality images. For the images + license to use them in ad copy and so on, the prices seem fairly reasonable.Sure, an amateur could crank out stuff just as good with access to a darkroom/camera and scanner, or a high price digital cam, but who wants to spend the cash up front for all that equipment?
#7
Also, this is just what we decided to price our products at, products added by other users are priced however they see fit. They don't have to follow our lead and price as high if they don't want to.
I don't want to get into any flame wars comparing our site to Turbo Squid, but since Turbo Squid has been mentioned I will give you my thoughts on it. I see Turbo Squid as a completly different market from what we are aiming at with Creative Pirate. Turbo Squid is great for low budget projects and hobbyists, however they have a problem with getting a lot of professionals to buy or sell stuff on their site because they allow anything and everything to be published. That clutters the site and allows a ton of junk to be published that consumers have to filter through. Turbo Squid also has a big problem with selling pirated products, we've talked to several people who have complained about seeing their products being sold on Turbo Squid by someone else. Not only does this cause problems for product owners, but it makes consumers have to wonder whether they are buying a legitimate product or not which is why some professionals don't like to buy from Turbo Squid.
Creative Pirate is aimed at professionals and skilled hobbyists. We want ad agencies to come and buy stuff for their print ad or powerpoint presentation. Game developers for models, textures, sound effects and motion capture. Design firms for photos and illustrations. etc. And that's what really seperates us from Turbo Squid, to me Turbo Squid is not huge competition because if all goes as planned we will be two very different markets. That's the reason why we do not approve every product that is submitted to the site, we want to make sure that only quality products are available. And hopefully since all products have to be approved, that will help with the problem of people selling other artist's work.
03/25/2003 (12:17 pm)
Thanks, Mark. I'm fairly confident that the prices on our photos are reasonable. I personally don't know what the photos are worth or exactly how much it cost to shoot them, my boss priced the photos and he was the one who hired the photographers to shoot them. He's been in the marketing and design business for 15 years and has dealt with photography and illustration for a long time so he has a good idea of what they are worth. But if the prices are too high for the market, we will rethink our pricing.Also, this is just what we decided to price our products at, products added by other users are priced however they see fit. They don't have to follow our lead and price as high if they don't want to.
I don't want to get into any flame wars comparing our site to Turbo Squid, but since Turbo Squid has been mentioned I will give you my thoughts on it. I see Turbo Squid as a completly different market from what we are aiming at with Creative Pirate. Turbo Squid is great for low budget projects and hobbyists, however they have a problem with getting a lot of professionals to buy or sell stuff on their site because they allow anything and everything to be published. That clutters the site and allows a ton of junk to be published that consumers have to filter through. Turbo Squid also has a big problem with selling pirated products, we've talked to several people who have complained about seeing their products being sold on Turbo Squid by someone else. Not only does this cause problems for product owners, but it makes consumers have to wonder whether they are buying a legitimate product or not which is why some professionals don't like to buy from Turbo Squid.
Creative Pirate is aimed at professionals and skilled hobbyists. We want ad agencies to come and buy stuff for their print ad or powerpoint presentation. Game developers for models, textures, sound effects and motion capture. Design firms for photos and illustrations. etc. And that's what really seperates us from Turbo Squid, to me Turbo Squid is not huge competition because if all goes as planned we will be two very different markets. That's the reason why we do not approve every product that is submitted to the site, we want to make sure that only quality products are available. And hopefully since all products have to be approved, that will help with the problem of people selling other artist's work.
#8
03/25/2003 (12:44 pm)
It might help if the "collections" actually showed a collection of pictures instead of just one picture. But that is just my 2cents.
#9
03/25/2003 (1:07 pm)
Yeah, that's one of our concerns with the collections. It's hard to tell when you are looking at a collection and if we put more than one image in the thumbnail it would be hard to tell what you're looking at. Something I'm considering is marking collections when you are in a product table view to make them stand out from the non-collection products. 
#10
Nice site Chuck, if you can build a good library it will no doubt be an excellent resource in the future. Good luck!
03/26/2003 (2:46 am)
Although the prices aren't exactly useful to most of us indies, if you think $45 is expensive for a professionally shot photograph you really need to do some research. One of the companies we've worked with charges a good $500+ per picture, and that's only for web use, and before you ask they're a nice happy multi million dollar company with awesome growth year on year.Nice site Chuck, if you can build a good library it will no doubt be an excellent resource in the future. Good luck!
Torque 3D Owner Phil Carlisle
I guess I better go and take a photo of my desk.. gotta be worth at least a tenner!
Phil.