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Naes3d · 5th June 2007, 07:45

Honestly, I think that educating your user base is the most often overlooked aspect to successfully marketing an application. Max and Maya are not industry standards because they are necessarily the best applications out there. It's really the seeming neverending stream of talented users that make it appear so.

Most companies are using tutorials as a revenue stream. I have long been an advocate of seeing them as investments.

Take early childhood intervention statistics for example. They estimate that early childhood intervention programs generate a return to society ranging from $1.80 to $17.07 for each dollar spent on them. Imagine if this model could be applied to Carrara (and other 3D apps). The more skilled your users are at the early stages, the more prolific they will be.

Now comparing trueSpace to Carrara in this area (back on topic), as I stated above DAZ pays it's users to teach and the tutorials are available freely. That is a very good start and should be expanded upon. At Caligari, I don't think thay have ever gone into specifics, but they did say in response to being asked about the pricing of their tutorials that it was necessary to take into consideration that they pay the tutorial authors for their work and the cost of the tutorial is used to cover the expenses of producing it.

I think that Carrara wins on this note but they need to do more to take advantage of this leverage.

5th June 2007, 07:45	#51 (permalink)
Naes3d Box modeling Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 231	Honestly, I think that educating your user base is the most often overlooked aspect to successfully marketing an application. Max and Maya are not industry standards because they are necessarily the best applications out there. It's really the seeming neverending stream of talented users that make it appear so. Most companies are using tutorials as a revenue stream. I have long been an advocate of seeing them as investments. Take early childhood intervention statistics for example. They estimate that early childhood intervention programs generate a return to society ranging from $1.80 to $17.07 for each dollar spent on them. Imagine if this model could be applied to Carrara (and other 3D apps). The more skilled your users are at the early stages, the more prolific they will be. Now comparing trueSpace to Carrara in this area (back on topic), as I stated above DAZ pays it's users to teach and the tutorials are available freely. That is a very good start and should be expanded upon. At Caligari, I don't think thay have ever gone into specifics, but they did say in response to being asked about the pricing of their tutorials that it was necessary to take into consideration that they pay the tutorial authors for their work and the cost of the tutorial is used to cover the expenses of producing it. I think that Carrara wins on this note but they need to do more to take advantage of this leverage.