ShareCG in trouble
3WC
Posts: 1,107
Anybody else get this?
http://www10.sharecg.com/blogs/david-heller/
The days of free freebie hosting at ShareCG may be numbered. Discuss?
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Comments
It didn't sound like all free hosting would be finished, but rather it would end up a lot more limited...maybe something like caps on upload size, number of uploads and such.
I do think $10/month is a little steep...but the site owner should be allowed to at least break even.
Actually when I read it, I thought it said $9.99/year not month
Which is not a bad price.
for some reason It freezes so I cannot read the entire letter.
I like sharecg- however the categories are a real problem for me. They need to really redefine the commerical use/personal use so they are easy to sort. Plus searching is a huge issue.
Better grab what freestuff I can then.
sadly, I know of people who will not even download from sharecg because you have to join and sign in.
having an associated store sounds like a better option to me.
the people wishing to sell their stuff would would pay a rent and the site can get a commision on sales.
that way some could have both freebies and paid for better models they have worked very hard on,
others can host just freebies but not a prominant page or suggestions such as "you also might like" on others models unless paid for.
in otherwords, you get the site prominance you pay for and if one wants to only download freebies, they need to sift through a bit with paid for options listed first in any seach.
I have to wonder how many people will want to pay a subscription, no matter how little it is, in order to give something away for nothing.
Yeah, from a creators perspective, that is true.
I'm sure they'll work something out, a store would be good, but then, we've already got daz and renderosity to compete with. And as a customer, I'd really want to know the product has been tested and has no faults. With freebies, it really isn't that big a deal with any item faults because its free.
Zelroth, you're right. I copied this directly from the letter: at just $9.99 a year for a banner free ShareCG
IMO, that's more than worth it for all that sharecg.com provides.
As much as I would love SharCG to stay free, you can't expect the founder to be a "martryr for the cause" and spend his own money to make us happy. The man has to at least break even.
Myself, I don't care about the ad banners. I would expect possibly a combination of add sites and perhaps a $5 monthly donation which you could set to recurring if you want could possibly give the push they need. If its $10 every month no matter what then I can understand people not wanting to opt for the site.
It's sad but c'est la via.
I read it as $9.99 /month...that's what I get for reading it late at night.
At $10/year...yeah, that's a deal.
I was willing to go $5/month...or $60/year.
Heh! You aren't the only one. $9.99 a year?
Heck, I'll throw in the extra penny. *smile*
Always secretly felt like I was stealing from the site or getting away with something when I downloaded stuff. *chuckle*
This shall assuage my guilt. :D
But the sub will only go towards keeping the site running, or so we are told. All the people who put the freebies up there, the ones who do all the work, are going to be expected to pay the same amount for uploading them., so that you can download them.
There are still free sites they could put them on, but ShareCG has a solid community.
If they start making it a brokerage, then they may be able to pick up more stuff too.
Does anyone remember the discussion about ShareCG , last year I think it was, on the old forums?
For the amount of awesome stuff I have collected in a year just from that site is well worth more than 9.99. I will gladly pay.
It's $10.00 a year and in the letter he expressed improving not diminishing services on ShareCG!
I don't think charging people is going to work. $10/year is not a lot, but I don't think the average Poser user will pay it. Never mind the people who create the free stuff, who then have to pay to give it away.
I understand that ShareCG has to make money, but perhaps their business plan was ill conceived. You can get free storage at so many sites now (Google, 4shared, Skydrive, etc.) that I don't know why anyone would pay to host their freebies at ShareCG.
The email I recieved went into my spam filter and just deleted it. But glad I did it seems a bit of greed even if its only $10 a year after all the amount of Ads that are on the site its paying for itsself anyway.
Ill remove the only thing i have on there and that is some material settings for DS. I have 100mb I can use on my ISP if I wanted to give something away.
Sal.
Maybe you should have read the letter...
I never read anything that goes into spam i just click select all and delete. too late now lol I just deleted what I had there.
Sal.
Well, according to that letter, the ads aren't paying for the site, which is why they're looking at a small fee. I know I never clicked through those adds. (I rarely click through adds at all, on any site.)
I'm kinda torn on it.
On the one hand, I don't see $10 a year as unreasonable, considering the size of the archive, but on the other hand...it kinda defeats the definition of "Freebie"
And not everything that ends up in a spam folder IS spam...
By definition if you've signed up to the site and get newsletters from it, it is not spam.
Well, according to that letter, the ads aren't paying for the site, which is why they're looking at a small fee. I know I never clicked through those adds. (I rarely click through adds at all, on any site.)
I'm kinda torn on it.
On the one hand, I don't see $10 a year as unreasonable, considering the size of the archive, but on the other hand...it kinda defeats the definition of "Freebie"
Yes seems a bit silly to pay to give something away, I agree with the majority of the comments on the letter you can view at the blog. I didnt use Share CG much just it was there so I could give out material settings for a model to use it in DS other than that I havent used it for years.
Sal.
You'd have to pay for your own site, if you went that route. While it's true there are hsoting sites that will allow you to upload files for others to download they don't provide for niceties like preview images as ShareCG does, so (assuming you want those) they ar not a comparable service.
Many ISPs give you free webspace. And you can set up a free site on Google. See Baggingsbill's:
https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/Home
I think what has changed is that Poser content is now relatively small compared to other files. It used to be huge, so that the typical free storage of 2 Mb wasn't really enough. But now, people are storing 10 Gb movies and the like. The file size and bandwidth limits are generally large enough that it won't be an issue for Poser stuff.
Sure, Google might go belly-up or be forced to cut back from 5-20 Gb they give you for free now...but I suspect it's more likely that ShareCG will go out of business.
I can say without a doubt, that even if you've got space provided by your ISP you are paying for it.
A portion of your monthly charge covers that. And most ISP storage has some pretty strict bandwidth limits. So, if you are planning on using ISP provided storage...look at the terms closely. Too much bandwidth use can suspend your page or come with some hefty charges.
As to 'free' online storage...like Google. Still being supported by ads. And many others, basic service is 'free' (usually ad supported) and either more or faster service, along with an ad-free option are available by subscription.
Agree Richard. I pay for my own server space. I'm not getting any kickbacks for what I store on that and share with other folks. $10.00 a year is a drop in the bucket in comparison. It works out to be like .85 cents a month! WooHoo... Such an big unfair payout there in order to share my works that if I didn't share them then what would be the purpose of making this stuff in the first place sort of unfair payout.... .... :snake:
I have my own web sites so I don't have to deal with this, but from your standpoint Cho, I agree with you.
That said, however, $9.99 a year is a whooooooooooooole lot cheaper than the cheapest web hosting out there, and most of those cheap hosting packages are only true if you pay for a year (or more) "up front". I pay for 3 yrs. up front, so it averages out to approximately $5.95 a month. I don't know where anyone would be able to get hosting for $9.99 a year, and then there's another $10+ for domain registration if you want it (thought it's not absolutely necessary), though I know my host (and I'm sure a number of others) will offer at least 1 domain registration through them for free. Still you can't beat the price ShareCG is offering if you don't have your own site.
Another thing to consider, of course, is how many items do you have to offer. I know you have a huge collection that would be worth the cost if you needed to use ShareCG, and there are others that have been uploading freebies to ShareCG for years, but some don't have that many freebies, and may not be adding that many in the near future. I wonder if it would be worth it for them.
I too have no problems, thanks to my generous host. I was going to put my stuff up on Share, in fact there are some up there, when we started doing it after the 2nd time my site was taken down due to the actions of mass downloaders, (and took down the entire Francemi site with it, and all the other sites that Francemi gave space to) , but we gave up that idea because of the sheer amount of time it would have taken to load the content of my entire site up to sharecg, as they only allow one upload at a time, the same as only 1 download at a time. The content on my site is more than 5gb.
My concern with this is how it is going to affect the Freebie challenge, which is a challenge that relies on people using only freebies (with certain exceptions) in their renders. If shareCG becomes a pay to join site, will the downoads still be freebies, in the strict interpretation of the word. We already had to change the rules to allow some paid for items when the DAZ 3D base figures became paid for items.
Well..
People downloading probably wouldn't have to pay would they? I took it to mean that those who were using it for hosting would be required to pay...
which is not unreasonable...
I will be sad to see ShareCG not stay free, but I can't blame them for trying to find a solution for paying their bills... :down:
...things are just changing too much everywhere lately...kinda sad about it, but I don't think they're being "greedy" or anything... $10 a year is more than reasonable... I think they're just trying to stay afloat in a stormy economy....but it's still too sad. :down: