This problem has been discussed before, but I still don't understand the unfairness of the current split mechanism.
If every month I get 10 views and the price that SCG charges those that buy advertisement (like Google) doesn't change, then I should get equal payment for those 10 views regardless SCG having a hundred or one hundred thousand members. SCG charges the same amount for my views, but pays me according to the amount of users it has that particular month.

* I propose that the Unit Price changes only when Google (or whatever) changes what it pays per each view.
It would be good if it was posted clearly how much the advertisement buyers pay SCG per view.

* SCG doesn't pay members the views generated when viewing member profiles or "my account" pages. The 50% - 50% split should apply in those cases as well.

By examining other content sites, the future of SCG can be foreseen if these problems are not addressed. hese sites pay millionths of a cent per each view.

For now it seems that other site's proposals, where the 3d content is just sold, point to be more remunerative and clear about their pay system.

I would like to stay on SCG.
I would like it keeps being worth the effort of generating content for SCG.
I would like to be paid the same for the same effort.

Concerned,
regards to all,
Deskar

Edited by Deskar on 11/05/07 11:40 AM.

M'kay, say ShareCG makes $5,000 in a month from advertisers, 50% ($2,500) ShareCG keeps, the other 50% ($2,500) is split between members according to how many valid page views each has.

I don't see where you are saying you are not getting equal pay for your views, my rate is the same as yours, I may have more or less views than other members so my "payment" amount will differ from yours unless we have the same exact page view count. So, you got paid the same rate (.00343) for your "10" views as I did for my "50" views (.00343).

And why should viewing my account or anyone's profile count?

My only gripe right now is I missed the paypal payment by a few cents but at least I'll have Christmas money next month!! :)))) 

There is absolutely nothing unfair about the earnings split. Everyone gets paid the exact same rate as everyone else based on their view counts. Adding view counts for profiles would not help you or anyone else. I too am disappointed by the drop this month but it's hardly unfair based on the averages.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.- Albert Einstein

i think there is some confusion between original post, and the replies.

is the pay we recieve a direct division of the amount payed by advertisers? or is it also the number of registered sharecg users (views irelevent) part of the equasion?

if we are payed a fixed pay per view, based on the pay per view that charecg recieves from the advertisers, then, its all fair. if, as the original past implies, there is a loss caused by more people joining sharecg, then its not fair.  

I think there is room for confusion since the exact details on how the system works are not clearly disclosed.

How are the advertisement contracts made?

Do the advertisers pay a fixed price and SCG has then to divide half that amount among the total views all items had and then multiply that number for the total amount of views X member had?

Does SCG also get a variable amount of money for each view an ad gets?

If so, it's a totally different thing.

It's logical we want to know in order to think of ways of improving our profits, but also to know if there's anything we can do in order to help ShareCG grow.
I mean, if more members mean less money for the content providers, then I will refrain myself from spreading the word. If, on the contrary, more members and views in general will mean more money to split, then I'll go and tell everybody. (This is just an example of things I can do to help, of course).

So, I think it would be useful for everybody to know how exactly the advertisement system works.

Barb

There is no "Fixed" payout per view! There never has been! If you would take the time to actually read the FAQ link right next to the link to "My Account" up at the top of the page where it says your log in name, you would see exactly how income from the site is computed. Below is the direct quote regarding how the income is split:

How exactly do you calculate payments?

 Obviously that "Average Revenue Per Page View" is figured based on how many users there are and how many item Pages they have to view. The website get's 50% of the income off the top. The remaining 50% of the monthly income is divided up between the users based on page views. It's not a fixed amount and never has been.

The more users there are the less income we get. The only way to increase that income with the increasing amount of user's we're getting is to increase the advertising revenue. So in effect, yeah, if you want to keep making money stop telling new people about the payout system. They'll find out about it when they come to view your downloads though so it's a catch 22.

   This is a great way to get more exposure for ourselves.  It is not a marketplace.  We get what we signed up for. 

  I'm happy for the added exposure and the ability to host our files without killing our own bandwidth.  Thanks, ShareCG!

 FAQ's have been read. that doesn't always mean they have been understood.

fine, that bit is explained. i get it. does everyone else get it?

personally, i dont give a [censored]. my work is good enough to sell, if thats what i wanted. i just treat sharecg as a useful server that doesn't constantly try to delete my larger files, and as a glorified publicity machine. (i get a lot of work offers from people downloading my stuff, liking it, and getting in touch) 

the money is just a cute bonus (despite massive pageviews, i package my work up, so i dont actually get much money. only about 3/4000 views per month) personally, i would like to see how many actual complete downloads i get. would be interesting to see peoples views, versus their downloads. 

so, yea. it makes sense to me, as to how we are alloted our stipend. anyone not got it yet?  now, the question is, what can we do to get our unit price up?  when i got here, i got 0.01471 per view. now i get 0.00343. thats a mad drop! are sharecg payed per view, or per click? what can WE do to help. to change things. we have done well enough in publicising sharecg. hense the drop in pay price. but surely the increase in new members, = increased overall views of sharecg = increased potential asking price for advertising space. right? or wrong? 

now. where is the "unfairness" of the earnings split? where is the route to improve matters for us and for sharecg? is it possible? or is sharecg going to dissapear into a toilet of [censored] assets, hostile forums, and poor advertising targetting?  personally, i hope things can improve. i hope to see the ratings system gone. i hope to see the content of the front page make sense. (i thought contents of the front page was based on the newist uploads. obviously not) i would like to see sharecg pick of the day make sense. how many unfinished, poorly finished, or just uncreative things are there? plenty of untextured models. plenty of boring still life renders which show off nothing but the renderer. in fact, why is the front page so messy, and poorly designed? uh, aren't there supposed to be artists and designer type people here? how about running a comp to design a less ugly front page? 

how about stop being so defensive over your favourite sacred cows. ("poser is digital barbies" squables, "sharecg is unfair" squables, s"tar rating" squables etc.) and lets see what can be done to help. 

(p.s. poser is still digital barbies)   

Matrix, there really is no need for you to shout and treat people (me particularly, in this case,) like stupid.

I've read the FAQ even before I became a member.

I might not have explained myself well since English isn't my mother language. I guess Irishboy put it better than I could have.

The thing is, I was asking for more detailed information in order to know what we can do to help SCG grow without killing our profits. And yes, I am here to make money. Should I be ashamed? At least I'm not hyprocritical. If people want just a site to distribute their downloads for free there are literally hundreds of sites that will host your files for free without bandwidth limits.

Jake told us many times that spreading the word and bringing more members would help. I just would like to know, given the contradictory evidence, how that would be. And asked for details because there was the possibility that I haven't understood the payment calculation correctly, precisely because given the experience we've had here it seems to contradict Jake's statement.

Since I'm sure he's not lying, I just wanted to understand it all with more detailed information so I can DO something about it.

Barb

DW I didn't "SHOUT" at you. The "Bold Text" was "BOLD" because I cut and pasted it directly from the FAQ and it was BOLD there. Neither did I treat you or anyone else as stupid. Since english isn't your primary language, maybe you shouldn't try reading between the lines when there's nothing there to be read? I'm getting really tired of people reading hostility where there is none.

Also, you were not the only post I was responding to when I posted so maybe you should step back and not take things so personally? It was someone else who asked if the payout was fixed and I explained that it wasn't "fixed", it was computed based on what the FAQ says it was computed on. 

when i say "fixed" ....read the rest of the sentence. the bit where i say "based on...etc. i dunno. maybe i phrased it wrong. i know the spelling is atrocious. as usual. but it looks like my base communication is wrong too.

what does it normally mean when something is "fixed" based on.. something else?

its a moot pointanyway. lets see some answers to my views raised in my prevous post. or are they not something people feel needs to be discussed? 

guys,

when we first joined this site sharecg said that the average pay PER VIEW was the amount W lets say, so every month we get paid (W multiplied by the number of views each member generated per month). which means that the advertisers are paying PER CLICK not a fixed amount of money.

so if that is the case, then even if the number of views increases the amount per click (W) should not go down as long as the advertisers are still paying the same money.

based on the above, the person initiated this discussion is 100% right.

"which means that the advertisers are paying PER CLICK not a fixed amount of money."

On a Pay Per Click basis, IMHO no visitor with an "ad-free" browser should be counted as a "view". With Firefox and Adblock/Noscript installed this site is completly "clean".

I'm new here (6 weeks) and my content has generated ~45000 views last month. So there should be at least 45000 * (ads per page) more than the month before. We'll see what comes out next month.

Hi All,

I'll try my best to explain an incredibly complicated situation.

First, like our equation shows, the important number is the amount we make per pageview on average--that is, if we take the amount we make per month and divide it by the pageviews we recieved over the last month, that's the number we get. Each pageview is not equal. Consider these facts:

• Google pays per click-through. So some pageviews when there are Google ads we are making $0, other times, when there is  a click-through, we can get  anywhere between 50 cents and $10 for the pageview. (PS: this doesn't mean you should click on all the ads all the time! Although clicking casually on things you are interested in would definitely help, we do not want to lose our account because of click fraud!)
• Other (in our opinion, better) advertisers pay on a pay-per-view basis. For those of you in the States, you'll see TribalFusion ads, and in the near future, 24/7 Realmedia ads. These guys pay $1-$10 per 1,000 pageviews, which although isn't great, it's something, and better than we have been experiencing.
  • But, here's one of the real challenges: we have an enormous international user base that's growing daily. We're very grateful for the contributions they have made, and definitely don't want to discourage them from coming. But the truth is that advertisers will not pay for international traffic. So the $1-$10 number above drops to 0 for a lot of our users.
  • Essentially, we make money off of the US users, and split that number amongst pageviews which include international.
  • If you really want to help in this respect, spread the word about ShareCG in forums, etc. where there are a lot of US users. I'm not positive that I know where that is, but I think CGSociety does. The way to popularize it, by the way, is by posting links to your content (which of course helps you), but real content is often a more interesting draw than an admittedly lame homepage.
  • Also, add your pages to directories like digg, stumbleupon, etc. We'll try to set up tools that help in that respect. Whenever something is picked by stumbleupon, for example, we get massive influxes of US traffic.
• Finally, we every-so-often get advertisers who buy ads directly from our site. They are usually very, very targetted (e.g., Autodesk), but for whatever reason they don't get enough click-throughs. Please, if you're interested in them, CLICK! Whenever they come, they are our higher-paying users.
• Finally, we're going to be starting soon with video-ads. They're going to be slightly annoying, but usually no more than 10 seconds for short videos, and 30 seconds for long videos. They should really help monetize a space of our site that we haven't been yet.
• We're also considering restructuring the pages so that we can cram more ads in there (without it looking bad--in fact, it'll look better). Basically, we're doing what we can with very limited resources (you can imagine if we're making .007 cents per page...) If you do what you can to bring US traffic, and to ensure pay-per-click and specific ads are clicked, we'll be in a better place.

That pretty much sums it up.

And yes, our homepage is a little cramped and silly. I like the idea of having a competition about that :-) I wonder what the prize should be?

Best,

Jake 

Thanks for the information! Very helpfull to get a picture of what's going on.

yay!! good clean info.

 1. how about we all go and edit our files to ask "pretty please" to all who download our works, to click on an add banner, as it will help starving artists. (and us too)

 2. what can be done to get international advertising business? surely its not the norm for only US stuff to get paid for? this is the interweb for bobs sake. where are the borders? i am sitting pretty (or not so) in ireland. i still see adverts. would be good to look into a way of earning from international users also. 

i aint talking politics here, but at least geographically, the UK is not part of the USA.

gee, spot the irish coming out in me there

Thank you, Jake, for the explaination. It really helps, and I'm sure many of us are more than willing to do whatever in our power to make ShareCG grow. I for one like this place a lot, specially for the honesty of you PTB.

 I'll try my best in those places you mentioned (StumbleUpon and Digg), so if you can think of any more places that will bring US members, please let us know so we can help.

Have you tried  this one? http://www.text-link-ads.com/

If there's anything we can do to take advantage of international members (I'm one of those as well), let us know too.

Thanks again!
Barb

Ok....I need a tad bit of clarification here.....please......

When we talk about peeps outside the USA are we talking about people uploading content or people downloading, say psp tubes?  Or are we talking about people clicking on ads, not downloading and uploading?  I'm confused on this!

MatrixWorkz:

Your words sound constantly like Caps. There's no need to write in bold to be rude, arrogant or condescending. There's no need to be rude, arrogant or condescending in order to be heard.

Check the way you interact with the world and then please ignore all my posts.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein

Deskar

Thank you, Jake. You've been very clear.I suggest for your explanation to be placed in a more visible place. The FAQ, for instance.

...    * Google pays per click-through. So some pageviews when there are Google ads we are making $0, other times, when there is  a click-through, we can get  anywhere between 50 cents and $10 for the pageview. (PS: this doesn't mean you should click on all the ads all the time! Although clicking casually on things you are interested in would definitely help, we do not want to lose our account because of click fraud!)

    * Other (in our opinion, better) advertisers pay on a pay-per-view basis. For those of you in the States, you'll see TribalFusion ads, and in the near future, 24/7 Realmedia ads. These guys pay $1-$10 per 1,000 pageviews, which although isn't great, it's something, and better than we have been experiencing.

          o But, here's one of the real challenges: we have an enormous international user base that's growing daily. We're very grateful for the contributions they have made, and definitely don't want to discourage them from coming. But the truth is that advertisers will not pay for international traffic. So the $1-$10 number above drops to 0 for a lot of our users.

          o Essentially, we make money off of the US users, and split that number amongst pageviews which include international.

          o If you really want to help in this respect, spread the word about ShareCG in forums, etc. where there are a lot of US users. I'm not positive that I know where that is, but I think CGSociety does. The way to popularize it, by the way, is by posting links to your content (which of course helps you), but real content is often a more interesting draw than an admittedly lame homepage.

          o Also, add your pages to directories like digg, stumbleupon, etc. We'll try to set up tools that help in that respect. Whenever something is picked by stumbleupon, for example, we get massive influxes of US traffic.

      * Finally, we every-so-often get advertisers who buy ads directly from our site. They are usually very, very targetted (e.g., Autodesk), but for whatever reason they don't get enough click-throughs. Please, if you're interested in them, CLICK! Whenever they come, they are our higher-paying users.

    * Finally, we're going to be starting soon with video-ads. They're going to be slightly annoying, but usually no more than 10 seconds for short videos, and 30 seconds for long videos. They should really help monetize a space of our site that we haven't been yet.

    * We're also considering restructuring the pages so that we can cram more ads in there (without it looking bad--in fact, it'll look better). Basically, we're doing what we can with very limited resources (you can imagine if we're making .007 cents per page...) If you do what you can to bring US traffic, and to ensure pay-per-click and specific ads are clicked, we'll be in a better place...

Continues in next post

Edited by Deskar on 11/07/07 10:14 AM.

Of course it is still unfair for all those that month after month get less per view. It may not be entirely SCG's fault, but I guess that some measures to protect members could be put in place. After all, we are the ground on which the whole project is built upon.

How about translating the indispensable minimum to browse? That way many views would come from countries that (it should be checked first) might pay for the views. Renderosity has recently translated part of their site to French, German, Japanese and Spanish, although most of the income there is generated by product sales. Shvoong offers content in 34 different languages. On the other hand, they pay almost nothing to their members. Perhaps it could be translated to those languages which countries are willing to buy advertisement. Was a market research conducted about this?

I celebrate energetically the good will for communication that SCG has towards its members. Knowing the data you explained above allows us to establish useful promotion strategies. I hope the experiences of other sites where free content is offered help SCG. These sites don't value the content provider and let the view rate drop to the ground. Potential new members think twice before investing their time and efforts in such places. I guess such a commercial strategy might still generate profits, but less than it could if the unit price was kept high. I hope that's not SCG's intention. In practice, we see the unit price dropping month after month, anyway.

Soon it won't be worth uploading stuff. 

I sincerely hope that this trend is reversed somehow. 

Deskar,

Your words are just as rude to me as apparently mine are to you so take your own advice and ignore my posts from now on. I'm not the one demanding that payouts be made to me based on ignorance of the FAQ. I'm not the one whining about unfair payouts, and I'm not the one demanding that people write their posts in a way that is acceptable to me. I'm not writing in CAPS or bold except where it was bold when I cut and pasted it from the FAQ and I'm not responsible for you taking things the wrong way.

Now as Jake has given us even more information, it's pretty clear to me that the most of the people complaining about the way things are run around here are international  users and it's the US users and visitors who are generating the income. I'd say THAT's unfair to us!  

MatrixWorkz,

I didn't have the intention to reply to your post, but your tendency to try to win a discussion by misinforming people is very harming for SCG and its members and it can't be let pass.

It is not true, as you say, that international users complain and US users generate the income, since it doesn't matter where a content-generating member comes from but, as Jake said, the important thing is where the visitor comes from (the person that is looking for content).

You're practically inviting for a witch hunt. 

It is evident to me that it is more important for you to win an arguement, even if it harms us all, than to make a constructive criticism. 

Deskar

Edited by marcodd on 11/07/07 02:17 PM.

Well...much going on here!!!!!  You are all stars so there is no need to argue. Deskar...I cannot see why you took offence although I did the same many weeks ago.

Matrixworks.....your posts are always informative!!

Irishlostboy.....are you always in a bad mood?????? AND...are you actually Irish????

Keep up the good work boys.....forums are meant to stimulate debate!!!!

 Just so glad that the upload issue seems to have been sorted...it has prevented some of us from earning anything.....but...I share the view that this is ShareCG and not a "get rich" site. I look forward to trying to upload again and replacing all the stuff that i removed.....perhaps I will get a bad time from you lot for spamming!!!

Cheers

YUP a raging crazy irishman i be. from the middle of nowhere northwest of ireland. why am i so angry all the time? someone has to keep up the irish reputation of being a big angry drunk. *whispering* when i write to sound angry i am usually joking.

so yea, remember i wake up with sarcasm turned up to 11. it amuses me.  

now, its 8:30 in the morning, so i gotta go get my hands on some celtic cream. i cant abide sobriety on my birthday 

Happy Birthday, irishlostboy!

Keep your special kind of humour :) 

thank you all. its five o clock, i am tipsy as a gypsy, and its great. lol

did this little tut. its a real WIP, so hey, yea. look at it if you like. when i finish figuring out the technique i will put it on sharecg

http://files.filefront.com/terrain+tutorialzip/;9019414;/fileinfo.html

happy thingy to mee...

happy thingyee to meee....

when you find a peice of work on ShareCG you really like, you click a button to review that page (or something like that, not using a computer with my stumble on it right now). Then the page will be added to the stumbleupon database.

-Jake 

Adserver wasn't Google but Tribal. An US company with a localized page behind the ad (games), for example.

Apparently some US-companies checked that this internet has no real borders. So be patient with us non-US people :)
(just kidding). 

For "virtual goods" a company shouldn't care where buyers are located. To deliver a fridge or a car to a customer on the other end of the world is a bit more difficult.

Sometimes I see japanese ads over here. hehe