This message is also posted in the annoucements section.

----- 

Dear ShareCG Members,

It is with much regret that we are ending our revenue sharing system. The payouts you will receive for December will be the last that ShareCG gives out.

We are ending the revenue sharing system for a few reasons. First, it encouraged a lot of mediocre, copyright, and spam material to be posted to our site. We want ShareCG to be a community that represents high quality content, and revenue sharing brought out the worst, not the best, in our community. Second, it became uneconomical. We would pay thousands of dollars to our users, but most individual users would not make that much.

We are still exploring alternate ways to deal with these problems and begin revenue sharing again. We are still committed to that ideal. For the time being, however, we are disabling revenue sharing until we come up with a better system.

We are now concentrating on making the website more useful for our users in other ways. We will integrate a jobs section, where you can use the talent you have shown on the site to find work. We will also introduce a flash enabled and embeddable portfolio, which will allow you to show off the work you have posted to ShareCG to employers and peers. Finally, we will be restructuring the layout of the site to make it easier for you to share feedback with your expert peers, and help you become a better artist.

I think that we have a great site with a lot of excellent material and committed users. I hope our community of over 20,000 contributions continues to grow.

Thank You,
The ShareCG Team

Although I am sorry to see this happen, I must say I am happy to see it happen too. And, I am surprised you guys held out this long. It was a good idea with many pitfalls and unfortunately, as you pointed out, you fell into almost every pit that it created. Maybe this will send a signal to the people who have abused the site. But I seriously doubt it because I'm sure in their minds eye the did nothing wrong.

I will continue to use this site for posting my free work and samples for people to download as I have in the past. And I hope you find a way to make the revenue sharing work again. It is would be nice to see it function the way of the idea, but the site needs two things added to make that work. A review process that keeps copyright material off the site, and a rating system that means something so that items with little or no community approval and support (and with contructive criticism required for a rating) will create a way to weed out the less desirable items so that only the quality flurishes.

 I hope you find a way to make it work in the future. Best of luck to you.

David

i am very sad to hear that, but i appreciate your effort to make this website alive, it is distinguished arround the world, and it is encourage idea..

i suggest to look for solving the problem we have, maybe that need more staff, but i am ready to help and know alot of members ready to do also..

my suggestion summarizes in asking the member for a proof for his work, link to a famouse CG forums, WIP..etc

and make the registration closed along month and opened for a day or two, may be the registration turned to be through invitation or somthing else..

there must be a staff who monitor the works then give acceptance or not..

hope that is useful to make sharecg at the head.

Regards,

For revenues generated below $20 .... We are putting a few more dollars in our PayPal account now and will be paying off all members who have a minimum of $1.00 accumulated in their account.  The transfer to our PayPal takes a few days to clear, and this will all be straightened out before the end of next week.

David

ShareCG.com

Well,  It is all ok with me. I was never shairing my creations for the money. I just wanted to give a little back to my fellow artist. I never even cared if I was paid or not. I will continue to shair my creations and Thanks for allowing me to do this. It is all good.

Smiles my fellow artist   

Edited by Lakota on 01/04/08 03:06 PM.

I am sad in many ways over this then again....maybe the site will 'clean up' a bit and all will be well!

 Still gonna use the site tho cause it is an excellent way to have freebies.....

Hey guys,

Could you just keep the lil bit of money I generated rather than adding more of your own to bump it up?

I don't really want to go through the effort of setting up the PayPal info since this is going to be a done deal on this site.

If you are interested in ideas for a business model that has a better possiblity of working as your original intent entailed give me a shout by e-mail.

I'm a project manager at a construction company by trade and own a boarding stable so I've a little practice, as do many others on this site without question.

A forum of ideas could be of benefit, brainstorming does have it's uses. :)

I for one did not care about the monies, i just wanted an outlet for my models.

i am slow in making them and would not keep up with the crowd. 

Well, As a content creator I do not agree with the cancelation of the payper view/ download system. I hope that most of the poeple do remove they're content from the site. ShareCG gets paid by the content being viewed/downloaded from.

I also understand that there is content that some artist thing isn't that great. But i don't think it their right to say it's good bad or junk.

I'm giving the site until the 10th to figure out if it's going to fix the system or I'm removing my content. I also suggest that all other user do the same.

Content creators should look at this as our content build this site, without it there would be no site.

Edited by Arotech on 01/04/08 06:30 PM.

Hi Matrix,

No individual user is the cause--let alone your look alikes. I don't think they infringe on any real and currently held copyrights. The real problem that we're trying to address is people actually ripping off others' works just to make a quick buck on our site. We respect our artists and don't want their work being stolen.

Another problem is people posting literally hundreds of ... well ... mediocre works, and then redirecting traffic there under false pretenses (lying on message boards, using click services). We certainly don't support that, and don't think that they would without the money bringing out the worst in them.

In response to an earlier post--yes, we do make (some...) money from advertising, and our site is 100% user contributed. We do provide our users with a lot of benefits, though. We host your files and make it easy for you to share it with your friends, peers, and employers, and get feedback. We're going to make the site look nicer, easier to navigate, and easier to leave feedback in the near future. More importantly, we'll be offering ways for people to find work through our site, and we have a very nice Flash portfolio that you can embed in your personal webpages. All in all, we still hope to be the #1 CG portal on the net, even without paying our users.

Best,

Jacob 

All of what I have uploaded here is 100% my own copyrighted work made with a filter I created.   I include all bump maps with my textures so that is why many are just singles, but with different colors and maps included in the single download. 

What I am wondering is if my stuff is among the mediocre stuff mentioned and whether or not I should continue to upload here.  

My reply wasn't meant to be to Matrix, I just hit reply on your post because I couldn't figure out how to post here. 

Edited by ahimsa on 01/04/08 08:23 PM.

ahimsa I'm sure that your textures are not what he is referring to. I believe its more along the lines of people uploading a single picture of nothing in particular and calling it somthing useful.....

As a simple criterion, the content uploaded here should work properly at the very least.  Perhaps a "newbie" area where people who are starting out could be formed as they work out their craft, graduating up into a 'paid' group as they improve? 

Bouncing out people using false pretenses and the like to generate hits should be the rule, too.

I do try to only upload the best of my textures and like I said, I supply all the maps with them and have several different colors of each enclosed in the zip file. 

I like uploading here because I can check out other people's shares when I come to see how mine are doing.  The money wasn't a reason so it doesn't bother me that it's ending.   I like this place.

Oh well I guess people will always screw up a good thing. My point is I'm already puting enough time into my creation. It it took too much effort to get people to find the site in the first place to have the site jumpship.

In truth the promised reward was never there, or worth the effort.

Still the site is breaking it's original offering. IMSO this is a breach of contract.  IMO

I will remove my content.

I am sorry to see it end. The little amount of money was a pleasant bonus. (I am still waiting for my small amount to be sent to me) But I can understand that there may well have been a lot of stuff that was not very good. I guess that what you do need if you are going to have a site like this is people policing everything which means they need to be paid of course.

Whatever happens please don't base things on ratings

Ok, well here's my suggestion which is bound to upset some people but since it's already been brought up. If you wish to continue sharing revenue with the uploaders. I suggest a new policy be put into effect where revenue sharing is only given to those uploaders whom the admin deem to be quality providers. It will stop those who aren't getting paid from uploading junk and it will encourage those providing quality stuff to keep doing so.

 It will require active participation by the site admins in going through the uploaded content and deciding whether or not someone is producing enough quality items to be bumped up to paid provider status. And just because someone achieves that status shouldn't mean they can't loose it if they start abusing the privilege.

That's my 2 Cents. 

Hi Matrix,

We're seriously considering ideas like that. The problem is--our staff is small, and we're likely to miss out on a lot of good talent, for example, in tools we don't understand. We're going to have to figure out a way to get the community involved in it in a way that won't look fishy to other users. We're pretty creative people, but we've had trouble thinking of how to fix the broken system. That's why we're giving it a cooler until we figure out the true alternative.

-Jake 

You can check out how it's done here -- http://www.thesimsresource.com/intro/

They're a pay/freebie site, but you can see how they deal with uploads and criterion for content.  I used to upload textures for Sims, they were sometimes slow, but they changed how it was done for a more streamlined process.   

If it is so ... please take the banner from your website: "sharecq pays uploaders. It pays to share."

Agreed.

If nothing happens within the next 8 days, I'll remove my content here moving it to my own site. A server with "unlimited traffic" is available for 20-30 Euro a month.   

Thanks for the notification but it doesn't really make a diffrence to me. For me this is first and foremost a hobby. I like Poser, Paint Shop Pro and Photography. Hence the tubes, backgrounds and some wallpapers.

Money was never a reason for uploading here. The reason I started to upload here was the easy use for downloading since alot of my friends get lost on other free file hosts where the "download-link" is so small you need a magnifying glass to find it and the you still end up in some cybercasino. The revenue was a nice bonus, not a reason. If I want to get alot of money, I'll get a job.

You guys and dolls just take your time figuring out the hows and whats. This is no reason for me to take my stuff down or to go somewhere else. This is fun for me to do and that's what it should stay, a hobby, fun. And if people really expect to make a monthly income with things like this...I'm sorry but then you live in la-la-land.  

Greetz from Pommerlis.

  Our stuff stays here.  We support the concept that ShareCG started with: Community.

  Things are rough all over, and here is no exception.  I'm happy that we still have a good, searchable site, with free upload.

  Thanks for keeping the site alive, guys!

James

Well I've no intention of going elsewhere. The hosting here is free and I plan on continuing making freebie Poser clothing and morphs and need someplace to put them.

If your stuff is good you can still get PayPal donations here with the donation button. I've gotten one that I know of so far. I know people are actually using what I upload so I don't think I'm total crap but I still don't feel qualified to be a merchant.

I'm fairly certain that there are members here who are willing to help point out quality items to be added to the paid content list. If you want volunteers for the job, it never hurts to ask. I know the staff here is small but it seriously shouldn't take more than a few hours a day of scanning each users content to decide if they're providing items you consider quality draws for the site. If there are certain application items you don't feel comfortable judging, ask the people who use those items to speak up and vote on them.

In my opinion, the people who are all jumping ship because of this are most likely the ones who were abusing the system in the first place. Just here to make a quick buck and quality be damned. That sort won't be missed. 

It's really not that much of a surprise that this has happened. It was bound to, and it was obvious at an early stage. What has been done is a necessary consequence, in my opinion.

The question is - why didn't ShareCG react earlier to the bleeding obvious by enforcing effective restrictions on mass uploads, banning spammers, deleting low-quality content etc. A lot of problems could probably have been avoided by taking suitable action as soon as possible, and the payment system could have been maintained for the benefit of the many in this community who do provide quality work and make this site a worthwile source of content.

Like others here, however, I'm not in it for the pocket money. I moved my stuff to this site because ShareCG is an excellent file hoster, easy to use and fair to both uploaders and downloaders. That is one reason why I will continue to upload my stuff here.

Also, I support doaservices: ShareCG is supposed to be a community, and people shouldn't abandon this community because of the decisions that have been made, and that had to be made.

So, payment or no payment, I'm still happy to be able to use this site, and unless my stuff is considered utter crap and I'm asked to leave, I have no reason to go away.

I hope you guys at ShareCG can sort out the problems eventually and, if payments are to be shared with uploaders again in the future, come up with a more viable concept for doing so.

brainstew

To those who are jumping ship ... Goodbye, Good  Riddance, and Good Luck. You will not be missed.

I think this is a bit strange way to let this all end....

Why not just having a look once a day what people were uploading and remove all you don´t want to have on the site? There are some people who constantly uploading junk? Warn them. They do it again? - bann them. Easy thing.

You say people are lying somewhere else to get people looking at their stuff. If you know that - bann the user. Also simple thing.

I uploaded a lot of my freebies here. Not to make big money . Just to have a bit of "pocket money" at PayPal when I want to buy something. I´m posting links to the freebies at 2 stores and on my homepage. That`s all I do.

I had a look at my earnings a moment ago:
You have received 2,376 views this month (since the beginning of January)  (sorry about the large text - I copied that and can not find out where I can make the text size smaller)

Not fantastic for 4 days - but not to bad I would say . But I have an own homepage with so many GB free trafic I´ll never ever use. I love to make freebies and hope people will like to use them - but I´ll not have my freebies on a site which makes money with siteviews and "generate" income for them with uploading my freebies here.

You said in your announcement "Second, it became uneconomical. We would pay thousands of dollars to our users, but most individual users would not make that much"

I´m a bit confused now......  .... you want to say it´s more "economical" to pay nothing to the people who are uploading here and the money stays in your pocket *lol* ?

Ok - If it stays the way it is now, I´ll upload my freebies on my own homepage and delete them here.

Well and getting a job with uploading freebies here? You are kidding?
Nobody will get any job doing things like that. Really not.

oh and about the "community" thing......

I think this is a typical site which wants to make money with the service they offer.
There is nothing wrong with this. We all need to work and earn money - or we would
not be able to put bread and butter on the table so to speak.

But I really don´t get it when I see a site which is surrounded with banners etc.
which all bring money to the site owners and I hear always this "but we are mainly
a community site"

I feel a bit like a fish thats been hooked, reeled in and thrown up on the bank.

 I keep hearing all this talk of how the quality of uploads was the problem, but in another thread you state that the problem was that traffic outside the us pays nothing and there is a large international base of visitors to this site. 

 As for the copyright issues its nothing new and most certainly not only at sharecg. Did you really have the assumption that people wouldnt be doing that? 

So in the end you feel your cut was getting too low and now you get 100% and we get zip........ Well we do get to host files here for free but how long is that going to last?

 Nice way to start a community.

karanta: You are my voice :)

I'm with 3500 unfaked views for this month right now. Without promoting mutch and only uploaded 3 items the last 3 weeks.

I realize the file hosting costs money, but karanta does bring up some very valid points, and the point brainstew made - that if the rules of the site being enforced would keep things fairly even keeled.

A lot of the comic hosting sites that do voting, for instance, will put up a page for people clicking in to state if they want to vote for this comic, OR, if they have been tricked/mislead to that site, to click in a report abuse field. Sounds like a perfect way to cut down on traffic that isn't here for the content.

Edited by Goldenthrush on 01/05/08 01:32 PM.

I am all for you guys demanding better uploads...there is nothing that pisses me off more then looking for something and seeing tile textures in the hundreds that take like 1 minute to make in any image software, which should be packaged as one download, but instead uploaded one by one.  No wonder they get 500 views a day, driving everyone who uploads things that actually take time to make down.

 Those who do this kknow who you are I am not going to name names but you are the ones who wrecked this.

Hope re-organization improves the site.

I started here to upload 5000 texture tiles, 3600 done so far, 10 per zip file. I'll upload the the remaining zips as time allows and keep my promise to someone else who helped me.

I didn't come here for money, I don't care about the critics and sour pusses, I appreciate some of the content uploaded by others and I will continue to utilize this site.

IMHO, 

Your kidding me comunity.

Until this theif of labor.  The forum have been dead.

If we want comunity there's facebook, artzone, second life, myspace. This was host your stuff while we pimp our junk site.

Give me a break, we did our job the admin didn't, filter the junk, filter the bots.

I created quality and got cheesed in return.

why 10 per?

why not 100 per or 200 per?

What you are saying is that wneh you are done I am going to have to wade through 500+ tiles packages before I get to something else.

Interesting reactions to this issue......just goes to show what happens when money is involved..... *Raises eyebrow*

I'll continue to upload as long as ShareCG remains a free host & my freebies remain available to people whom may want them.

If the admins deem my offerings mediocre or substandard & remove them, I have other outlets.

Thing to remember, all sites have growing pains & this is just one of many & more sure to come no matter what changes are made. You just can't make all people happy all the time.

When I had my first character ready for release, I needed a place to host it and shareCg was the best place to do that, even without the payments. The real payment I get is from getting as many people as I can to see my work. and when I hear someone compliment my stuff, THAT is worth more than any money I could make here.

But I was able to get a new dvd burner for my pc and some content from the Daz store, and for that I say thank you Share Staff.

of course I'll miss the little I made, but I will continue to use this site simply because there isn't a better place to upload my freebies. If I need money I could always try to sell the stuff at rendo or daz.

I think some of you missed the point of what I wanted to say... Maybe I missworded something because English is not my native language.

I really don't care about the few dollars I make here. If I have them - fine. If I don't have them it will not hurt me. My freestuff will be available again after I'll delete it here. I'll put it on my homepage and I'll pay for my webspace as I always did. So usually I pay my money for giving something to people for free.

But I'll not going to earn money with my freestuff for a business site. If I upload freebies on a site which earns money with my freestuff (and they do so with the siteviews) I want my part of the money. And I think for some people here it makes a BIG difference if they have the 20, 50 or maybe more. Maybe they don't have a job and they need every single little dollar they earn...

If I have money to give away there are better places I could do so (and I very often do so). In Germany - where I live - I give money to SOS Kinderdorf. Also to Red Cross and some other places which are here near where I live. But I don´t give my hard earned money just for fun to companies. Maybe you can see the difference.

So don't say it's about money for me. That´s not what I said. It's about me (or we) making money for a business owner without getting something for it. And that's plain wrong for me.

Maybe think about a company near you and think about going to them and work a day for free for them. I bet they would really love that - but be honest ;) would you do so? Or tell your boss you want to work for him/her without getting money for it a day or even more. That's a strange idea for most of you? Really ;) ?

Ok - this was my last posting about this :)  

(Btw. the banner which says "it pays to share" is still on the page. Maybe it´s really time to remove it ;)....)

Nevertheless - have all a very nice weekend and a great New Year :)

In reply to:

---

So don't say it's about money for me. That´s not what I said. It's about me (or we) making money for a business owner without getting something for it. And that's plain wrong for me.

---

And this is why we say good bye and good riddence. You're being quite hypocritical saying you're not here for the money and yet you're leaving because someone else is getting money and you aren't. You DO get something for uploading content here. You get FREE Hosting! You want to go pay to host your freebies, fine, you should have done that in the first place if all you came here for was the money.

 As far as making money for a business owner goes, That's a Strawman argument.  My freebies draw some traffic to several other sites as well including Renderosity, 3DC and DAZ. Those sites are making money and not paying me either. Should I pull my freebies offline all together? That's not why I make them and it's not why this site was called ShareCG and not PayCG in the first place.

Well if you think I'm "hypocritical" - there is nothing I can do against that :)
People always believe what they want to believe :)

You simply missed my point. Again. That´s all.

And I know what's "hypocritical". My English is not that bad.
And I also think calling people "hypocritical" is an insult.

No more insulting than the insinuations that the site owners have somehow set out to rob you of something when they are giving you me and everyone else free hosting. I didn't miss your point. I find your point to be hypocritical that's all. You don't want someone else making money off of your freebies but you'll gladly cut and run if you're not getting your cut off a site that already gives you a free place to host so you don't have to pay to host elsewhere.

Renderosity makes tonnes of money off of visitors who were drawn there for freebies like yours and mine and you had no problem posting links there to your freebies here as long as you thought it would garner you some money. Will you be pulling your renderosity freebies as well?

What's sad is that you can't see how that reflects on you.

No no no, this isn't a good time to be divided.  Take everyone's points and rather than worrying over who's being hypocritical or purist donater or whatever, and look for a solution that will work for at least MOST of the people here. 

I'm no altruist, I like making money from my hobby, but I'm just a good with barter or praise.  (Okay, money's better, this is an expensive hobby!  XD).  

File hosting is expensive, and that is usually paid for out of pocket and by ads.  There's the main point of barter.  Hosting for the content.  Content for the ads.  

Then there is a share of the ad revenue going to the content creators, which is cool.  Means we don't have to worry about shops and that sort of thing.  And some of us don't feel comfortable with selling our stuff for whatever reason.  

This is abused by people, which happens.  But there are rules against it.  So how about some additional rules?  

No works in progress, or works in progress should be exempt from the share program.

Texture tiles must be in sets, blocks of tiles should be uploaded in batches of (say) 50-100.  

Enforce the other rules.

That's just off the top of my head, two things that seem to be in contention and a big part of the problem.

Seriously though, dividing up camps isn't going to help.  The people who are abusing the system sure aren't going to pop in here, they're going to bail like rats leaving a sinking ship, and likely will not remove their content at all in the hopes they'll get money off of it later anyhow.  

There's a lot of very intelligent and well spoken people here right now, I think that differing reasons for using this service can be successfully combined to make it into something that works for all of us, the content providers, the site owners, and the ad sales people.  

Solutions!  

And no, I don't intend to remove my stuff, I was lucky I could figure out how to upload it in the first place.  XD   

I've been making freebies almost since I figured out how to use poser, without looking for any rewards other than experience and maybe a bit of encouraging feedback.

I'd be lying if I said that to get a bit of pocketmoney for them wasn't nice, it really was  but it isn't the main reason I now post my freestuff here... it's the free hosting.

So I'll continue putting me freebies up here as long as the hosting's free.

And to throw my twopennorth into the ideas ring..... why not just pay people for stuff that is actualy downloaded rather than for page views..... that way the customer(so to speak) would basicly be the one deciding who gets a payout.

Maybe I'm missing somthing, or everyone else in this thread is. I'm still not sure wich it is. :-)

 Are we talking about how to get the revenue back or just cleaning the place up to be an elitist 3d community?

Better content is not going to help generate revenue through ads. Neither is combining 100 textures into 1 file.  If anything it will create less page views and in turn less ad revenue.

I fail to see how you can have both. Your not going to get all high quality free items without some kind of incentive.. Hell, rendo can't even do that in its marketplace, much less freestuff. 

As for the ads revenue not being enough, theyve stated that the problem is that international views or clicks dont count. How to fix that is beyond me other than trying to get international ads in here.  Or at least switching out the ones that dont pay for ones that will.

For myself, I intend to stick around as well.

Sure, the idea of making a little money for the stuff I posted was nice, but to me, the free hosting is far more important. Especially hosting that is so much easier to use for both uploaders and downloaders.

For suggestions, I don't have much. I do think that the idea of paying per download instead of per page view as someone else suggested would be a smarter plan. It would encourage quality since if it's junk, no one will download and with IP tracking, it would be a little harder to abuse I would think.

On the quality issue though, I've been wondering lately why you don't see any groups for Freestuff creators like there are for merchants. Or at least none that I've heard of. Perhaps if one was created, while it wouldn't do a thing about those who are just in this for the quick buck, if done right it could be highly useful for those who want to put out quality work.

*shrugs* Just a thought. 

I don't mind hearing an opposing point of view. I just don't think people who are saying things like "Oh they just wanted all our stuff to generate views for their ad revenue to grow large enough they could skate on it and dump the providers" are precisely the ones who are here to abuse the system.

I provided my freebies from my own paid hosting for 5 years before closing my site due to financial issues. Finding a free host has been the best way to keep my freebies available. Getting paid for it made it better, but it's no reason to pull my freebies if I'm not being paid. Where's the "Share" in that?

The people who are just here to earn are not here to share which in and of itself is not at all the spirit of what the site was purported to be. A Place to share your freebies with others. Emphasis on Sharing! Not Earning. 

Actually, if it comes down to the technical, ShareCG started off this community by offering to pay uploaders because they felt the freestuff providers deserved to be compensated...and they said so in the first page, in the top paragraph of the Learn More area:

"Does ShareCG really pay me for uploading my CG art, animations, tutorials, 3d models, and other resources?

Yes. All over the web, CG professionals, artists, and hobbyists are sharing their content with the world for free. The sites they choose to share it on are the real ones that benefit, though, making thousands with advertising. We believe that those that make the art, tutorials, and downloads deserve their fair share."

And this is what drew most everyone in...not only because its was a free host, and easy to navigate..

I personally don't care about the money...but I do care about the direction the site is going. Alot of questions. 

When I discovered ShareCG, I was looking for a software program etc that I could put on my own domain so I could run a freebie area, and a store of my own, {once I got good enough to begin selling items}....I'm still looking, and have been the entire time I have been here.

If I find what I'm looking for, I may leave my items here, and at my place too, or I might pull everything and move it there exclusively...doesn't mean I'm jumping ship because I'm not being paid tho..I never really got that much to begin with ~shrugs~

Been some good ideas I have seen here...keep those thinking caps on ;) 

Yes indeed Steve. ShareCG has provided so many with a good hosting site and it is a shame that some are thinking of jumping ship. People here are so lucky in being able upload their freestuff. Being in the UK, I have had so many problems uploading (takes several attempts and much time lost) and cannot spare the time it takes.

Be thankful for such a good hosting site that allows your work to be previewed in formats other than tiny thumbnails.

It is sad that some individuals cannot accept or see that they have abused the site. The only solution that I can see is to have moderators. This can be controversial...but we live in the real world....and we are all subject to scrutiny in what we do. What is so wrong with a group of diverse people determining the usefulness of material posted here???? I am all for moderation if admin can afford it.

Good luck everyone!!!

Thank you for all your comments, and we really appreciate all the people saying that they are going to stay with us. Like many of you, we are also disappointed that the original revenue sharing system didn’t work out. We are considering alternatives, and I hope those with opinions will voice them in the discussion started by Dadchamp here: http://www10.sharecg.com/wwwthreads-5.3/showflat.php?Cat=8,9,10,11,12&Board=suggestions&Number=87901&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0∂=1&vc=1

There were a few people who made four basic arguments, which I will respond to here:

1. The site gets revenue from ads, and that revenue should be shared

While it's true that the site gets revenue from ads, remember that we have to pay our staff, as well as servers, office space, etc.

But in principle, we still agree that artists deserve to get the benefits of their hard work. That's why we're going to work our hardest to return to revenue sharing, but with a more sensible system that won't drown the website in illegitimate, copyright, or low quality posts.

2. There are no benefits to sharing on the site other than revenue
I know our site needs improvements, but as it stands, I think we offer a pretty good deal. You can upload an unlimited amount of files, up to 180MB each, and we'll host it for you for free. We make it easily searchable by tool type, category, format, etc. We give you an audience of hundreds of thousands of artists a month, where you can get helpful feedback and start a discussion about your work, which will ultimately help you become a better artist.

We are involved in an overall effort to beautify our site—making it easier to use, leave feedback, and a better place to showcase your work. In the near future, we will introduce our jobs system, which will allow you to use our website to submit a resume to hundreds of employers. We're going to introduce a Flash portfolio application, which you can use to present your art, animations, tutorials, or even freebies and embed in your resumes for the job system on our site.

3. If we enforced the rules, there would be no problems
First, one of the largest problems was the quality of uploads on the site, but the line between what is and isn't art, and what should or should not be showcased on our site, is too difficult to draw. We hoped the rating system and view counts would help the quality posts float to the top, but for whatever reason (and perhaps because people were driven by money, not wanting to leave feedback) it never really worked.

Second, the copyright issue is very complicated, and our staff had to spend hours trying to determine if a 3d Model or Poser freebie violated someone's copyright. Of course this might continue without the payment system, but the incentives made it so that people wanted to cheat the system. We anticipate a significant decrease in copyright infringement after we abolish the payment system.

4. This was a "bait and switch"
We respect our artists, and were never trying to trick them into anything. Please remember that we paid our contributors for every month we had a revenue sharing system, and we informed you when it ended. Our services were always and will continue to be 100% free, and you can easily remove all your content whenever you want.

Community ... Jake my support is behind you 110% as always! I want you to succeed because that means I did my part. And I thank you whole heartedly for providing FREE web space and FREE support for all the items I have uploaded. I have never complained about anything you have done and have always supported ALL of your business decisions. Even this one! Especially THIS ONE!

 HEY, where were all you whiny toads when it was time for making suggestions BEFORE the $#!T hit the fan? It becomes so obvious who the problems are whenever there is a change ... payout rate drops ... people whine and complain. Payout system stops ... same people whine and complain. And always the same ones who are NEVER active in discussions before. If you're not here for the money, just why are you here if the only time we hear from you is when there is a problem WITH the money! Also, do any other sites offer a click button on download pages for DONATIONS? HMMM???? I've gotten about a $150 so far that way.

Matrix is right ... hypocrits. GO somewhere else, you are not welcome here. It is not a community divided, it is a community shaking out the loosers and moochers and moving forward to improve!

I'm with Dadchamp and want to know where the heck was all you in previous discussions on ANYTHING! 

Sharecg Admin.....I love ya'll for the ease of posting freebies and finding freebies.....I check the site daily for poser, textures, 2d, art, and forums.....I'll be regardless as long as you remain free!  And I'll do whatever to help make the site the BEST....

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents worth in, I can't speak for anyone else of course but I can give my own opinion loudly enough.. lol..

Personally I started using Sharecg for entirely selfish reasons, but not because I ever thought I was going to make a living off of the revenue sharing concept.

Granted, it's a great idea, but it wasn't my main goal.  I was looking for a site on which I could host some freebies, now that I'm starting off in modelling I'd like to build a name for myself before I run out and try to sell a bunch of stuff.  I think that's a much better way to go than to just jump in and start trying to sell commercial products on other sites right away.

So far the only two items I've done were both by request from message boards on another site, just simple little things I threw together relatively quickly.   Granted I'm planning on uploading much more complex models as well, to showcase my abilities and give people confidence in my commercial products.

If someone wants to know how good of a modeler I am I can always point them towards my freebies and say, "here, try these out and see what you think", I think it's the best way to build customer confidence imaginable.

So the revenue sharing thing was always a "bonus" as far as I was concerned, if I got a bit of extra revenue that way great, but the free hosting and ease of use for the folks wanting to download my stuff far outweighed any other concerns in my mind.

I've already posted my thoughts on ways to bring back revenue sharing and do so in such a fashion as artists can get rewarded for their work but scammers won't, hopefully you'll find something in there of use.   But as far as staying a member of ShareCG, you bet.  I'm not going anywhere. 

In reply to:

---

But now that I'm here rest assured I'll be the whiniest toad of all.. lol..

---

Sorry but that position already has a full time employee in it. 

Hey Matrix, I thought you were the dog everyone kicks around? When did you become a toad?

Crap.. figures.. full time employee huh?  Bet he's part of the UWWNHFTC (Union of Weasely and Whiney Non Human Fairy Tale Creatures) too, so they won't be able to fire him.

Well, if there still in the market for a volunteer whiney toad.. lol..

Um... I suppose my biggest concern is whether my uploads are to be considered "low quality?" I'm pretty new at this whole content provider thing. I know I've messed up a few times. That's part of the learning process. Eventually, I'll get things right so that my work can measure up to the professional quality content people pay for, but that will take time, obviously. That's why I haven't even tried to sell anything. I mean, I'm still learning how to package things properly for people, as well as learning how to make the content, in the first place. ShareCG is giving me the practice I need to get my work up to the kind of quality standards I'm aiming for. But the discussion of low quality work has gotten me a little nervous. People have been kind enough to give my uploads 5 stars, which really surprised me, as I really don't think they're good enough for that rating. I'm not saying they're not useful, or I wouldn't have uploaded them, at all (why waste valuable space with uploads you don't feel would be useful to people?). But 5 stars is very generous, considering that people have had to paitently wait for me to notice and/or work through a few blunders I've made, and I'm very grateful for such generosity. But I'm afraid that ShareCG will not agree with the people who find my work useful, from what they said about the rating system not working, and delete my content, anyhow?

As for how I feel about no longer being able to earn a little pocket money, especially after only having been here for a month, I've been trying to do a bit of research by looking for other... (oh, what kind of site is this called, anyhow? An uploading site?) uploading sites like ShareCG, and so far, I've found ShareCG to be unique in offering what appears to be unlimited space for content (or have I misunderstood, and missed the part where I have only a limited amount of space?). Granted, I've only been able to explore two other sites: 4Shared and CNet's uploads.com. And both of those sites only offer a limited amount of storage space for free. You have to pay for more if you find the space granted to not be enough. And after finally getting the chance to discuss the matter with someone who knows more about these things than I do, I was told that was about par for sites like that. In fact, I was told that the 5 gigs 4Shared offered was really very generous, as other sites will only allow up to 500 megs of space, or so. So, I've finally come to the conclusion that ShareCG is still, in a way, sharing its revenue with us by giving us unlimited storage space for free.

(continued from last post)

After thinking about the situation in light of this new information, I guess that's a pretty fair deal. There's no way, at this point in time, that I can afford to pay for unlimited space with those other sites, so I'm glad that a site like ShareCG exists, and has allowed me to upload my content without any real fuss. Yes, I’m disappointed and regretful that the system is ending just as I signed up. This means I won’t be able to get a certain Poser utility I have my eye on earlier than my initial plans, after all. But, to be completely honest, I didn’t even know that ShareCG had a revenue sharing program when I made the decision to upload my first Poser freebie about a month ago. (Yes, I know. Apparently, banners were flying everywhere stating that this was the case, but I’ve only been to ShareCG, up to that point, through Renderosity, and when I’ve got my eye on a great download, I really don’t notice anything else!) All I knew, at the time, was that I had made a great character that was, in the end, going to be wasted through disuse, so I thought, why not offer it to the Poser community? Someone, somewhere, just might find it useful enough for their commercial or non-commercial renders. I chose ShareCG because, other than 4Shared and Cnet, it was the only site I knew of where I could upload my character, and as one who downloads a lot of free content, I liked ShareCG the most. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could earn a little pocket change by the number of views I got, and even more pleasantly surprised when people asked me for more. So, I gave more, and am trying to make more, such as a skirt pack for Aiko and a kilt pack for Hiro (sorry, that’s as close as I can get to a matching pack for Hiro).

But, I find myself asking if I should bother as, again, I keep coming back to my initial question: is my work even good enough that ShareCG will even allow me to keep it here? That's got me all in knots... I mean, my armor set doesn't even have body morphs in it, yet, although I'm working on it. But will that weigh against me? Will they delete my things?

In reply to:

---

Hey Matrix, I thought you were the dog everyone kicks around? When did you become a toad?

---

Who says I was speaking of myself? I was kinda thinking of a certain Irishman here abouts.

TheKeeper, As a freebie, no one is going to complain about your armor not having body morphs (at least they shouldn't).

It's the commercial packages that people pay for that at least the most basic body morphs are expected to have included.

A good example is my V4 T-Shirt model.  The free version does not have morphs, but I do sell commercially the same model with all of the standard V4 body morphs built into it.

I've had no complaints about body morphs not being in the free version.

Edited by TheKeeper on 01/07/08 10:43 AM.

It's the 100's of single textures for items like the DAZ Cyclorama or multiple clothing textures for commercial products where all that's been done to them is to change the colors that people complain about the most. Also people have a problem with people uploading textures that they do not own and did not make from other websites that host these images. ShareCG's TOS says it should be your own work that you're uploading and not somebody elses.

My own Lost In Space stuff falls under the catagory of collaborative work since it's not all my own work but I give credit to the other people who've worked on them and have the proper permissions to redistribute them. All of the Lost in Space items were previously hosted by me on lostin3d.com. Most of them have improvements over the originals that I did myself.

It's not so much beginning modeling attempts that are at issue here, it's folks who have been abusing the system by uploading a lot of garbage and then using external programs to generate tons of hits on files so they can make extra money from the revenue sharing.

A shirt for V3 or V4 doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles to be considered quality work, indeed if it just fits right I consider that quality enough for freebie purposes.

But were talking about folks here who upload stuff that took them 5 or 10 minutes to generate and spam the content database with it, then use all sorts of tricks to generate extra hits for extra cash.

So no worries, I'm sure your modelling skills are just fine as is and I'm sure that like me your improving with each and every model you complete.  Lord knows my stuff isn't anything to write home about just yet either.. lol..

Lol.. well I can't promise you anything about your content being deleted, I'm no admin - just another member of the community putting in my 2 cents worth and trying to come up with ideas on how to get the revenue sharing reinstated as quickly as possible.

I haven't heard any plans for anyone deleting anything, and I'm sure the site admins would have mentioned something about it by now if they were even considering it, but then again who knows... pretty easy to start a panic with even a rumor like that one.

It often amazes me what herd animals human beings can be at times.. all it takes is one little lemur to start a huge stampede right over the cliff edge.. lol..

Oh, I thought I had read something about ShareCG deleting files. Maybe I misread it. It's a good possibility, considering I'm operating on only a few hours of sleep, lately. My own fears could just be projecting phantom words here and there.

And I'm very much a panicky kind of girl when sudden changes occur! Don't mean to start a stampede, though. rofl!

ok, i am just back online after my xmas hols, and this whole thing came as a shock.

 i have read thru peoples arguements.

fair enough, we are getting free hosting. nice one. although this is not really anything unique, and sharecg has (in my experiance) slower speeds, and more bugs than the established service providers like filefront. so this is not really an incentive.

as re; sharecg being a community; i think most of us are more likely to use more specialist, or more active forums for comunities. there is precious little comunity here. this is the only thread to have seen serious activity in a while. although i appreciate the effort needed to make a comunity, you need to entice people into one, and allow time to let it develop on its own time, or not, if thats the way it is going to be.

as re; the quality issue. i have been saying this for ages. quit being nice about it, and just delete everything and everyone that is not good at their craft. all mediocre stuff should be scrapped. accross the board. dont be nice, dont be fair. just do it. because if you dont, this place will be swamped in crap, as it is doing. and like a nutrified lake, it will suffocate.

 as re; the money.... yes, this is a change for the worse. it has been fully discussed above. instead of 50 per cent, sharecg is now taking 100 per cent. which is not what i signed up for. you have not stuck to the spirit of what we signed up to, and in fact it could be seen that we have been hoodwinked. get us to upload enough, and build up a reputation for the site, then shelves us, with self-contradicting excuses.

as for whether or not this is legal, i dont know yet. i want to see the user agreement again that i saw when i signed up. there is a posibility that there are grounds for suing. i dont have an interest in this, right now at least.

as for me; if my 50 percent as is usually calculated is not either put aside for distribution by agreement later on, when this has been dealt with properly, or at the very least, given to a reputable charity, i will without a doubt be removing my work. its not about the money, its about breach of trust. we cant all of a sudden decide we want 100 percent. why should david and jacob? i view this as insulting to the people who have helped make sharecg what it is today.

Well, as I had only been signed up for a month, I figured that ShareCG had been announcing they were going to make this move for some time, and I just didn't know it. Was this not the case, and the announcement truly was sudden?

In any event, even if it was, and was a breach in contract, I have to wonder if it's even worth suing over? Especially as they've said they were going to bring revenue sharing back when they've made it less prone to abuse (nothing is ever free from abuse, not when money is involved). Me, I'm content to leave the whole matter alone. I'm still going to upload my content here because, in the end, I've decided that I like ShareCG's format, especially the ability to upload nice, large pictures demonstrating what's in the zip I've uploaded.

The Keeper: "And I'm very much a panicky kind of girl when sudden changes occur! Don't mean to start a stampede, though. rofl!"

"The lemmings... look.. there starting a stampede"

"Oh Dear Lord, that's no stampede, it's an all out attack..  run for your lives!!"

 Lol..

gives Irishboy a big sloppy kiss for not saying what I figured he would say...

I could live with only having 20-25 items payable.....As long as I got to chose what items there were for me and it be allowed to change from month to month.

Is this true?

Great..
I guess my content is crap.. :(

Noted and thanks for the heads up.

@ sissywoods

 Got that feeling too? ;)

No, your items are definitely NOT crap!!

Wait wait wait wait wait....Sissy....I've downloaded all your laces and I love them....and well.....Kimber already knows I worship her texture sets!  Both have better sets than some that I have paid good darn money for!  I can honestly say that I would be crushed if either stopped sharing their creations.....along with quiet a few other creators here.......

 I'd like to know what admin thinks of all the suggestions for making this site work?

LOL, Panthia, I have no intentions of removing anything or stopping (except to take a breather now & then). :))) *HUGS*

I have alternatives if my content gets booted from here. I'm just waiting to see what changes will be done. Final decision will not be made until the new policy is implemented, whatever it may be. Til then, I'm here & will continue to share. ;)

@sissywoods

I've had a look at your portfolio and although I do not use PSP, my personal opinion is that you don't need to worry about your items being crap. They're not.

Anyway, although it would be nice to see less spammers because the obvious crap makes ShareCG less attractive, that would never solve the problem of payments in the long run. The more popular ShareCG gets, the less money they will be able to pay. Reducing the number for items for which payments are made is a good idea, but in my opinion that also would only work for a while.

I think that people should really try and see ShareCG as a platform to gain a reputation as an artist, a place to showcase their work. Like someone else said before, uploading a shirt for V4 without morphs for free and selling the same item with morphs at Renderosity or elsewhere is something that makes perfect sense. You will never get the amount of money for such an item out of ShareCG, with or without the morphs.

This is why I don't understand many of the discussions that have been going on here. I've been following the postings here and in other threads (passively for the most part), and I just can't get it into my head why all those people who think so highly of their items (and I'm not insinuating that they are not justified to do so) don't actually sell them.

Since money does seem to matter a lot, which indeed is understandable, put 'em up for sale in a shop. ShareCG is not a shop. You will never get the same earnings here, it's just not possible. If you upload your stuff here because you think your items are not good enough to be sold, don't complain about how little money you receive from ShareCG, that's ridiculous. So is Irishlostboys idea of possibly sueing ShareCG for cancelling payments, by the way. Let's not turn this thing into a soap opera.

Which, for one thing, leaves the community question. With all those well-established and/or specialized forums out there, ShareCG will have a hard time bringing the forums to life as long as nothing can be found that would make them stand apart from what already exists. ShareCG needs a concept to attract people to the forums. I agree with Irishlostboy on that one.

(continued from my last post... ) 

As for the never-ending crap issue... Like Jake said earlier, it is indeed difficult to define what is art and what is not. There is a lot of obvious stuff though. However, there also is a lot of stuff that is not quite that obvious. Take modeling for example. Being a beginner, I download many models to analyze them in order to learn from them. Although a lot of them looked nice at first sight, I was really surprised to see so much inefficient modeling. Reversed normals, objects that have not been properly optimized, mistakes that show that people just don't know the basics of their application's modeling tools etc. etc. And no, those models were not made by someone who has just started out and subdivided the crap out of a cube just to get it really smooth. Often enough, these items are by people whose resume qualifies them as pros...

Still, some of those items, though not perfect, are nice anyway. That, however , is not my point. The point is, who will test the uploads and define what is crap and what is not? Because that's one thing that has to be done to weed out the crap. With many items you cannot judge the book by the cover. And with the modeling section covered, who will test the Poser stuff and all of the other content that is uploaded to guarantee a certain degree of quality?

Personally, I like the versatility that can be discovered here at ShareCG. I like the fact that it's not just a pro site, and that you can find items of all kinds and tastes. That anyone can offer their stuff that they have worked on hard. Even if not everything is perfect to the last vertex or pixel.

Unlike irshlost boy, I do find ShareCG attractive as a file hoster, and as a database for content. Admittedly, download speeds could be higher, but there are still advantages other sites don't offer. One of them – this has been mentioned by someone else before - is the ability to upload large previews that allow people to get a better idea of the item they are about to download. I find that very useful.

Stepdad: "The lemmings... look.. there starting a stampede"

"Oh Dear Lord, that's no stampede, it's an all out attack..  run for your lives!!"

 Lol..

rofl! Would an "Oops, sorry about that!" make up for any damages?

Nahh..no need.  It' s like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, if your dumb enough to get caught on the wrong side of the fence you get what you deserve.. lol..

Let's just look at something shall we? Here's my earnings history of clicks and payout rates since I joined.

Month            Views    RatePerView
Jun. 2007      1056      0.00526
Jul. 2007        3336     0.00539
Aug. 2007      3760     0.00520
Sep. 2007      8810     0.00463
Oct. 2007     14009     0.00343
Nov. 2007    12320     0.00331
Dec. 2007    10658     0.00310

In the seven months I've been here. The payout rate has been in a nose dive with only one month where it perked up just a smidge. This was only going to get worse as the site continued to grow under the current revenue sharing plan. Better that they stopped the hemoraging now in the hope of saving the leg than to wait til gangreen sets in!

in theory though, the drop in our revenue is not reflected in the drop in sharecg's revenue. in fact, with the increased profile of sharecg, the oposite is probably the case.

thanks panthia for the kiss. :) you can never get enough of them. as re; not saying what you thought i would say..... well this is a serious thread, i will save my slagging of poser heads for entertainment. :) nothing like mindless abuse to cheer me up.

re; the "look at the lemmings run" comments and their like, they are not really constructive. maybe it would suit some people to stay here in a sea of abandoned detritus, which is a possible end result of this rash and previously undiscussed move. i dont think you can say you are building a community and then act like a dictator and not even consult the members of the said comunity before making such a move. 

Irishboy, since I'm the one who started the lemmings thing I think a point of clarification is in order.

It was a comment made to another poster about sharecg deleting material from there content database.  Since we had heard nothing of the sort I merely commented to them that we had heard nothing about sharecg deleting anything.

The poster had commented back to me about how grateful they were that such was not the case, said something I found amusing and then the lemmings joke got started.  It wasn't directed at anyone, nor was it meant to categorize those vendors who've decided or who are thinking about leaving sharecg as "lemmings", indeed nothing could be further from the truth.

It had nothing to do with vendors who were thinking about leaving, it was a joke intended for that one poster about starting a panic over people thinking there items were going to be deleted, nothing more, nothing less.

So you and anyone else who might have been offended have my deepest apologies, but rest assured that no offense was intended and nothing personal was meant by the lemmings comments.  It had nothing to do with vendors who might decide to leave Sharecg for greener pastures.

@Kimber, thanks, yes we were thinking along the same lines.. lol.. your work is awesome and I know a lot of people have benefited from the freebies you've shared.
@Panthia, thanks so much for your feedback, it is helpful and appreciated so much. I hope you find the tubes useful.
Thanks for the positive comments brainstew and dadchamp.

Please forgive my outburst/venting.. I know better. I usually take things with a grain of salt, but I tend to be passionate about my work (aren't we all..).

I ran across this site time and time again coming here from freebie links. When I saw all the content from so many different programs and artists, the no-hassle ease to download, the positive encompassing sense of 'community', and seeing the stats/numbers of all the visitors, I thought, 'how cool is this!!'. (* I mention this to give a sense of the original potential of this site's impact for myself and possibly for others)

So I signed up and tried it. Compared to another site, it was nice not having to go through five pages of info just to share an upload. The other site seemed to have dial-up upload time and ShareCG seemed better. So this was convenient, a nice plus.

This site has been helpful with it's features for feedback. It's helped me learn as an artist, as a potential merchant, and the site and fellow artists have inspired me.

So things just didn't work out the way they were originally planned for the site. I understand this.. it's the owners perogative to change things. I accept this.

I am concerned with the comments and treatment of members here that is less than respectful. I'm not supportive of that.
I'm undecided at this point if I'll leave.., if I don't get booted first.. lol. I've pulled some of my content. At this point my gut tells me to move on.

 suggestions: (*I'll post this in the other thread too)
-I seriously hope that the respect/treatment of the members is quickly addressed.. major priority
-Moderate the forum or pull it? Ask for volunteers?
-surely there is a way to accommodate artists outside the US? (taxes,etc). Other sites have achieved this..
-I've tried to look at the pros and cons from different perspectives, there's no way around it, uploads need to be moderated and approved. This addresses the copyright, quality, and cut down on the abusers/spammers. It will help artists know specifically what's appropriate content. It may take a little longer for uploads to be processed. We've had to deal with that before.. Someone mentioned volunteers, I was thinking the same thing, and if they get an additional %, that much better of an offer.
-Base payouts on Downloads, not views. Some of us check back occasionally on our uploads when someone posts a comment. Not all views are downloads.

 Sorry for the long-winded post.. This is just my humble opinion. If it's helpful, great!! If you think I'm full of it.. well, that's ok too.. :D

Jake, I hope everything works out for the best for you and the site. I think the original concept was fantastic for reasons mentioned above.

I know we're all a bunch of passionate artists, but you guys (me too.. properly chastised..) please try to remember to be respectful of each other, be sweet, play nice!!.. :D

most sincerely, sissy

No worries, no harm done really.  I posted the apology just to be on the safe side, I didn't want anyone thinking I had treated them the way I had just recently been treated in another thread, so I had no problems posting the apology and it really wasn't a big deal.  Just better to do it on the off chance that someone else might misinterpret what was said, as one person obviously already had.

Sadly these message forums are completely without boundries or guidelines, without moderation of any sort.  People who give helpful suggestions at the admins request can (and are, I speak from personal experience here) and are harrassed, insulted and demeaned publically and loudly all for having the temerity to offer a few helpful and free suggestions on improvements.  If you happen to differ in your opinion with a couple of immature posters whom I will not name, you get slammed pretty quick.

Sadly the admins response to this has been utterly non-existent, there only concern seemed to be with the ideas the thread generated, not at all with the brutish treatment that some of us who offered those ideas in good faith recieved. 

The entire incident has left a pretty sour taste in my mouth overall, and though I once pledged my support to Sharecg regardless of the revenue sharing situation, I must now say that I am entirely on the fence and seriously considering going elsewhere.  If you ask for people's help and they give it freely you don't thank them by letting a couple of snotty brats slap them in the face repeatedly without saying a word.  It's just no way to run a railroad and there is simply no excuse for it whatsoever.

So Sharecg at the moment is a very, very big question mark in my mind.  While I do like a lot of people in the community, thus far I must say the admins have a lot of work to do before they earn back my trust or respect.  The treatement I have recieved here thus far has been nothing short of shameful in all respects.

"If you happen to differ in your opinion with a couple of immature posters whom I will not name, you get slammed pretty quick." -Stepdad

There are only a couple that get very rude to the point I have a strong desire to cut loose my bad attitude upon them. An ignore feature would be most welcome. Besides, after being at Rendo for awhile, one should be used to it. :)))))

Go check your paypal account Matrix. It may have already been paid.

Mine was added to my account on the 3rd, but payment doesn't show in my ShareCG balance.

That's odd. This is the first time the payment showed up there before I saw it here and it's still not showing here but I did get it. I guess when they canceled future payments it somehow disabled the payment notification here for December.  PayPal shows it was recieved on the 3rd.

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

has anyone who never made $20 been paid?  I have about $10 in my 'earnings' that havn't been paid out.

I thought that we were all getting what was due?

Yeah I have actually checked in my PayPal , and nothing is there from here.  I checked it before I posted just in case I missed it...I realize that quite a few have been paid but wondering if anyone else was missed...so thought that I would check if any under the limits have been paid, and it seems according to your answer that they have so I will get in contact with the site.

Thanks for your time.

Well i ment that no longer people upload 5-min. models like alien object or such kind of nosence.

Have you noticed that on the first page there is a model one week old?

Being new does not meen flooding wright? I've been new also not so long ago and my first models and even not bad models but by tutorial STAY ON MY PC.

I have more then 20 dollars earnings, it would be my first and also my last payment, but I didn't receive any payment, I checked my paypalaccount there is nothing, I wonder if something went wrong.

hugs

There are many websites that pay for content. Each differ in their products. I even earn at cafepress.

Regarding the sharing being suspended, lets just wait and see what will happen. I'm thankful for the money I got. i bought some pc stuff with the extra money plus I get to link some videos to my other products like so. http://www.fallingpixel.com/product.php/1897 or

http://www.exchange3d.com/cubecart/architecture/suburban-street-walkthrough/prod_4790.html

affiliate 

Edited by raytracer on 01/18/08 06:25 AM.

I am new to this site and uploaded 6 models last week which took over 1,400 hits between them.Now my account is back to 0 for a new month,does the 1,400 get credited or carried forward?

And I am confused about this revenue sharing how many views are needed to generate any payment?

 Cheers! Jed.

Hi,Thanks for clearing that up!I'll keep my stuff here and see what happens!

  I posted my models so I could link from Renderosity free-stuff.Earning a few quid would be a bonus but sharing is quite rewarding in itself.

   Cheers! Jed.

Hello everyone.

I'm new to sharecg, and only created my account about a week ago. I knew there would be no payouts, before I decided to join.

I selected sharecg for two reasons:

1)      A lot of free content that I wanted was stored on sharecg

2)      It would be easy to link my file to sharecg from other forums.

The main purpose of this post seemed to be:

1)      Announce a policy change (no more payouts).

2)      Announce the intent to resume payouts when a solution is found.

3)      Give members of the sharecg community the opportunity to help resolve the problem so that payouts can resume.

A new set of policies can help:

1)      Anyone found guilty of the violations that created this problem would be permanently banned.  This would include stealing other people’s work, using bots to artificially increase numbers, misleading people to their link to their content, etc…

2)      Pay by download, rather than by view.  Many download sites require a confirmation code to download a file.  After viewing a graphic file, the user has to type the characters in a box.

Edited by DavidJHanna on 02/09/08 11:11 PM.

a.      One for stolen content.  One verified case and the user is banned, and all payment is forfeit.

b.      Misleading link.  5 cases and item is deleted, and all payment for that item is forfeit.  2 deleted and the user is banned, and all payment is deleted.

4)      Original limit of 10 items.  The user can then request a review.  If the content passes review, the limit goes up to 25.  If the user requests a second review, the limit can go up to 100.

5)      Payment date will be three months after the end of the month.  This gives sharecg more time to weed out violators.  It will not affect the non-cheaters.  They will still get a monthly payment; it will just be a little later.

6)      Payment rate will be affected by the rating.  5 stars get 100% of the rate.  4 stars get 80% of the rate, 3 stars get 50% of the rate, and below 3 stars get nothing.  This rewards better content, but may be hard to prevent cheating, so you may want to skip this step.

I know these rules sound a bit severe, but it is easer to start tough, and soften over time, than to start soft and then try to make rules.  If this post was about starting a sharing the profits policy, nobody would be threading to leave.

-David

The rating system does not work, because somebodies trash can be anotherone's treasure. It even does not show, if something is completely off the road. I have been quiet here for a long time, though I am on ShareCG for almost 1 year. But I think I have one or the other thing to say..

Good thing: I had the opportunity to test what people are interested in. I posted textures, both "generated" and made from photos, tutorials, some models from older files, because I was curious to see, what people are after with sometimes "stunning" results. I learned, that tutorials are obviously the most interesting stuff from my point of view. By the way, even generated textures are work, since for my part, I have tested them and used them in own works. It is true, that "homecooked" textures take more time to produce them. Just to say something against some other opinions here.

Difficult: As maybe some others here, I am always looking for similar content, in my case everything useable for visualization, because that is what I do. I often have the impression here, that the Poser stuff has taken over everything. Frontpage ShareCG: To me it looks like Poser-paradise. Is this too specialised and might turn off other 3D guys?

Don't get me wrong, I am not the kind of person saying, that  this or that software is better or more professional than the other one, I just feel, that people like me are not really represented here. This might also confuse potential clients for advertising on this website and therefor mainly Google ads have been running, which does not make heaps of money. We all have seen the revenue going down to very low levels, which was probably caused by the lack of advertisers. So where is this all going here? I think that we, the uploaders and the downloaders, deserve some more answers from the site-owners. We know, there have been probs with low-quality content, likely also copyrights, but what is exactly the goal for the future? This is, at least, what I am asking myself after the revenue sharing has been cancelled. It is six weeks ago now. I will now remove parts of my content, as a form of "protest" , because....I would like to know, what is the new concept for this website?