Tips for Success
When you start selling your products on Blender Market, you may have big ideas about how much supplemental income you are going to earn or how selling your products will finally allow you to strike out on your own. Your big ideas are achievable, but they are going to take some effort. Here we have compiled top tips for success on Blender Market.
1. Create Great Products
What makes a great product? It is well made, free from bugs, and maintained or updated when it needs to be. Ideally, it works with the newest versions of Blender. Maybe it is one-of-a-kind, but maybe it isn't. Most importantly, it does what it claims it will do.
2. Present Your Products Effectively
Product Description
Your product description is what sets customers' expectations. It is where you make promises about what your product will do, what software versions it will work with, and how it will make your customers' lives easier when they are working in Blender. If you do not provide enough information, potential customers may think that your product was hastily thrown together or not well-thought-out. If you promise things that you cannot deliver, customers who purchase your product may request refunds, leave your product bad reviews, and avoid purchasing products from you in the future. Be sure to keep your descriptions clear, thorough, and well written.
Documentation
Providing quality support documentation and FAQs with your products will help get customers started with their purchases and allow them to easily troubleshoot any challenges that they run into. Good documentation will also limit the amount of time that you have to spend replying to support requests or answering dissatisfied reviews on your product pages.
Images
Your potential customers all work with Blender and are, to varying degrees, visual people. By creating eye-catching images that illustrate your products, their functionalities, and possible uses, you are reaching customers in a way that grabs their imagination. Your images should complement your product descriptions and documentation, allowing customers to visualize how your product works and what it is capable of.
3. Get the Word Out About Your Products
Social Media
Social media is a free outlet to advertise and share your products. Connect with others and tell them what's so special about what you are selling on Blender Market. But don't limit yourself to social media! You can also submit news items to sites like BlenderNation or direct your website visitors to your Blender Market product pages.
Affiliates
Affiliates do some of your advertising legwork for you. They refer potential customers to your products and, in exchange, you give them a percentage of your profits when those referrals lead to sales.
4. Price Your Products Appropriately
Pricing your products can be difficult. What should you base your product price on? Time spent making the product? Value to your customer? Market price? You don't want the price to be too high, or people will dismiss it out-of-hand, and you don't want it to be too low, or people may think that what you're selling has no value.
A good place to start is looking at how similar products on Blender Market (or elsewhere) are priced and adjusting from there. Consider the product's value to your customers—is it a small asset that is going to be tucked into the corner of a scene? Or is it an add-on or training that is going to shave hours off of customers' projects? Remember: prices are not set in stone. You may want to start your product at one price and then adjust it up or down to gauge how the change affects your sales.
The bottom line? Choosing a competitive and appropriate price will make it more likely that customers will choose your product when faced with several options.
5. Provide Good Customer Service
This is so important. A lot of product referrals are the result of word-of-mouth recommendations. Someone—maybe a high-profile someone, but maybe not—calls out your product on a YouTube video or in their Blenderartists post and you suddenly have dozens more people looking at and buying your product. Those types of recommendations are typically the result of two things: a good product and good customer service.
What is good customer service? Responding thoughtfully and in a timely manner to support requests, communicating about product updates, providing good support documentation. Not only will good customer service lead to new customers, but it will also build customer loyalty. Customers who have bought one of your products and had a good experience will be more likely to buy more products from you.
6. Build Your Brand
One way to keep people coming back for more is by establishing your brand. Your brand isn't just what avatar you use or what overlay you put on your product images. It is the standard that customers can expect when they purchase your product. The standard of what? Of product quality, of documentation, of customer service. By delivering these things at a consistently high level, your brand will come to be known as a provider of high-quality products and services.