Experienced sellers: I'd love to hear your real numbers

Hello there! Here is my response:

1. My first model that I uploaded and 3D modeled was a pencil I didn't make a sale on it until a couple months later but I was so happy when it actually sold. I was not expecting that at all. This gave me the motivation to keep on creating models and as time went on the quality of my models has increased.

2. I can't remember exactly at how many models I had up for sale that showed my sales to be regular. I'm just going to put a number out there and say somewhere between 10 and 30.

3. I noticed as I created more higher quality models number of sales has increased. I believe that its not the amount of models that you put up for sale but the quality of the models. Customers have no idea how many models you have for sale but if they see a high quality model they would most likely purchase that one.

4. For my models it seems I sell a good balance between the collections that I have created as well as the individual models. Some of the collections I have I also sell individual models of the models in the collection as some people aren't always looking for an entire collection. Also to create a collection you have to first have the individual models on your store page and then with the collection creator you can put them together into a collection. For each one of my models I like to have the models fully manually UV unwrapped, included baked textures for customers in game development, and good descriptions so they know what they will get when they purchase one of my models. I also include help documents, rendered images and more.

5. If I was starting from scratch today I would look around the internet for inspiration for things to model, go outside see if there are things I feel confident in re creating, or just look around the house and see what stands out. I would think to myself what types of models people could use them for whether in game development, scenes or other things.

Hope this information helped anyone who is reading this post. Feel free to ask any questions and I will be happy to answer. Happy modeling!

I have just a few models but do relatively well compared to lots of portfolios with way more models, so more is not always the answer. In my case the models for games keep selling, while my other models have fallen flat (I believe due to AI video now good enough).

My main strategies now are producing game models, avoiding crowded categories and focus on carving out own niches (provide particular own art stile).

I believe making good quality models (real effort) and provide exactly what is advertised (render previews with the provided files) will make models rise to the surface of the low effort slop-wave. The slop is actually driving up the value for “real effort” artists. Byers will become hyper focused on finding those artists and they will be ready to pay the correct price for “real” work.

Note: Things that are scares are valuable, large quantities of something become valueless.
Slop will be vast, real artists will be scares!

At some point however, (don’t know when) even in games probably the pixels will be rendered on the fly without 3D models (at the command of a prompt list and image-guiding)?

Hi,
as I started selling models 15 years ago when the situation was totally different so it gives no sense to answear points 1. and 2.
3. More bigger portfolio more better. But you can have artist with 100 models portfolio doing better than other artist with 500 models.
4. My personal strategy was always "filling the gaps". In other words doing models which are missing on market. And avoid overcrowded niches. So yes probably the choise of good niche is important.
5. Probably my advise in 2026 would be - not to concentrate on it too much. Now selling 3D models is no more gold-mine like 15 years ago. Situation is now not good in this area and on all matkets in all forums you can read about low sales, AI etc.