Sold with or without additional hardware like electrical parts or fasteners, a purchaser buys a kit and prints their own plastic parts. This approach sells 3D models as part of a product. Kits Where Customers Print Their Own Parts Again, tabletop gaming miniatures and terrain are over-represented in this area. Money is raised to create a specific set of models, and backers receive access to the resulting files. Tabletop gaming is a common niche, and some of the bigger players have thousands of monthly subscribers.Īnother way indirect sales are done is via crowdfunding campaign. Patreon is a common way for 3D model creators to manage monthly subscribers and provide access to files. Successful creators make models in a niche area of interest, and people pay for ongoing access to the creator’s library of work. Indirect selling is when customers pay for access, rather than buying models individually. Indirect Sales (Pay for Access to Models)

Hero Forge is a proprietary system, but a highly successful one judging by their recent Kickstarter campaign. Users can pay to download the STL of their creation, or pay for a printed version. Sales numbers are a bit hard to determine, but popular models have hundreds or a few thousand downloads.Ī standout success is a site like Hero Forge, which allows users to create custom tabletop gaming miniatures with a web-based interface. Sites like Cults3D and MyMiniFactory allow creators to set prices on non-free models. Direct Sales (Pay per Model)ĭirect sales work just like free 3D models, but with a price tag stuck in front of the download. A user technically pays for a license to use the model rather than purchasing it outright, and terms vary depending on the creators and providers.

Online sales are great for digital models because models are not physical goods, and serving a thousand buyers is no different from serving ten. There are quite a few different ways 3D models get sold online. What the problems are and how to address them depends a little on the different ways models get sold, but one thing is clear: poorly-designed 3D models are bad for consumers, and bad for the future of pay-to-download in general. There are more free 3D models online than one can shake a stick at, but what about paid models? Hosting models somewhere and putting a buy button in front of the download is certainly a solved problem, but after spending some time buying and printing a variety of non-free 3D models online, it’s clear that there are shortcomings in the current system.

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