The designer earnings is a bit of mystery for me… I have roughly 60 designs posted on the Glowforge site and I have largely given up trying to anticipate the kind of earnings they will produce each month. There are months where literally all of them will increase, and other months when they will all decrease (like this last month). I would understand if individual designs went up or down relating to the others, but they tend to all go in the same direction… which doesn’t make sense to me. They wouldn’t all get more or less popular at the same time.
Is there anything that we as designers can do to get a better feel for the earnings generated by our designs? I understand that Glowforge likely has a proprietary formula here, but some insight into how it behaves I am sure would be welcome by designers.
Unfortunately, your speaking only to other owners. Many of us designers have been asking the same thing…it’s all a mystery and Glowforge is not forthcoming at all about how their calculations are done. You can sure try sending your post to support and ask that it be shared with the catalog team…but don’t hold your breath. Good luck!
From what i remember, it’s the spotify formula, which means something like that percentage we see of popularity is how it compares to the most popular item for that month. So if overall cuts are down for the most popular item…? Yeah, lost my train of thought.
But some months, you’ll get more because you’re design just posted and it has more visibility too. The following months, i think you lose that new design bonus, and people will by- then notice what sells for them and will adjust accordingly.
Also, this has always been pure speculation on my part so take it with a grain of salt, but i always assumed that premium subscriptions were what was paying the designer bill. So if premium subscriptions are down, that’s less money to divide up among all the designs…i only felt that way because there is a huge difference from when it was just a few of us compared to now when there are thousands of designs to compete against. Comparing my data over the years shows certain design popularity has remained constant every month, but the incone from it has significantly decreased. So…recruit more people to buy and keep premium membership
I have seen big changes month to month depending on how popular the whole catalog is. Weirdly Spring seems to do best and Fall worst though specific holidays do best around holidays. If the lowest earning 10% is a few cents different from the highest 75-90% it is likely the boundary is between them, but that boundary changes every month. This last month paid out about half the best ever this spring.
I’m not sure if that’s the case, I think there is some factor (related to the total number of catalog items) that made everything lower, and I suspect it won’t come up.
My suspicion is that the only way to maintain income around the same amount is by continuing to submit designs.
As i haxe researcher it over a couple of years, the launch of the Aura made a big boost, but beyond that the seasonal peak of around April seems to hold though without much eexplanation. By looking at the cut from 10% to 75-90%, etc. it is not tied to only your sales.
Even the age of the deaign does no/ seem to be a factor as some show up on top years after sibmission.
