I got my first sale - $7,20 !
Total active products -   152
Total product views - 7,941

I don't want 30% of my earnings withheld,too! On the other sites I lose only 5% on the US sales with no need of ITIN !

Very discouraging:  -30% and -20% here in Bulgaria... 

With 721 files not one sale, repeat zero . . . . . I guess that says 3DS is the wrong place for me.

PS . .  no vectors or 3D renders in my port.

Close to 1000 photos, more than 85.000 views, one sale in roughly a year....
Disappointing. (Though I will not delete anything, I don't see any harm in letting the portfolio sit there and wait).

I got an email to post a reply here to correct some information so wanted to do that really quick...

1. On the W8BEN issue, we have no plans to change this because the IRS has no plans to change this and thus we MUST follow the laws of our country. I'd love to lose the whole tax issue as well but we are required to do it. I've had many CPAs look at this issue now (and have literally paid thousands of dollars to have this investigate) and have talked with the IRS (anyone can call the IRS to get the same info) and the bottom line is that the ONLY way to claim tax treaty benefits for a reduced rate is with an ITIN. The IRS will tell you that if you read Page 5 of the W8BEN directions...

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw8ben.pdf

...you will see�

You must provide a U.S. TIN if you are:
Claiming benefits under an income tax treaty

...and that's about as clear as it gets. I used the "well, here is what shutter does" and every person tells me "they are wrong". We will watch this issue closely of course.

2. @cclapper � We have a system in place called Delete Protection that allows you to add and remove products without any problems at any time. But, it will detect surges in deleting and if a bunch of items are removed all at once it will temporarily stop the deleting to protect the account in case somebody got into your account. We actually added this feature years ago after an incident with an �ex� deleting their spouses products. We then had to restore some products from a backup to fix the issue so we added that feature and over the years it�s saved a few of our members from disaster.

You see, in the world of 3D we find that sellers don�t really delete many products and most people who sell with us stay with us so it�s rare when we run into an issue where somebody is removing their entire collection. Personally, even if a collection isn�t selling well I always go with the logic of it can�t hurt to leave it and see.

3. On that note, I know a lot of people here are starting to see their sales finally pick up and we have a few who aren�t seeing many or any sales. This is perfectly normal, this is a very tough business to break into and it just takes time and has been part of our business plan from day 1. We are actually ahead of where we planned to be and growing faster than expected as well which is great news. There is a common theme when I see people reporting sales, and that�s about the money they make. Even with low sales the amount you make per sale with us is much higher than in most places. Join our loyalty program and you are making $8.40 on each large size sale. We think this is why it only makes sense to stick with us because we are growing fast and getting where we need to be but we�re not in this to make every rich overnight, that�s just not our business model.

4. I�ve actually had 2 people tell me they want to leave because we are adding people like Yuri and iofoto (many others on the way!) and that they�ll get buried and never see sales. I explained to them both that the exact opposite is true because big names bring in both buyers and sellers and that allows for fast growth all around. We�ve already seen direct impact from the addition of large collections that has brought in many more sellers and many new buyers that we otherwise wouldn�t have. These buyers don�t just buy from these big collections and instead the sales are evenly spread around to many collections (big and small). It�s the support from these big names that will end up helping us all.

I started uploading files there a couple months ago. About 1100 images uploaded so far, 50000+ views and one sale.

It's not performing as well as I had hoped, but I am not planning on deleting any of my files.

Thank you for the explanation about the deletion of files, Matt. That makes perfect sense.

I appreciate your responding here as well as by email.

I joined two weeks ago and have had two sales of 1.80 each and are seeing thousands of views on my 1000+ images. I wonder how that works? I have many more to upload but when I have uploaded my last batch I will wait untill I see some more action in buying. Anyone seen any sales there the last month?

I got a few sales at the beginning, but not a single one in many many moons...but hey, I've got 60K views with 500+ photos on the site, I which I could take those views to the bank...LOL

IMO a complete waste of time and effort, have not uploaded anything there for a long time, and probably won't ever again unless sales and not views start coming in.

I got $9 sale last month. I still upload there due to ... instant acceptance and no minimum payout level. You get paid each month as long as you got something in your account. Even though they dont sell like SS...I still like how they handle the contributors.

Plus I am working on learning Z Brush for 3D so its a place I can sell models if I get the hang of it.

I was selling there until all y'all joined. LOL

+1  Why couldn't we keep it just secret?