Rethinking the New Payout Rate System: A Call for Balance and Recognition

Obviously what CGTrader cares about now is faster growth. Productive people will be rewarded while those who can't keep up should be paid less as punishment. By looking at new rate graph I can see no one will get 85% - the threshold is ridiculously high. You can see top designer reputation points in your dashboard. For instance "Squir" - a company with 6k good quality car models earns about 20k points per month - which are surely mostly sales meaning if you apply 80% current rate is about 16,000 $ monthly\ 192,000 $ yearly earnings. Even this guy barely reaches 83-84% rate. Most of the artist will be stuck between 60-75%. So in conclusion - we are lowering your rates although promising 85% you will never reach. So keep up working even harder now(for lower pay), so you can stay at the same level or as close at your old 80% as possible.

Hi, I have a question that's still unclear to me. With the new payout system, will payments be processed after June 2nd, or are we still going to receive payouts this month as usual? I couldn’t find a clear statement on this—maybe I missed it. Any clarification would be appreciated!

To understand whether this decision benefits the sellers or CGTrader itself, it's enough to compare the old and new payout rates for the sellers.

In previous comments, everyone has complained about a significant drop in payout rates. While we don't have exact statistics, it's not hard to assume that this has been the case for the vast majority of sellers on CGTrader.

Of course, CGTrader is free to change its payout structure as it sees fit, but what's disappointing is the lack of honesty in the way it's being presented, as if it's somehow to the sellers' advantage.
I'd bet that the percentage of sellers whose payout rate has increased or even stayed the same doesn’t exceed one percent.

Additionally, the rise in AI-generated models has been used as an excuse for this change. If AI models are truly that valuable to CGTrader, I’d love to see what happens if, after a large-scale boycott, the platform is left with nothing but AI-generated content.

I completely agree with your suggestions about including buyer ratings, past earnings, and project success.

However, to reach the top payout rate of 85%, a seller would need to earn $300,000 per year, which means an average of $25,000 per month.

Honestly, that alone is enough to prove how out of touch and disingenuous this system is. I really wonder how many users have ever consistently made $25,000 or more per month since CGTrader was founded :)

Hello.

So after reading through the email on this subject and seeing that the new 12 month sales tab shows that your revenue for the year is based on the final earnings (and not on the after tax earnings).

This tells me that as a new user (less then a couple of years) will either have to raise the selling price (which could make it too expensive to buy) or accept a lower royality rate (which can be upto a loss of 13%).

This will make it very hard for new users on the site to grow a marketplace where they can be back upto a good royality rate (between 70 & 75 percent).

I hope their will be enough people who raise this issue and have them reevaluate this policy, because as of now it does more harm then good.

A utopian payout system for creators... basically means “buy yourselves IV drips and work 24/7,” and maybe you'll reach 70% royalties. Earning $300,000 a year is unrealistic if you're doing everything alone — that’s probably an achievable number for just a few percent of people across all 3D stock platforms. And as we know, those people aren't on CGTrader. This isn’t a food market; it’s a niche product... Seems like CGTrader just decided to lower royalties and came up with this scheme to justify it))) Thanks, CGTrader.
I’m disappointed in you!

That's just pure greed from CGtrader. I've worked hard to gain that 80% and trust from my clients. And now it's just gone for nothing. And they say it's a good thing. They changed freelance royalties too, like 6 monthes ago, I don't freelance there anymore. There are Cults and 3D Export that offers much more.

Those are really good and valid suggestions, but the problem is that decision has been already made and we can discuss matters to death but that will change nothing. If cgtrader would care about opinion, they would announce changes well ahead and would invite sellers to discuss. The fact is, they don't care about us in a slightest, all they care is how to increase their profit and if the easiest way to do that is at sellers expense, so be it. Corporate greed.

I don't feel safe now after years of struggling to increase my profit percentage went in vain!!

Last month they auto enrolled my models in a sale without notifying me and now they cut my royalty percentage. I'm voting with my feet, just deleted all my models and will delete my account as soon as the last royalty is paid.

I got the payment email, I think this is the last payout with the current royalty, next payment we will be get the reduced royalty percentage ( new payout change ), so, possibly all the recent Bulk sale from cg- client will also be cut down in % ,

Ok. It looks like you need more money or to lower our income to preserve yours:
An unrealistic 300 000 usd earning a year to reach a 85 % commission rate and a very realistic -10%+ commission rate compared to now for most of us. And it's supposed to be good ?!? Only for you ! Poor explanations/communication to try to justify this fact.

I am a small time designer but the income from designs is very important to me. I have worked very hard to get to a 74% payout rate over five years of selling on this platform. This past year I had the most sales yet ~$600. That may not seem like much to a company like this but that amount of money has helped me immensely.

Now you will be dropping my payout by 10% to just 64%. This feels like a slap in the face for all the work that I put in watching my rate increase one percentage point at a time. Your telling me after all that now I am going to be below the 70% that I started at five years ago! This stinks of corporate greed to the highest level!