One way to make money as a 3D artist is to sell 3D models online. And over the years, the demand for better and higher quality 3D models has increased in many and different industries such as game development, architectural visualization, and 3D printing just to name a few. But the question is: where can you sell your 3D models and what are the best marketplaces you can find online?
Although the first thought that you had in mind when becoming a 3D artist probably wasn’t to sell 3D models, it’s actually worth thinking about at some point. It’s certainly not related to the financial income alone, but also to the satisfaction that you’ll receive when your work gets appreciated worldwide. However, if you’re also interested in this specific topic, you can In this post, we will take a quick look at some of the best websites and marketplaces dedicated specifically for selling 3D models online.
First off, we have Render Hub, an online community for all CG enthusiasts, including 3D professionals, independent game developers, and amateurs alike. It serves as a hub where you can buy and sell high-quality 3D models, and It has a simple interface making it easy to navigate through. You can find everything there, including:
This site is a great choice for artists who usually work with Daz Studio because it harbors a big community of Daz users. However, it is not limited to them and it welcomes artists with whatever software they use.
What is good about Render Hub is that it is not only a marketplace but it also works as a community where you can ask questions or discuss topics through forums and you get replies from different people in the community. You can even land some very good job opportunities in those forums.
Speaking of opportunities, we all know that to get one, you gotta create one, and to do that you need a place to showcase your talents and capabilities. Render Hub got you covered on that because it has a gallery where you can post your renders and showcase them to potential clients. This works kind of similarly to ArtStation.
As mentioned earlier, the site allows you to sell your 3D models, and the royalties that you can get are actually pretty decent. You can earn between 55% and 70% depending on how many items and models you upload to your store. You can also get a bonus of 500$ if you upload over 1,000 models.
You have a few options in which you can cash out your earnings:
Visit the website: https://www.renderhub.com/
This site is one of the oldest ones in this business but it has one of the most attractive site designs in the industry. even though They were founded way back in 2004 they only have about 220,000 and 600,000 members. on 3DExport you can sell 3D models, for architectural visualization, cinematics, video games, and 3D printing.
on average the Royalty rates that Artists receive on this website is 60 percent for non-exclusive sales, and up to 70 percent with exclusivity contract.
Visit the website: https://3dexport.com/
Sketchfab is a good platform to show your models as well as to sell them. As a 3D model seller, you get about %70 of your sales. and even though this place is not one of the favorite sites if you want to be profitable as a 3D modeler it offers the most advanced model viewer.
You can see all the details of your models like wireframes, and UVs on the 3D model as you navigate around it in space, You can see all the materials on your model like base color, metalness, roughness, and so on. This is probably the best place for buyers in terms of getting something very close to what they expect. but for 3D model sellers, sketchfab is still a growing market that will probably be a great place to sell 3D models and assets in the future.
Visit the website: https://sketchfab.com/store
Cubebrush is also an interesting Platform and even though it is not the best for generating sales, i think it is one of the rising stars of selling 3D assets online because Unlike the usual marketplace, the content on Cubebrush is curated so everything you find on there is top quality which is great especially for studios and companies that want good quality assets.
When you do all the work and sell directly to your audience through your own store you get to keep 95% of your profits which is a great deal if you manage to get a good stream of sales.
when you make sales on the Cubebrush marketplace you get to keep 70% of profits on those sales.
Visit the website: https://cubebrush.co/
Fippednormals is relatively a new marketplace for those who want to sell 3D models but it probably has the best website interface and user experience. most models are of high quality and it seems like this marketplace has more potential in the future because some of the best 3D assets sellers on other marketplaces actually sell on it which is a good sign.
on flipped normals, you get %60 of the profits and up to 90% using their referral system.
actually, this platform is different because it is also curated to ensure products are of the best quality and they ask you to send your portfolio for the team to assess before you start selling.
Visit the website: https://flippednormals.com/
The Blender Market was created to empower indie artists & developers using Blender.
and for those who create good quality 3D models for games or animation. Blender Market is a good place to start if you are primarily working in Blender. this platform has actually a lot of good 3D assets and with the growing numbers of Blender users, it is becoming more important to be on this marketplace.
the Blender market is not just for 3D models because you can find a lot of good addon developers here. and if you have created addons for Blender before this is the ideal place to sell them.
Visit the website: https://blendermarket.com/
Unity Asset Store is a marketplace that hosts thousands of affordably priced game assets specifically created for game developers to save time and effort.
this market provides different 3D assets for those who create video games, so if you have some game-ready assets you probably want to put them up for sale here. but regardless of the fact that this is a targeted market, this does not mean you will see greater success compared to the other market places that sell all different kinds of 3D models like architecture visualization and 3D animation models.
Visit the website: https://assetstore.unity.com/
the unreal marketplace is another place where game developers sell their 3D assets. and actually a lot of individual game artists and game assets outsourcing studios put their individual 3D models and packs on this marketplace.
honestly, if you sell game-ready 3D models you have to be on this platform because this is where a good portion of the traffic is in terms of where indie developers and studios buy their 3D models.
but to see any success you need to be qualified for this job because these 3D assets sold here have to work properly inside the game engine otherwise you are going to face a lot of problems down the road and you might not see any success in the first place.
Visit the website: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/store
Turbosquid is the most well-known website for selling 3D assets, it is also considered one of the largest marketplaces for selling 3D models. Turbosquid used to be the absolute king of selling 3d models, but now with the new platforms that emerged in the last decade, things are a little bit different especially with how Turbosquid changed over the years.
TurboSquid offers users up to 80% royalties for selling their work If you decide to sell exclusively here and you can get their highest royalty rates on your sales. but New members to TurboSquid who have not yet signed up for their programs will start out with a Royalty rate of 40% of the sale. which is very low.
Yes, Turbosquid is huge. and has an impressive library of 3D assets with thousands of professional sellers that can offer and upside if you have high-quality 3D models because it means that potential buyers are not going to be a problem.
but regardless of Turbosquid’s massive popularity, you might not see big success due to two very important things which are fierce competition and the big cut that the site will take from every sale you make which is %60. Success here will most likely require a significant amount of active marketing and for small creators, this might be tough. but if you can generate a good amount of money in this market place then I think you will face fewer problems anywhere else.
Many 3D artists face the problem of whether they should sell their models all over the 3D model’s marketplaces online or they should join the selling exclusively program or what is known as the guild which will allow you to keep up to %80 of the sale you make.
basically Turbosquid is trying to keep their clients buying from their marketplace because there are tons of good websites out there that provide great services. personally I think that selling exclusively is not a good idea but if you are seeing better success with it then good for you I guess.
Visit the website: https://www.turbosquid.com/
this is a well-known marketplace for those who sell and buy 3D models online, CGtrader is also considered one of the best and largest marketplaces for high-quality 3D models, with over a million 3D models available in its library. containing VR, AR, gaming, and 3D printing assets. and is backed by a strong professional community of qualified artists from different industries which makes it a good place to buy 3D assets if you want high quality and fewer problems. a lot of 3D artists, design studios, and businesses share and sell their models on CGTrader.
CGTrader, based in Lithuania, was founded in 2011 and its community hosts more than 500,000 3D artists.
the good thing about CGtrader and other good 3D marketplace is that You can find here a very solid customer base looking for top-notch 3D models to use them in their projects. in addition to that they can also hire you as a designer for a custom job.
and the best thing is the decent basic %70 up to 80% royalty rate on sales that you can pretty much get to if you have 40,000 level points without having to sell exclusively on the site.
Visit the website: https://www.cgtrader.com/
we mentioned a lot of different websites here, some of them are new and others are very old. if you look around online you will find many other websites and platforms where you can sell 3D models if you are a 3d artist, but this does not mean that you will see success in all of them or in any of them for this matter. so you have to try and see for yourself. and if you are new you can actually put up your models for sale on all of these platforms, wait a few weeks or a few months, and see. test different models because you want to be flexible to have a better understanding of the market needs.
also, some of these platforms offer analytics that you can use to decide what kind of 3d models artists and studios need so you can take advantage of that because to be honest, many artists create models that no one needs, and later they complain that selling is impossible.
Different platforms have different royalty rates. you need to be aware of that so you can do certain things accordingly. there are two things you can do if you want to sell on a platform where your share of the revenue is very low like for example Turbosquid where you get only 40% of your sales. you might say this not fair but you can actually join their guild program but the best thing you can do is to adjust the price of your models in a way that allows you to keep the same amount of money as if you were selling on a platform where the royalty rate is %70 for example.
there are a lot of things we can share with you on this topic if you are interested stick around and we give more information that can help you take advantage of your artistic skills.
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