cgtalk

[user_deleted]

Anyone know whats going on at cgtalk? See that letter of woe on their front page? I guess starting a publishing company with titles that only appeal to an a select audeince sold only through them online was kinda not the best idea? I don't know, sounds kinda dire if you really read that notice.
Might want to have the new highend site all up and running when they colapse on themselves...Not that I'm thrilled at their lose, but, well I thought they were amazingly over extended. Although, it might just be a nice way to get the folks on the site to buy some books in fear that their site will go away unless they do it. I've seen tactics like that before, although, I really think their publishing company went south fast with that many very selective books published at once

[admin]

Yeah we are working very hard to get things in order right now. We just finished up the tutorial section (working out bugs in the video tutorials), and the tips section. So we have working:

Downloads
Tutorials
Tips
FAQs
Frequently Asked Question Systems
List server Archives
Message Boards

we have to finish up:
- Home page templates
- newsletters
- news section (using code we already have)
- articles/features section (using code we already have)

After NAB we should also have a contract signed with APPLE which will really help things. Im hoping we can launch as beta next week during NAB.

They deal with cgnetworks is they have 11 employees and I have information that they are really in trouble. They put way too high expectations on their book sales after their first book which did really well. The rest did not. Gaining content is the easiest thing in the world, managing it is another factor. Look at how long the new site is taking us... mostly because we have to deal with existing data and structure to convert from. That means time and money and people.

Alex Alvarez tried to warn them about a magazine after we saw what happened with Highend Magazine. We had like 300 subscribers (maybe double DMG's numbers were always fishy...). But they did not listen.

My philosophy is everyone bought the first book because it was cool and the first of it's kind. But those kind of books have no return on investment. So if you are going to spend $60 and you have their first book, your next purchase is likely to be something like a Gnomon DVD -- makes you better at your job, which gets you more $. That has a return. Hard to base a business on something that has no return on investment unless you are appealing to a group of people who have lots of money. A majority of their registered users are students, hobbiests, or international warez users.

We've spent a great deal of time on the new site building and designing an infrastructure that allows us to grow for the next few years. So im confident when we finally get this up we will really build momentum.

Will

[user_deleted]

Yea, I thought the first book was cool, a second in a year would be neat as well. Keep it small, like spectrum tradiational art books have. I mean I didn't even see the book make it into any retail stores. I'd have waited till I had a deal with at least amazon online or a larger publisher to umbrella the venture before I created like 10 books that were even MORE of a niche audience than a general 3d art book.
I mean, thier art in the contests didn't even justifiy a book, but yet, here they were for sale.
I can't say I'm not surprised, publishing is very expensive, no offense Will, I would have been surprised if Highend mag lasted. its very hard work and requires a lot of liquid assests to float it till something picks up.
I was shocked with how fast they tried to grow that book business.

[admin]

Yeah, I was happy with Highend Magazine and would have continued it if it wasnt for DMG being so shady. We ran it very tight, but the #'s they reported back were very very suspicious. Since it was basically "Will" magazine anyway, I was doing everything, I figured we should just build an article system in the new highend and give it away for free. Allow movies, forums, etc. Just a much better medium.

We've now spent about 3 months on our wysiwyg editor but we now can allow just about everything needed - table creation, editing, auto thumbnailing of large images, upload of images, upload of movies, upload of scene files, and lots of other cool features. That alone has really pushed us back but that alone will allow us to do upload features in minutes not hours. The same for people who have content but dont know html.

Im just glad to know cgnetworks will not be getting into doing downloads, tutorials, or career placements anytime soon now -- our main focus.

Will

[admin]

plus our new forums rock and look nice

[joojaa]

Yes they do!

[user_deleted]

yea, I think they went the wrong direction over there. They focused on a fanbase rather than a career based audeince.
I'd love to see more pure artists come over to the site though, not enough art is uploaded here.
The galleries here have always seemed very much background for some reason.

[joojaa]

perhaps we need a art forum.

[admin]

[censored] i almost forgot we completely rewrote the gallery system Now there are categories, and comments, etc. Autothumbnailing of large images that link to original uploaded versions. Very easy to navigate. We are rotating those around the site much better as well.

I hadnt pushed the gallery for the past 2 years because it was in conflict with highend careers. Also most pros arent creating individual art and dont have permissions. But our new gallery will rock too.

The new WIP forums allow uploads of images too. I might be able to get some of the guys from the Gnomon art videos to host an art forum.

Will

[gmask]

"The community has grown exponentially from 5000 members in July 2002 to 160,000 members at present. However, both advertising and book sales have not grown at the same pace. "

LOL.. guess they're getting too big for their britches.

They more than anyone else are in a position to charge membership fees. Of course this might cutoff users in certain countries etc or people not old enough to have a credit card.

According to them people who post their work their get jobs and solicitations and well CGtalk should be getting something for that... otherwise the bulk of their membership are fanboys which do buy things but IMO brought the level of intelligence down over there and reduced the concept of art to neked ladies, fast cars, dragons etc.

[user_deleted]

Agreed, thats why I can't deal with thier forums.

[deke-kincaid]

"The community has grown exponentially from 5000 members in July 2002 to 160,000 members at present. However, both advertising and book sales have not grown at the same pace. "

Here is a funny thing though. Over half those "members" don't have a single post to their name. Also there are numerous dupe accounts for people. Leonard has no interest in changing that though because it gives advertisers a false sense of their numbers so they can charge more for advertising.

They said are not interested in charging for the forums.

[gmask]

True but wether or not those people are posting messages they are viewing bandwidth intensive graphic files and I guess the volume of messages being read is pretty heavy so paying for the bandwidth is what is costing them.

I know they are not interested in charging for the forums but it might also be wishful thinking to expect that most of the people who are taking advantage of all the freebies will suddenly kick in and buy a book as long as they still have unrestricted access the the content on the website.

As for the advertisers they are only going to care about the number of actual click throughs.. membership is an abstraction but giving a high number does imply a higher rate of click through but if you've been advertising with them this way for a while you will know if the ratio is really any better and I imagine it must not have improved that much with the higher number of members... they pretty much have revealed that to the public allready.

[admin]

they kick the hell out of us in impressions and click throughs... but not conversion sales. We have guys like okino getting as little as 10 click throughs a day sometimes but continually makes more sales from us then any other site. Its hard to prove that advertisers who dont know the industry though. We are seeing more and more of that.

I had to explain what Maya and 3ds max were to advertisers this year for respective ads from their own companies.

[user_deleted]

I think the problem is the idea of focused audeince is a tuff one when it comes to the web.
Heres a tv example simply becouse this is what I know;)
Demographics matter, in the beginning the tv show 24 didn't do the pure rating a show that expensive would be expected to in order to keep on the air. None of us where I work thought it would be back.
BUT, FOX was able to prove that sure, rating were not huge but the deomgraphic the show brought in was middle age people with money and class. Haha , yeap, so they landed highend advertisers to show off expensive products that are not mass market. Advertisers that FOX normally doesn't get with the American Idol, Simpsons crowd.
The numbers were not there but the advertisers realized the people they wanted were.
I think advertisers on this site need to realize proffesionals that acually work and have money/need to purchase them
come here. The industry ISN"T that big, so they need to focus on the people that count.
CGtalk, sure, might get the numbers, but the audeince is all wrong. Its hard to prove but its the truth. 17 year old kids and pot smoking middle age painters who just found photoshop don't buy. They make great art, becouse they DON"T have jobs ! haha
Anyway, yea , I can see how hard it is to explain this to people used to traditional mass market audiences. This indtustry is so focused you'd think they'd realize the difference.