What do you think a custom skin should cost?

What are people willing to pay for a top notch custom skin with full resale rights (with PSD files)? I'm NOT in the market for doing anything like this yet, but I'm curious about what people feel is a fair price. People should look at the value in US$ first, and then translate to L$.

with full resale rights to make copies forever and ever and charge L$1000 or more for them without doing any of the work? Bloody lot$, Nam!

I'm not in agreement on the "Bad idea" front. SOMEONE might think it's a good idea. But really no price range on this list is suitable. An auction is the only way to go and the price would have to be absurd before I'd be happy giving away a full perms skin.

Think of it this way:

A skilled skin artist can probably bang out a totally unique skin with quite a few layering tweaks in 50-100 hours. Say they charge US $75/hr for their time ($75x100=$7500). That falls into the top of the $ list. An auction might bring more if the skin artist is well known.

The artist won't have to worry about advertising, uploads, skin tone variations, texture theft, etc. The buyer would assume all responsibility and risk for that. The skin artist would collect all $ up front and move on to the next project.

My skin stylist sold me my skin with PSD files for 3k, back in 2004 or early 2005.
-She also gave me about 45 different make-up combinations as well - she is awesome.

My original skin stylist also gave me the TGA files for my skin.

I prefer to own the PSD or TGA files because it allows me to replace the client side default skins with my custom skin thus leaving my client slide tattoo slots free for anything I choose.
And having total freedom to add tat's just can't be beaten.

If I can't have full rights to the skin, I wont wear it.

Briana Dawson

crap i voted wrong. I didn't read carefully and missed the full resale rights. Um... 20K L (about 80 or 100 USD). Also the creator should be able to retain resale rights. Otherwise I can't see any amount of cash being worth this. You coudl create the skin, sell 20 and still have 20K.

I would be willing to pay up to 5000 lindens; however, the only thing I would want to to be able to use the tatoos to add say arm or chest tattos and things like face hair and chest hair. I made a big mistake when I first got on and did not read what the vendor had posted in his store. I bought three skins to find out later they were two dark and I could not mod to add facial or chest hair. Now I have over $4000.00 in skins I can't or don't want to use, can't put on the hair on the fact and chest I want, and can't even give them away if I wanted too. Granted it was my fault but still stuck with them and can't see trashing that much lindens. Naturally, I understand, but the creator was very unwilling to help me at all.

Is that 3k in US dollars or in Lindens (big difference)?



That is a good point I forgot to mention. Client side installs will give the owner full slider functionality for makeup & definition, plus the tat slots.

Also, I might add, if the buyer is only interested in keeping the skin for themselves, that can be written into a license agreement, and might negate some of the cost. They would have to be willing to reveal thier RL identity and personally sign the license agreement. That is how it is done professionally.

Full resale rights is a lot easier to manage, but an agreement would still need to be written up giving the skin artist full credit for the original work, and maybe mention in any advertisements.

That amount of $ would probably not even register on any skin artist's radar if they were giving over original files, or even TGA files with full permissions. It's just too easy to abuse that privilage. 5000 Lindens wouldn't even be worth the time to write up the license agreement and get it signed.

With the full "Profit In a Box" option thrown in I would asume it would be a commision and I wouldn't expect to get any change from L$ 50K ( and probably not a lot from L$ 100K ) - skins are hot items.

However for full perms ( no resell - with signed agreement to that effect ) I would be willing to pay between 5K and 25K depending on who the designer was.

Everyone really needs to think in terms of RL US DOLLARS. Forget Lindens in an initial purchase. Thier value fluctuates too much. And, with full resale rights, you can set your own price. And believe me, if the skin is well done, you will sell more than 1000 in a year.

With the amount of work it takes to make a really nice skin, and the amount of money you can command for the price of said skin... my vote is "bad idea," for the artist, that is. I wouldn't want to pay what a full-resale-perms skin would be worth, to tell you the truth.

If we had more resale permissions options in SL, sellers would have more options about how their buyers could resell things. If a seller could sell to a buyer for a percentage of the cost, then allow the buyer to resell for a set markup, it might encourage a wholesale bulk sales market in SL - like, allow a person to buy 20 items (that would eventually be non-transferable, after the initial wholesale purchase) for a 25% reduction in price, with the stipulation that they not resell for more than a 25% markup over what they paid. This would facilitate store owners who wanted to own stores and artists who wanted to just create things to co-exist in a more uncomplicated way. Or something like that.

*Edited to add that I don't even know if it would be necessary to add the option to set the limit on a resale price for a wholesale permission option, but I have a feeling some might want this. *shrug*

It's quite simply worth what ever the buyer is willing to pay, and that will vary massively. How the skin designer values their time will also vary massively, and that value will not always be an indication of quality. This is not only due to a varying perception of the designers own worth, but also how they view the job. Some will expect full compensation for all the time they have spent on it, others will look at it as more of a fun hobby thing.

If I was a designer and valued my work, I would be charging a fair amount I think, simply because my time is very limited at the moment. However, with the shoe on the other foot, I doubt I would pay a great deal to someone else for a custom skin

I'm no skin artist...only a skin customer. But if I were to inquire about buying a skin with full permissions I would expect to pay a whole lot of money for it. Considering I could copy and resell all the skin and charge L$1k a pop....ya, I would expect to pay a whole S*&@ ton of money.

Yup.

I consider that most skins I see floating around, I have also seen before, on turbosquid. I also consider that $75/hour is more money than most so called skin artists deserve, that payment somwhere in the $20.00/hr range is more appropriate. But frankly why would you make a skin and sell it so that others can make a profit of it? Skinning is not hard of you know where to download. Rather than doing something that is going to flood the market with mediocre skins for $1000 linden a pop I would like to see a cohesive lobby on the part of the skinners to get LL to enforce the copyright protections ina reasonable way. Its a much beter use of time.

Frankly I'd like to see skins made by someone who looks like the have seen vogue. lol

Could this be profitable for the buyer of this package? Or, in other words, if I bought something like this, how many skins can I expect to sell?

To run some numbers:

US$7500 for full perms skin using example above.
L$4000 for low perms skin sold to my customers. I've seen skins sold for as much as this.
L$4000 = US$13.77 is the current rate for buying that many lindens
7500 / 13.77 = 545 (rounded)

I'd need to sell 545 skins to start making a profit. Drop the price to L$1000 and I'd have to sell over 2000 skins to make a profit (L$1000 = US$3.67; 7500 / 3.67 = 2044 (rounded)). This doesn't include land fees, upload fees, and the cost of my time.

Is that reasonable? Is there a return on investment here?

HP

oh about 500,000L. Taking into account real world wages and time, and resellability (even if they don't)... ya, that's fair.

I think I'm missing something in the above post...

500,000L / 4,000L = 125 skins sold to break even
500,000L / 300 ~ 1700 US$

nvm do what the f you want.

I wish you lots of luck in getting thease people to pay real world wages for SL products.
When they whine bitterly about losing 3 cents real in the game. Do you think they will cough up a half a million lindens.

Rox

The value of a skin (or any other creation, for that matter) is equal to whatever the market is willing to pay for it, and if the creator is willing to sell it at that price.

Now if you were to ask what's the highest price that would be sellable to the market...I'd say quite a bit. See paragraph 1 for details about specific price.


- Newfie

Obviously there needs to be profit for both parties, otherwise this is a "bad idea". The figures listed here are all speculative and open for discussion as are the many factors that would determine value and risk involved. In my mind the artist carries less risk and the buyer more, so the price should reflect a fair value for work involved and rights granted on the side of the artist, but also weigh in potential market risk and profit margin on the buyers side.

I would love to have a full-perm skin I could use as a base for making other skins. Adding tattoos, different makeups, scars, birthmarks, or altering to sell with packaged avatars. I've made lots of makeups, and have many more to make as ideas come to me, but I've never even bothered to upload them because I don't have the patience to do whole skins. (And those who do, have my undying gratitude.)

To me, something like this would be worth quite a lot, even without the option of reselling the skins unaltered. However, what I think they could potentially be worth, and what I could realistically pay without my husband strangling me, are two different ballparks. I personally would pay up to a few hundred US$, but I would also be very particular about what skins I bought, because there are a lot of skins that don't fit my personal taste, which would probably just create even more work for the artist.

Hah! I've offered two skin makers twice that just to add freckles and red pubes to skins they ALREADY make! just one copy! for me only! Neither took me up on it. So 5k L wouldn't get you anywhere.

Having, myself, made a skin that looked like frankenstein's bride, I can understand and appreciate, just a bit anyway, the tremendous work it takes to get it right.

(TY Nam for making a redhead skin btw. =D)

Hmm..I think you could charge alot, and I am almost amazed that I think that. It's an SL product, and so it make's, if done very well, a certain group of residents happy and they buy it with Lindens. But sheesh! That's real dollars you are polling about. I did vote in the $100-$500 range, but you might get even more if you are good.

I really need to start a business in SL.