I sell models and textures on Turbosquid.com (search for: TheTextureStore) 1 word, that’s me. I don’t make much money. $82 this month, and most of that is from textures. I usually make $40 - $50. Not bad - a tank of gas, but of course I’d like to make more. I spend a HUGE amount of time on it, not to mention the models. I probably make $1 per hour. Of course, I’d make them anyway, and I like creating textures. I’ve got something like 500 products for sale, but I can go for a week without a sale. Blender still has not made the jump to being used by lots of pros. Still .3ds, .lwo, .max etc.
So, I’ll keep the Turbosquid thing going - if I never touch it again I’ll keep selling anyway. I was thinking about giving away models. I have hundreds, as well as textures. I can’t sell them very well, so I thought I’d try giving them away and generating $$ from ads on the website. I do this already, but I neglect it, so I make next to nothing. I know this has been tried - Kator Legatz or something, but people just stole them to resell. My opinion is, where the hell would people sell them? 
Long story short, is this a stupid idea? Can I really rely on the decency of people to download some stuff and click a few ads? If it works, I’ll be happy to keep publishing models.
Below, an example of what I may give away.
If you’re going to rely on other people’s actions to bring in your money, chances are… nobody’s going to care enough to click a few ads.
True. I guess I’ll just have to see.
Sure this could work.
I think google adds has a rewards system.
I also recall even a firefox rewards system.
What you could do is release your models under 2 licenses.
Free> say using a creative commons attribution, non commercial license.
Payed for> Unrestricted License.
That way you are still able to generate money from your models & any add clicks…
Thanks - I would not have thought about the whole copyright isuue…
I don’t think you can rely on people clicking on ads. If you can get paid for page view ads, and use the models as bait, well and good, but to ask people to look at ads as “payment” for something you’re giving away just won’t work, imho.
Your probably better off putting them up for sale on Turbosquid and offering a non-commercial attribution licence for the freebies. That way, potential customers can download to test and examine in detail, and may buy them, and non-commercial users may wind up on YouTube with your name in the credits of their animation.
There are a lot of ways to monetize traffic to your website. There are page view ads and click-through affiliate programs like Amazon, among others. I have a friend who’s making quite a bit of money by gaming the various systems with blogging and search-engine optimization. Make no mistake, making biggish money on web traffic is a full time job. Still, if you have a website with good, solid, regularly updated content, you’ve got a start.
Remember, it’s not an either-or proposition. You can sell your Turbosquid stuff there and simultaneously run your own website (not linked to from Turbosquid obviously) where you gave away the same models under a CC non-commercial license. It’s your stuff. You can sell it where you want and give it away where you want. On the website you give it away at, have google ad sense ads, be sure to keep adding new content (having new text content is helpful too, so a small blog might be a good idea) and Amazon affiliate links, etc.
I think it takes a little doing, but your stuff is good, and I think that if you’ve got a lot of it, and you play it smart, you can make yourself more than it costs to fill your gas tank. Good luck.
Bu the way, I could be wrong, but I think the problems that Kator Legaz faced were that they were allowing others to upload to their hosting service, and they got sued over an infringing model that somebody uploaded onto their site. As long as you deal only with your own work you won’t have this problem.
Hey I’m glad that you make money by doing what you love, and truth be told I envy you for it. I’d be happy to click on a few adds for you if that is the price for one of your models you like.
I think I will give it a try. Yes, I may see my work somewhere else, with someone taking credit for it. But I’d rather see that and make $50 on clicks than not at all. I’ve actually achieved several #1 rankings on google - I am a custom furniture maker, and I show up (most of the time) as #1 in a search for “custom furniture atlanta”. (www.dougturner.net) I have many other top page results as well in several browsers.
So - I’ve studied how to get good search results, and I think I can, in time, copy my results. I can’t put advertising on my furniture site as that is my main source of income, and I can’t have people clicking on a competitors ad.
The main thing I’m saying, and I know that many of you will agree, is that work is hard. Playing with 3d and making textures is fun (most of the time). I don’t want to fight for every dollar I make, and as a business owner, that’s what I do. My motivation is that I’m very tired, and I’d like to put my model and texture collection, which has some value, to work.
Thanks for the input…I’ll post the website address as soon as I get it up and running. June probably.
Ads? I never even see them (thank you AdBlock Plus!)
Most ad blockers block the pop ups. I don’t know if there are any that can actually block ads on the pages themselves. Let me take this opportunity to say I WILL NOT be doing annoying pop ups. my advertising will be text or image ads that will not keep popping up or chase you all over the screen. You will not have to click through ads to get to the site, or be redirected in anyway. In fact, you can go to to the site, download all day, and never click on anything. That’s the only way I’ll do it. The sites that annoy people are sites that will never have return visitors. I’d like to create a nice resource for 3d folks, where they will have the choice to say thanks for the model by clicking an ad. Or not.
At least the obnoxiouse once. 
FireFox rules with AdBlock Plus + NoScript
Ok, it’s done. 1 exception. I left out the models, for now. I have created a site with more than 400 free textures.
www.FreeTextureSite.com
I may add the models back, but I received some interest in purchasing my whole collection, so I’ll wait on that. Enjoy.
Thank you so much Mr. Doug Turner. It’s now in my book marks and I’m off to click through some adds
do you get more money if people click on the adds, cuz I would do that if it were to make someones day brighter 
good site & textures.
thanks.
Thanks, I’ve bookmarked your texture site. Really nice and exotic looking door collection, too!
Oh, I looked at your turbosquid models. I’m just curious, why do you keep your models in .blend format, if you also posted .3ds and .obj files I bet you’d get more sales… Probably very few Blender users would be buying models on there, but the other formats are sold a lot. Just a thought.
Excellent. Thanks for sharing!!! 
Yes. That’s the only way I make money. So please do, and enjoy. I’ll be adding textures frequently.
You are absolutely right. I’ve got one or two in .3ds and .obj. It’s a task I’ve been putting off. I should get it done soon. I am losing money. Thanks for the reminder!