Since day one our goal for the Blender Market has been to build it into a viable platform for Creators to earn a living with Blender. This means helping them to build their business, reach an audience, and ideally to give them the ability to work independently should they choose. 

One method to doing this is by running regular sales that encourage more customer buy-in, thus widening the audience pool. The key, of course, is to not overdo it, taking care not to undervalue products or to cheapen someone's hard work through perpetual discounts.

This is where our seasonal and special-event sales come in. We aim to run four to five large discount campaigns per year, aligned either with the seasons or particular events, such as the Blender Conference. 

Two weeks ago was Cyber Weekend, a combination of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which are some of the busiest e-commerce days each year. This year we ran a 25% campaign, which included 301 products from 83 Creators. Each Creator had the choice to opt-in to the sale.

How did the sale do?

The Results

For the four days the campaign was running, we sold 1137 discounted items (not including non-discounted products), bringing in $33,531.82. Compared to last year, which brought in $9,378.68, this was a 357% improvement! 

Of the 1137 sales, there were 157 different products sold. The top five products were:

1. Space VFX by Aidy Burrows and Gleb Alexandrov
2. DECALmachine by MACHIN3
3. Bevelled Extrude by Mark Kingsnorth
4. Auto-Rig Pro by Artell
5. RetopoFlow by CGCookie

During November we also passed a big milestone, which was paying out over half a million dollars to Creators. 🎉 This is money going straight into the Blender economy, helping more artists and developers build an independent business with free and Open Source software while also investing in Blender's continued success through the Blender Development Fund. 

The Blender Market has averaged $48,800 per month in Gross Merchandise Value over the last six months. The same period last year was just $15,600.

It's safe to say that we have grown a lot through the constant efforts of the team and the great group of Creators that make this marketplace what it is. We are well on our way to creating a viable, sustainable marketplace for the Blender community.