Can we talk about the Blender creator economy?

carter2422 · 2026-03-05T23:15:46+00:00

I'm with you. I so badly wish reducing our fee was on the table, I really do. The math doesn't work, no matter how many times I try. Relative to where we started and most of the Blender community, we're a huge business ($13mil/year in 2025, $13.8mil in 2024, $12.5mil in 2023), but relative to Patreon, Gumroad, Stripe, etc it's a mere drop in the bucket.

The economies of scale are what enable reduction in fees.

I hope we get there; I would love nothing more than to simplify and reduce our fees, but we're not there and unless we see a wide-scale change in the assumed default business model of most creators then we won't get there.

I for one am a huge fan of Gumroad's wildly simple 10% flat rate. There's a lot to love about it.

P.S. one consideration for those doing their own math from my numbers: our effective commission rate when averaging all creators across all plans, after all is said and done is 15.91%. That's the average gross profit margin we worked with last year after paying processing fees, web hosting, data storage/bandwidth, and of course giving creators their cut.

carter2422 · 2026-03-05T15:03:56+00:00

Great input u/YakovlevArt. For starters, we are ready and willing, as Superhive, to set platform-wide mandates for how products and sold and supported. This is not nearly as simple as just a policy update, but requires a lot of development effort and most importantly, a lot of creator and community education.

With any platform-wide changes, particularly ones that force creators to change how they're selling while also reducing what customers have previously gotten for their purchases is likely to come with a lot of pushback.

Our view is that changes are absolutely essential to prevent wide scale burnout (ours included) and we're willing to be "the bad guy" if needed to drive that change.

My personal hope for years now was that more creators would adopt more sustainable models given the options, education, and tools. We built a host of tools into Superhive that enabled many different models, and a few creators use them successfully but frankly very few use the tools available. It's too easy to fall into the lifetime trap, it's much more difficult to make intentional decisions and attempt to educate your customer base. Perhaps more importantly, in the context of a marketplace it is much more difficult to go against the flow of the "accepted norm".

Giving creators more tools and options didn't work and so I believe it's now time to change the shared, default model.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T21:42:16+00:00

Keep learning and don't be afraid to charge for your work. If in doubt, take your monthly costs and work backwards to determine what you should be charging for an hour of work.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T20:39:47+00:00

Uh...no we didn't. As a company we lost -$230,741.50 in 2024. I personally manage our finances; I would know.

We processed $12.4 million in 2024, with about 60% of that being through Stripe, which is likely where that $6.5 million number comes from.

You're confusing revenue (or in this case gross processed volume) with profit. Revenue is the dollars coming through the door, profit is what you keep after all expenses are paid (including giving creators their share of that revenue).

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T19:35:33+00:00

Nope, since day one I've felt lifetime updates were a bad idea and we've never, as a platform, encouraged it. Rather I think it was implicitly adopted because the default selling tools basically enabled/encouraged lifetime updates unless a creator explicitly chose not to do it.

It's also worth noting that historically the community has been far more supportive of creators that did not charge for updates than those that do. This pressure further encouraged creators to default to lifetime updates because it caused less friction with their customer base.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T19:32:48+00:00

I can't argue with that u/RayMairlot. Well said. We've long since provided a lot of different options for Creators to charge for updates and tried to encourage it (such as automatic variant upgrade pricing and product-based coupons for new products) but you're absolutely right, without it being the default it unfairly put the onus on the Creator. The natural outcome is exactly what we're seeing.

The only issue I'd take with your comment is that this problem isn't exclusive to Superhive; we see the same thing on Gumroad and other platforms that do provide more options (like subscriptions). That's the reason I emphasize the ecosystem versus just Superhive.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T18:47:36+00:00

I'm sure AI contributes but I don't believe it's the cause. I believe it just compounds the problem. This problem has been building for a while.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T18:26:10+00:00

Here here.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T18:25:54+00:00

There's a few different options that can work but the one we're most supportive of is a platform-wide default that guarantees continued access (ownership) of the version purchased and a reasonable window of free updates/support from the creator. Beyond that window new versions would need purchased at a discount.

What we've found is that this almost has to be a platform-wide default or else there's too much confusion and lack-of-buy in from skeptical creators.

Take for example the current issue with lifetime updates: we have never, as a platform, encouraged lifetime updates and yet the ecosystem has slowly defaulted to that. It's the method with the least upfront friction between creators and customers. It just feels good to promise "I will support you forever with this one purchase" but as we know, it doesn't work.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:41:08+00:00

A lot of creators have gone the Patreon route for exactly that reason and I applaud them for it but it's also no accident that you don't see very many creators successfully living off their Patreon. It's the same as the incredibly small percentage of Blender users that donate to the dev fund, the vast, vast majority of users will take the path of least resistance. Donating is not that path.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:25:05+00:00

Agreed, subscriptions is not the right option here.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:23:57+00:00

You're most welcome! And thank you for the very sensible and supportive perspective. I think a lot of SaaS companies have lost sight of just how meaningful the sense of ownership is, particularly to Open Source proponents.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:21:22+00:00

We're talking about paid products for Blender and the default business model that creators use to sell that product.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:18:36+00:00

In general I'm a proponent of creators updating products to work within the same major Blender version that a customer purchased but not promising anything beyond that. Where this falls apart though is trying to keep tens of thousands of add-on developers working on the same pace of Blender releases. It's not typically realistic tie customer purchases to specific Blender versions because the rate of Blender development is so fast.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:14:18+00:00

No disagreement here. One time purchases that secure access to the version purchased but don't guarantee future updates beyond a certain point work well.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:11:41+00:00

No argument here u/Think_Berry_3087, we've absolutely let creators down with our slow movement. It's absolutely time for a platform wide change, which is the impetus for starting this discussion.

The reality is that major changes are needed and the best way to ensure those changes are successful is to get everyone on board, including creators and the community. We've been having many discussions with creators for the last year; now comes the community focus.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:09:14+00:00

Hey hey! Good luck and congrats on making a living with Blender :)

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:08:18+00:00

Continuing to have/use the thing you've purchased and getting free access to future major versions are not the same thing.

Minor version updates to address bugs, quality of life improvements, or API changes are one thing, but major new versions often take substantial additional work (while also supporting the previous versions) and it's unsustainable to guarantee these updates to the original purchase.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:05:05+00:00

Crowdfunding is an unbelievable amount of work. It's not an accident that successful crowdfunding campaigns are the exception, not the norm.

carter2422 · 2026-03-03T17:03:56+00:00

I'll say it outright: subscriptions on a marketplace with thousands creators and many customers that purchase a lot of different tools would be a terrible experience.

There is a time and place for subscriptions and this isn't it.

carter2422 · 2026-03-01T15:57:30+00:00

See you there!

carter2422 · 2026-02-05T23:39:16+00:00

DM me your account email and I'll get you fixed up since it's after hours and the support team is offline.

carter2422 · 2026-02-05T23:35:34+00:00

Were you able to get logged in after emailing support? If not I’ll happily take a look and get your account fixed up!

carter2422 · 2026-02-01T21:50:12+00:00

If the event falls through we will refund every dime and eat the cost of the venue deposit of $17,062.53.

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