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The New Content Paradise

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 12:18 am
by DK
***buyers, browsers or sellers***
Please feel free to post any feedback,suggestions etc positive or negative, regarding the New Content Paradise Website in this thread.
All suggestions, comments, ideas are welcome.

****UPDATE****
Smith Micro would like as many people as possible to contact them personally with comments they post on this thread via the support link below so they can be consolidated.


THEY HAVE ASSURED ME YOUR POSTS WILL BE READ

Please include this topic header in your post.
***NEW CONTENT PARADISE THREAD AT LOST MARBLE***

http://support.contentparadise.com/cont ... l#feedback





Cheers
D.K

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:14 am
by DK
Hi.
I'd like to kick things off by saying, (from a sellers point of view), I used to get at least "3-4" of my FREE products downloaded from the old Content Paradise site a day. Since the new site wet up it has petered out to "0" downloads of "FREEBIES" per day for the last 4-6 weeks. It appears I can't even "GIVE FREE AS CONTENT" away on the new site. That has to mean people are not finding them for some reason.

D.K

Products

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:17 am
by windstormer
I have all of your free products (two, I believe) along with the ones that came with Anime Studio 6. QUALITY work that you do, and a couple that I purchased. I'm very impressed.

I believe that a lot of the people that are using the product have already downloaded them.

On the other hand, The site really doesn't seem any better than the last site. I look at sites that seem to be the most appealing and works well with the transactions. Daz does that and sells their products with a quality look (though they seemed to lost some of that this year). Your products have that quality look on a site that really doesn't seem to come across that way. I would REALLY like to see Content Paradise to very well. But I don't see that they are going to sell as well until they get their act in a well designed, appealing, products that display quality illustrations to sell the products. You do a WONDERFUL job displaying your products, but is drowned out by the 90% of poorly displayed products on a site that doesn't display them well.

Look at Daz and Runtime DNA. That is the way the products should be displayed. I'm sure, as an artist, you know that the little touches of quality go a long way.

Another thing to consider is the slower economy and people just don't feel that looking would even be worth it since they don't have the money to buy.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:37 am
by DK
Hi windstormer.
Many thanks for your kind comments. I think a lot more people on this forum would sell their own products on CP if there were better sales results.

I totally agree with what you said about the products being drownd out. I went there myself and clicked the 2D character section and there was all this 3D stuff mixed in with it?

Maybe we should start our own Content Paradise for Anime Studio stuff ;)
We could call it "Paradise Lost"

Cheers
D.K

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:56 am
by J. Baker
DK wrote:... I went there myself and clicked the 2D character section and there was all this 3D stuff mixed in with it?...
This actually started to happen to the old content paradise right before it switched to the newer one. And even though I don't buy this kind of content because I'm capable of creating it myself. It was nice to see what people were selling because most of the items being sold were not posted on this forum. Things that were created with AnimeStudio anyway. But since the mixture of the 3D items with the 2D items (that are listed under 2D content), I have stopped going to view these.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:36 am
by heyvern
I posted my comments to CP directly but will expand here a bit:

They indicated in a small "blurb" that some of my concerns are being addressed. Mainly regarding software categories. I don't remember when I actually searched for a "products" like CP offers with out looking for specific application support. If a company has many "similar" creative applications with incompatible file formats the software supported needs to be CLEARLY AND VISIBLY indicated. Plus you need the option to search for only ONE specific application's products. I hate having to "search" through "search" results.

The SECOND big issue is SEO. CP has been around for quite a while before SM got it. It appears that the changes to the site structure may have broken many search results that have been built up over time resulting in "dead" links or "page not found".

SM should put in place redirects to catch those search engine results and try to redirect them to the closest possible matching page or link. Broken links in search engine results will lower CP in any rankings it has built up. Reciprocal links from other sites built up over time will also break. This is lost advertising, lost money.

I know first hand that the technology to do this is out there. My measly little site has a module to create redirects if I move or change the site structure. If the links change I can easily point the "old links" to the correct page based on the forwarding urls.

in addition "readable" links could help as well. Many systems can convert complex urls generated from data driven content to appear as "page" links. This results in easy to book mark pages and hugely improved search engine rankings. It is SEO that is going to drive more customers to CP.

-vern

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:36 pm
by windstormer
It appears that Cartoon Solutions is really the only site that I can find (or easily find) that sells with a clear focus on 2d animation products. All of the others, which really seems to be only Content Paradise, focus on a mix of various 2d or so called 2d products that really don't focus on the 2d animation area. Odd, since one of their main software products, through Smith Micro, is a 2d animation software.

It seems that they would want to set a side a spot on their market for a spot that is a clear focus on those items that will clearly sell for Anime Studio. The only argument that I feel that they may have against that would be that there is not enough 2d products ( characters, backgrounds, props,...) to really justify a separate catagory with that purpose in mind.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:21 pm
by Darramouss
Hey there, DK.

I had a look at the site and gave up after a few minutes. Feedback, of the constructive sort, has been left.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:29 pm
by realsnake
is it allowed to sell tutorial (video files) on CP?

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 12:05 am
by DK
Yes....you can sell anything that's relavent.

Cheers
D.K

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 6:30 am
by Patmals
It seems ALL my previous purchased items are now DISABLED in the retro side of content paradise.

Even though a particular item i had bought and paid for 2 years download assurance....

C'mon CP..

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 2:59 am
by DK
Just a quick note of thanks to all who wrote and are writing to CP with suggestions re: The New Content Paradise. I recieved an email today that outlined several changes to the site. Included:
Improve Search Results
The recent addition of the search drop-down box filters (Category, Seller and Software) allows buyers to narrow down their searches. Refining the search functionality will make it easier for customers to find what they want. The software compatibility field will soon be a required field during product set up.

The Software drop-down filter excludes any product that has a blank software compatibility field. Maximize search results by adding the software type to the compatibility field.
Nice to know they are taking things on board.

Cheers
D.K

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 3:38 am
by J. Baker
Yes but if you search by software such as Anime Studio you still get non related content. Such as the 3D models. Which Anime Studio can import but I don't think they should be in there. It would be nice to see content that was created with Anime Studio only. We all know that any 3D object (*.obj) can be imported from any 3D software. But that doesn't make it Anime Studio content. It could still use better filtering but at least they're trying.

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 6:07 am
by DK
True J. From the email it appears they hav'nt fully implemented the software specific categories yet on the sellers side. From what I read when you list a product as a seller soon you will be able to list it as AS specific. It might help sort the 2D from the 3D but I guess we have to wait and see.

Cheers
D.K

Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:48 am
by InfoCentral
It seems like they lost most of the merchants. I don't know what the new deal was but they haven't returned. I think that renderosity.com has a much larger marketplace and huge selection. Even for those who want to post a few free ones.