Two months ago we announced the upcoming feature that would let you support your favorite creators. At the same time, we started the closed beta with selected creators. We adjusted the system based on the feedback. We also implemented a couple of new features that we and the creators agreed were essential to be present for the launch. Today we have everything ready and you can see all the changes live on Printables! To celebrate the launch, we’re running a special promotion where we’ll double individual creator earnings up to $10,000!🧡 You’ll find details about this promotion below.
Whether you’re a creator interested in having your own club on Printables, or a user who’s considering supporting a creator, we prepared a concise summary of how the new Printables Clubs work.
The core idea
The whole system is designed to enable users to support their favorite creators in their activities, rather than being a 3D model marketplace. This is reflected in many of the features. From payments, which go directly to the creator’s account the second someone decides to support them, to exclusive models being available to all supporters, no matter their tier.
The subscription model we’re rolling out is perfect for creators who post fairly regularly and for people who want to support such creators in the long term. Even in cases where the creator shares all their work for free. Such creators often already have a profile on platforms like Patreon, but they expressed their frustrations and missing features on these sites, from discoverability to file management. If you’d like to learn more about our motivations and reasoning behind Printables Clubs, we suggest going over the previous article.
We’re aware the subscription model isn’t the optimal choice for everyone. We might implement additional systems in the future to tackle the other use cases, such as selling individual models, but that’s a topic for another time.
Below, you’ll find a quick breakdown of the features of Printables Clubs. Instead of lengthy explanations, we’ve gone with brief points for easy understanding. We’ve also prepared a new section in our Help where you’ll find additional information for both creators and supporters.
Tiers and benefits
Creators can create up to 5 tiers.
The tier price is limited to $3-$100.
Each tier can have benefits that the creator defines.
There are a couple of pre-defined benefits, such as advanced licensing options or member-only posts, which creators can assign to individual tiers. Creators can also define their own benefits. The benefits don’t have to be cumulative, creators can set completely different ones for each tier.
Club memberships
Memberships are on a monthly basis, and the recurring payment is charged at the beginning of each month.
If a new member joins in the middle of the month, they can choose to pay the full membership fee for the remaining part of the month or a proportional amount for the current month plus the following month. We are particularly proud of this solution, as creators expressed their frustration with people joining near the end of the month and the confusion that came with the two payments close to each other.
If a user wishes to cancel their membership, it will be terminated at the end of the month.
As soon as a tier has at least one member, its price cannot currently be changed, so consider the prices carefully.
Creators have the option to create a custom welcome email for new members of their Club.
Creators have access to basic analytics about their club members and earnings over time.
Creators can set up a welcome message that all new supporters receive after joining the club.
Creators have the option to write mass messages to members of individual tiers.
Exclusive models
Exclusive models are one of the possible, but not necessary, benefits creators can offer to their supporters.
If a creator decides to keep some models exclusive for their supporters, they will appear on a separate tab on the creator’s profile.
Exclusive models are accessible to all supporters, no matter their tier.
The Exclusive Models tab is visible to everyone, however, non-supporters only see a preview of each model and are not able to download any model files.
Exclusive Models, which you do not have access to, are not visible when browsing the model database or when using the search function (more about this in the previous article)
Creators can schedule an exclusive model to automatically become freely available to everyone after a set amount of time.
Exclusive models do not generate any Prusameters.
Loyalty badges for supporters
Comments and makes from the supporters of the model author are highlighted with a loyalty badge. So everyone will see at first glance that the comment/make poster is supporting the creator.
The badges level up over time, with the continuous support of the creator.
Commercial licensing
Creators can offer commercial licensing, or an entirely custom license for their models for specific membership tiers.
Creators can exclude specific models from Commercial use and Custom defined license terms benefits (e.g. for fanart). The restriction will be indicated on the model’s detail page.
Payments and fees
Payments are processed by Stripe. Users can pay using their credit/debit card or with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
The money goes directly from the supporter to the creator, with a 10% Printables fee which will be used to help cover the costs of servers, maintenance, and development. The payment from the supporter to the creator is also subject to fees outside of our control, such as currency conversions or the Stripe payment fee based on Stripe rates.
Creating a Club is completely free and there is no monthly fee for running the Club.
Where can you find the Clubs setup?
In the top menu bar, click on “Settings” below your avatar, and then select “Setup my Club.” You’ll go through a four-step wizard where you have to enter your basic information create 1-5 tiers for your supporters and set up your payout method.
Who can set up a Club?
Printables Clubs work globally. Users have to reach level 18 to be able to set up their club. You can skip this requirement by submitting your portfolio together with your application, e.g. if you have an established profile on another platform. To apply, click on your avatar in the top menu -> Settings -> Set up my Club.
Special promotion – we’ll double your earnings!
To celebrate the launch of Printables Clubs, we’re running a special promotion. Reach at least 50 supporters in your Club by the end of October 2023 and we’ll double your earnings since your club started! The maximum bonus is limited to $10,000.
Note: Every Club eligible for the bonus will undergo a review process. In case of suspicious activities, we reserve the right not to grant the bonus to the creator.
We’d like to thank all creators who were part of the various testing phases, your feedback and insight helped us shape Printables Clubs to the current form. As with everything on Printables, we’re planning to regularly update and expand the features based on your feedback. We can’t wait to see creators building communities of supporters on Printables. Happy printing!
Really not a fan of this. There’s plenty of sites with paywalls and people hawking their wares… what I liked about printables was that it was different and it DIDNT encourage people to put their work behind barriers. It was the best of the open source and collaborative sites since thingiverse went down hill. But now, I guess Prusa’s jumping on the Thangs/MyMiniFactory/Cults model…. which is sad, because at least some sites like cults have become mostly a wasteland except for the paid models.
I hope this doesn’t ruin Printables.
@AdamL You’re assuming that people who want to sell models aren’t already using those platforms. You do have a point that if Printables make it so easy someone will choose a paid model vs just posting for free, but I suspect that won’t be the case. It’s the Open culture that makes sites like ThingiVerse/Printables the go to places for models.
In addition, Prusa getting some income from Printables should help development…. preventing stagnation and unfixed bugs, like ThingiVerse.
Time will tell.
If you read the previous article – https://blog.prusa3d.com/support-the-designers-you-love-coming-soon-to-printables-com_78461/ You can read about us having the exact same thought process, and all the focus that went into making this the right way. We do not mix paid models anywhere in the database, there is no putting models into individual tiers, etc. We really spent an incredible amount of time on this, rather than just copying any of the existing platforms. The goal is to make this a net benefit for everyone. Keeping the main Printables database still completely free. Bringing more high-quality models to Printables. Enabling creators to spend more time doing what they love by being able to make money with it. We have automatic switching of models from exclusive to free after a set period of time, etc. I really believe we did everything we could to make this the best of both worlds, let’s see how it develops in a few months of time. Like always, we are actively looking for any feedback and we’ll be adjusting things on the way to further improve this.
How about existing models that are getting moved behind a paywall now ? What’s the incentive for every creator not move all their existing “ free” stuff to paid now.
So with the automatic switching what’s to stop creators from just deleting the model when the timer is about to run out and reuploading it?
Is there a way to search only exclusive models across printables? If I’m looking for the very best models, why am I unable to search/discover them from the search bar? It sounds like I would already have to know of a designer that makes what I’m looking for, or happen upon one of their free models, go to their page, and see if they offer exclusives. Why?
Except for that you can’t even see the details of the models anymore nor the reviews, nor the ppl feedback and pictures.
Models that I downloaded and still have on my computer are now behind paid subscriptions.
RIP Printables 🙁
I just tried to download a model I had in my queue from a couple of weeks ago to find that it was now behind a pay wall. Pretty frustrating.
I starting pushing people towards printables because it wasn’t MMF or Cults and seemed to embrace open community sharing. Sad to see it moving towards commercialization.
I was sceptical. But with people like fotis mint uploading so many free models here and many more paid models elsewhere, it is nice to see al his wares consolidated on one site.
One thing though, I’d love to see more than one preview pic on the model page as a non club member. I don’t see a reason why other images or even a 3d preview would be blocked from viewing.
What happens when someone posts a fan version of a film prop that the studio already merchandises – and the studio notices?
Or a ‘designer’ takes free designs from others’ posts or from other sites, claims them as his own and sells them? OK, you ban the offender but do you refund the members all or part of their payments, do you transfer the payments to the true originators … or what?
What happens if the designs are untested or simply unprintable?
What assurance of quality do we have?
Cheeri,
> Such creators often already have a profile on platforms like Patreon…
It would be great if creators had the ability to link a Patreon or similar existing benefit to a Printables “clubs” subscriber tier. Otherwise their existing supporters may have to chose between the convenience of accessing exclusive models on Printables vs. any additional benefits they already have through Patreon or similar platforms.
As someone who is also generally concerned with too many subscriptions already, I think it would be great if there was an option for a single broader Printables Premium subscription which pays out to the creators. Perhaps it gives you limited access to multiple creators, or allows you to chose a creator to sponsor that month.
Is there any way (yet) to disable a Club I set up ?
I realise, Club is likely not going to work for me. Even tho I’ve a few somewhat successful models I’m not a prolific enough designer to warrant anyone to subrscribe to a monthly fee.
A tipping system will work better for people like me; the one-hit-wonder. Maybe users could subscribe to Printables and then have a kind of pot from which they can drop a dollar (or prusameters) to a specific designer or model.
The monthly subscription thing bothers me immensely.
I would rather pay (less) for individual models, or have it be a site-wide subscription like Netflix, where Printables could pay creators from that pot based on their downloads/popularity
I think Printables Club is a great idea and it deserves a designated tab next to “Brands”. The side-scrolling feature does not give a good overview of the creator’s clubs.
best regards.
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I really don’t like this. This goes against the open source spirit of the 3D printing community and adds another layer of cost on top of an already expensive hobby with a high barrier of entry.
I migrated over to Printables because it was open. If I wanted to see a bunch of models I have to pay for I could just go to Cults or MMF.
I think it is a great idea for Designers and Creators. But what i dont like, is that you neither can see the other Images nor the Parts that you would get. It doesnt hurt, to see those parts. On the contrary, i would be more interested, if i knew whats inside.
Think about it…
This is the way…
I have to agree with this, if the creator doesn’t want something exposed, then might attach the image to the description field.
Maybe it’s prusa did the Blur images to hide the 3D previews? Maybe blur that section only?
To increase discoverability it could be beneficial to have a toggle that i can enable to show exclusive models. This way i could find those models when searching or just browsing through printables.
If the default is off, no one should complain and those looking for the exclusive models can find them more easily. Creators benefit from the better discoverability and gain more members.
How do you create a club?
Hi,
I’m here because there is/was no paywall, and the page design is nice.
I provide my models for free because of several reasons. It’s a very small niche. I try to get more young people into the hobby with projects for about 5€ including all parts compared to more than 50€ -140€ for commercial ones.
You should know, I spend about 20 to 40 hours on every model pair (2 scales). Every 5$ or 10$ payment could be much for the single young customer but on the other hand it’s a bad joke as salary.
You forget the expectation “because I paid some money (less than a coffee), I need to get more … much more” even if the costs of the production are hundred times higher.
Prusameter don’t work for me. It’s only works for mass models with a lot of downloads per month. For special interest it’s demoralizing. After the 10th uploaded model, you only get something for mass models. It’s less than a monkey island T-shirt!
It’s more annoying than the zero income on Thingiverse. Once someone pressed the tip button, but I don’t take tips. Its more demoralizing if you get 5€ for a month of work than anything else.
To say it clearly:
I don’t want to be the free sidekick and free advertising for paid models.
Best regards
Tomek
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What a stupid idea !!!!!
Printables will commercialize very soon thanks to these “Exlusive Clubs”.
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I would rather subscribe to pintables.
Here is how it could work.
Subscription £5 a month to printables. after costs and other expansive 1/4 goes in free pursa point fund and rest into exclusive gold points fund.
based on total in fund points allocation would be dynamic. so some months more or less.
eg. 400 dls gets you 200 points atm – this could change to 200 downloads gets you 200 points. all depending on fund total… lot math to balance things basically.
people subscribed to printables will get access to gold pursa exclusives..
and makers would only get gold points for items in that.
The gold points could be exchanged for real cash, or discount on items in pursa store.
good thing about this model it supports both paid and free. while directing some reward back to free.