grayhaze

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

My bad Hippy. I apologise for getting the facts wrong about SkinPlant. Obviously you don't have to answer this, but were the extra sales enough to support the development of those free skins? That's my main point about the free skins really. It's all well and good if free skins do create extra sales for the commercial ones, but if there aren't enough of those extra sales, is it really time well spent? I can see there is a definate divide between people on the issue, as some agr

Reply to Donations in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Chef Garry >> There's a comment in the description for the skins, in the documentation linked to from the description, and in various other places. Obviously I wanted people to know about the donations, so I covered as many bases as I could.

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

PayPal have had a bit of bad press in the past, most of which has been without any real grounding in the truth. Much in the same way as WindowBlinds no longer resembles the product it was two years ago, so too have PayPal continued to upgrade and improve their service. They are now actually one of the safest and easiest online payment providers, and offer a huge range of features for sellers and buyers which would otherwise cost a lot to sign up for with other companies. I'm no

Reply to Icons and how to install them in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

https://www.stardock.com/products/iconpackager

Reply to What is a "tool" window? in Skinning WinCustomize Forums

The hardest thing I've found to skin is the toolwindow titlebar buttons. Each instance of a toolwindow uses a different size and alignment for its buttons, meaning that it's almost impossible to get those buttons looking good on every toolwindow.

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

One potential problem with examining the sales achieved by Pixtudio, SkinPlant or any of the others is that they were producing free skins long before they started charging for commercial ones. They therefore have a large back catalog of free skins already existing before they start selling. It's therefore impossible to assess whether the existence of free skins helps sales without having an author who only produces commercial skins to compare against. Again I could be wrong, and

Reply to Problem With WindowBlinds in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

What version of Windows are you using? Is WindowBlinds set to load on startup?

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

As for the argument that nobody would buy a skin for the quality of that skin alone while there are so many free skins available, I'd say that's pretty insulting to those who are already selling skin packs and suites. I know you said you don't mean any offense, but there's no other way to look at it I'm afraid. If what you say is true and people only pay for skins to support an artist, then how do you explain the fact that donations don't work? Surely those asking for donations s

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

I guess the only people to comment on this with any kind of authority would be those involved in the sale of skins already, but I doubt very much that they'll be giving us their sales statistics any time soon.

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

So are you honestly saying that you only sell something by giving something else away for free? If that were the case, millions of businesses all over the globe are collapsing as we speak...

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

/me reads post #8 again Okay, I accept that free skins can be a good form of promotion to increase sales of commercial ones, but I still stand by my belief that the increase isn't sufficient to justify the creation of those free skins. Even reducing production values doesn't make it possible to create a full WB4 skin in a couple of days. In order for the free skins to be a viable method of promotion, they would have to increase sales by hundreds or even thousands of units, and I

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Who said that? /me glances around suspiciously

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

I wasn't disagreeing with his point Jafo, only stating that those people aren't the major contributing force to commercial sales IMHO. I could be completely wrong, and every single sale of a commercial skin is down to a general appreciation of an artist's work, but I'd be extremely surprised to find that the case.

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

I certainly didn't intend any offense by saying that you're in a minority IPlural, as I consider it a good minority. Those who follow an artist's work and then use the opportunity to buy a commercial skin as a way of saying thank you are a testament to the community spirit. However, it's a fact that the majority of visitors to this site are casual visitors who don't participate in the message boards or release their own skins, and who only come here to download skins. To those people, the

Reply to Problem With WindowBlinds in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling WindowBlinds? I'm pretty sure no files are shared between WB and DesktopX, but it's possible something's been removed in the process.

Reply to Donations in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

juni >> Do you put a donate link with your skins too? I'm having limited success now, and have started adding more to my skins as a result, but I'm pretty sure it's only down to this thread.

Reply to Donations in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

It's a shame that PayPal does have problems for some people, as on the whole I think they do a fantastic job. In future if I decide to release any commercial skins I'll probably go with a decent credit card processing company though. For these purposes, the costs involved with that are just too prohibitive. Thanks for trying anyway IPlural.

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

As I said paxx, there are those people who take that approach, but I believe they are in the minority. By not creating free skins, you would only be losing out on that small fraction of sales, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't pay for the development of free skins alone.

Reply to HELP ME!! in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Resolution has no effect on a WindowBlinds skin Dianekk.

Reply to Donations in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

And anyway, it's the Sistine Chapel you moron.

Reply to Donations in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Go and troll elsewhere anthony roberts. Seriously. > Or better still, try creating a skin yourself and then come back and tell us all about it.

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

As for 'crippling' a skin, I would take that to mean offering a small selection of the available sub-skins in one of my skins for free download, but only offering the more powerful ones and things like custom colour versions for purchase. Would that be so wrong?

Reply to For Pay Skin Packs the wave of the future? in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

I tend to agree with you. The majority of potential buyers wouldn't even know about the free skins available by the author, as the sheer volume of skins on the site makes it very rare for a skin by a particular author to be visible to the casual browser. If the skin's good enough to buy, they'll do so. Although I believe there are those who buy skins just to show their appreciation to the authors, I think those individuals tend to be long-standing members of the site who have seen the a

Reply to The Community is.....us in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

Everyone forgot me too, but only because I made them... /me laughs maniacally Thanks to everyone to knows I'm thanking them, and to those who don't.

Reply to Donations in WinCustomize Talk WinCustomize Forums

I'm in the UK too Stumpy, so I know it's possible to use PayPal in this country. I seem to remember their sign-up is a little complicated if you don't read the fine print properly, but once you've worked out what you're doing it's a pretty smooth process.