Adoptables

[Brandi]

Recently, I've been doing adoptables and I'm massively surprised at how popular they are...

5/6 of the first batch sold for $5 each (The last is still unsold with a bid of essentially $1.20 in DA points)
2/4 of the second batch for $6 each (The other two were sold for $6 worth of deviantart points which =480)

I feel that it is quicker for me to do designs for creatures than doing items for petsites, and more and more I'm feeling like there is less of a reason to do item commissions other than the sheer practice of dawing random objects. ;^;


But I am not making this thread to brag about anything, $5/6 is not much to make, as there are many adoptable designs that sell for $10+ by other artists, I'm just expressing the fun in it and inquiring...

...has anyone on here done anything like this? (I'd like to see!) Do you find it fun? How much have you made with adoptables? Do you get a similar feel for it as when you make pet art?
I'm getting addicted to doing this X3;

Oh and to make it clear yes this is my lineart/base that I drew myself, it's not being used by anyone else~ I thought about selling it as a pet originally but decided against it as pets in this style are not popular and do not sell well. (I probably would have made $5 off of it compared to the ~$37 I've made doing re-colors <_<;; )

[Dyl]

How do adoptables even work? o.o I never knew that you could sell them for real money.
And what's your deviantart account? (:

[Brandi]

@Dyl My DA: http://brandimuffin.deviantart.com/ ^^

How do adoptables even work? o.o I never knew that you could sell them for real money.
And what's your deviantart account? (:

An adoptable is basically a design/character that you sell. It is popular with people who like "collecting" characters or are not very good with designing characters for themselves.
People who enjoy petsites tend to enjoy adoptables.

Basically you create a lineart base (like a pet for a petsite- shading is not really necessary but makes the character look extra nice) and you do various designs for it, and you can sell the "designs" at a flat rate or in an auction (either or tends to work fine with a good price range)

Winners tend to want to post the image as their ID or in their profile, so in my case I send them a transparent .png of their adoptable for their personal use, with promise that they wont alter the lineart or try to create their own adoptables out of it by tracing or something or other. (This never happens- it's not really an issue)

People sell anything from cats to dogs to humans to anthro's to made-up creatures they designed themselves.

Note that adoptables sell for money better on Furaffinity than Deviantart, but they can sell alright for money there as well;

I've seen some original character designs get up to $60+ and that is something that is being sold to a single person, not for profit or pet-site- so that's pretty decent. (occassions like that are rare though)

[Solistia]

I've been a part of "user-made adoptables" for a loooong time. They're popular on Gaia where I was first introduced (though you couldn't sell for real $$ unless you had a link offsite). Then I got into Ponyisland.net that has a strong adoptable community (and you can easily sell art/templates/pets for $$$). Then there's Secundi.net, which is dedicated to user-made adoptables (via their forums, and those adoptables can eventually be voted to become official website adoptables, giving you access to more automated systems :3). I've seen some templated adoptables there go for $50+ |D;; (for a very popular and high activity adoptable) [sadly not all of PonyIsland and Secundi's adoptables are of very high caliber art OTL something I miss from Gaia, though there are definitely some very good quality ones :3].
There are also more "collect" type adoptable sites like on SanoriGardens.org, where the focus is mostly on collecting pretties without anything else attached (whereas most adoptables I'm used to tend to have "breeding" or other activities)

I may have to start checking out DA's adoptable community >w> seems like it's getting a lot larger.

(Also, I must admit, I just recently paid $20 for a templated pet that I really liked |D;; so I'm no stranger to paying $$$ for adoptables!)

[Drea]

Have you been able to sell them for actual cash or is it just for DA points?

[Brandi]

@Drea

Mostly cash.

I've made $37 in actual cash off of them ^^;

[Drea]

Teach me your ways. ;-; <3 XD

But really, that's awesome. Kami and I have been trying to do this sort of thing on DA off and on for points... @_@ I'd love some tips if you could spare the time... I'll message you if you wouldn't mind sharing some... :'3

Also, so are you going to be doing this more and more? Since you seem to enjoy it?

[Solistia]

Ah, also Brandi, being part of multiple adoptable communities for as many years as I have, I do have to add another explanation for why people purchase adoptables. I myself have never purchased a pet just because I am not good at designing a character, nor do I purchase for the sake of using it as a "character design". It really is just like a pet site, except on a much smaller scale, and instead of people getting pets that are of a specific premade coloration, you actually get your own uniquely colored pet (something I have only ever seen Aywas do of the big pet sites). With the purchase of a pet, you can usually participate in further activities like breeding and/or role-playing. There are also many adoptable shops that offer "customs" so that people can get a pet of their own created design (or like a pet they got from another adoptable).

Since most of these adoptables are on forums, even when adoptables aren't being bought and sold, you usually can spend time with other followers of the shop and let good times be had :3 (I have seen a number of shops with bad quality art be successful just because the idea of the adoptable and the community themselves draw them in). I have also seen adoptables with large backstories, multiple species, and even multiple colorists to accomodate demand for the adoptable :3

There are also a lot of adoptables out there (like on those sites I mentioned) that do free events (since some people can't pay real currency or don't have a lot of "site" currency), along with their paid events. Those events usually draw in new people to the shop, thus expanding the community of the shop.

I've actually seen quite a few art pieces purchased/commissioned from here to be used as adoptables in the way both Brandi and I have described :3

[DragonSpeaker]

There used to be forums dedicated solely to little adoptables shops. It was sort of like Gaia's Breedables subforum, except it was the entire site. People would start with a little cache of a fictional currency to start buying the pets and then they would post them up on their own webpages to show they owned them. The pets were often able to be bred, but all the art was done by hand. The first one I ever joined was Dragonspyrit Market back on Ezboard before it became Yuku. Around that time there were a lot of sites that had "click-and-take" adoptables too, like The Nameless Forest. That was like... 10 years ago though. xD Most of the little cyberpet forums got kinda swallowed up by Gaia and the automated SIM sites.

Anyway, I think yours are really cute! I'm glad you're finding it profitable. It's nice to see simple adoptables making a bit of a comeback.

[Brandi]

@Drea There is no secret... really... other than don't expect to make much money with just Deviantart; I held the auctions on both Furaffinity and on Deviantart- (and yes FA can be full of things people don't want to see but there are filters for that.)
The truth of the matter is, people on DA are mostly children with no money and no credit cards... FA has many more people with an income and expendable cash. I have less than half the watchers on FA compared to DA but 90% of my commissions come from the people on FA. So if you want to profit off of designs- get a following, even a small one, on FA, and generally people will buy an adoptable if they like it. One person who bought two adoptables saw them on the front page in the 5 minutes it was submitted; Things that pop up on the front page tend to have more of a chance to catch people's interest.

Furaffinity is mainly "animal" themed- where DA is "everything" theme'd... Because it's mostly a more singular interest on FA, it's a lot more popular there, and get's more attention, and you can generally sell for more too, people are not shy with their money because they love supporting artists and they love cute furry things C:

Here are a few links to some good auctions:
http://www.furaffinity.net/full/6116418/ (<- these were for $6 each- WAYYYY too cheap in my opinion)
http://www.furaffinity.net/full/5542756/ (<- This started at $5 and ended up being sold for $110)
http://www.furaffinity.net/full/5989674/ (<- This went for $130 by the same artist as listed above, her original species is very popular)
http://www.furaffinity.net/full/6147699/ (<- These were auctioned starting at $12 and each ending over around $20)

Also, just as an example of the different mentalities on FA vs. DA, the auction'd design that went for $130 on FA was submitted to DA, look at the comments here:
http://atomicfishbowl.deviantart.com...tion-214779479
http://atomicfishbowl.deviantart.com...tion-214779479

People are shocked the money people will spend here, they don't understand it, they wouldn't themselves, on FA, there are massive bidding wars.
But yeah... I think you get the picture.


I've never seen adoptables more popular or more successful than on FA. I wouldn't call it a secret, but a good suggestion.

and yes I do plan to keep doing adoptables, I did a poll on DA and people seem to be interested in red pandas so I may do a red panda design next; I feel that if I ever don't have time to do commissions but need some extra cash to pay bills, adoptables are something good to turn to.

Anthro adoptables tend to be more COMMON, but good original desings are definitely more POPULAR regardless of whether it's anthro or not C:

@Solistia I see, it's nice to get a different perspective; The reasons I listed were mostly the reasons given by others that I've heard- I've seen a few adoptables in the past I would have adopted at the time if they weren't already taken (really good ones are always gone instantly) I can say for myself I have design skills, but there are some things you just *want* - I guess like when you see some useless trinket that is CUTE in a store that you want buy for the sake that it made you smile~

@DragonSpeaker Thank you for the compliment; I actually did spent a lot of hard work on these and was happy with how they came out ^^; <3