We’re happy to announce two major features: Free Product Variants and Tips (Pay what you want).  With these highly requested features, artists can grow their following and earn even more on the ArtStation Marketplace!

Free Product Variants

Offering free digital products enables you to grow your following and attract potential new customers. Customers are more likely to buy your product if they can try out a sample first!

Build your audience

When someone buys or downloads your products, they start following you. They’ll automatically be subscribed to notifications on your updates, new products, artworks and blog posts. If you have announcements, blog posts will reach your followers via notification and email. 

How to upload a free product

Sellers can set the price of a product variant as Free. When editing a product, check the “Free” box to set it to $0.

Free product variant limitations

• Each product can only have 1 free variant.
• Free members can have up to 5 free variants in total. The sum of all files in the variant must be less than 50 MB. 
• Pro members can have up to 30 free variants in total. The the sum of all files in the variant must be less than 500MB.

The limitations are lifted as soon as you price a product at the minimum transaction price of $1.

Tips / “Pay What You Want”

The new Tips feature goes hand in hand with free products and is our implementation of “Pay what you want”. When a customer adds a product to their cart, they’ll be asked if and how much they’d like to tip the artist. 

Users can show their appreciation for a great product by adding a tip for the artist. Tips are completely optional and can be added both for free products or paid products. 

We Appreciate Your Feedback

This is an initial release of these features. We’d love to get your feedback!

Please write to us at support@artstation.com.

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FAQ

Why are there limitations on free products?

Sellers on the ArtStation Marketplace want the ability to offer free products but are also concerned about having it overrun with free products. The limitations are to prevent the ArtStation Marketplace from turning into a free file sharing site.

The limitations are also required for viability. Unlike other platforms which are personal storefronts rather than marketplaces, the ArtStation Marketplace offers a high amount of discoverability. Popular free products can attract a lot more downloads than a personal storefront. The bandwidth costs required for delivering large assets is a concern. We are being cautious in this initial release. We want to see how things go first and will consider lifting the limitations once we can see the impact of free products.

How will tips affect my earnings?

Tips are commissioned at the same amount as the product – sellers will receive 70-80% of the tip amount. Tips are also currently only released on the community marketplace and not on user website stores in this initial release.