Sharing Designs And The Damage It Causes
We have been in embroidery almost 12 years, and have seen the sharing that goes on in the embroidery world. One might not think they are doing any damage by sharing designs they have bought, after all they bought them right? They should be able to do with them what they want? This is just not correct.
When you share designs, you hurt the very business you buy them from. Doesn't matter what company or "how big" you think they are. If you take 1 design, and share it with 10 friends, those 10 friends share it with 10 more, and so on, the company you just bought that design from (even if they just sold it for $1.00 each) just lost $30.00 or more. If that continues, the business will go under, it's only a matter of time.
The digitizer works 3 to 4 hours on 1 design, sometimes depending on how complicated the embroidery design or project is, it could take longer. They deserve to be paid for their work and their time. No one will continue to digitize, if they can't earn an honest living with it. Some think, What's the big deal? It is a big deal when hard work is put into the final piece just to be handed out freely.
When you buy a design, you buy the right to use it, most sites have terms. Ours are pretty lenient. We allow our designs to be sold on items you stitch out without limits, but as with other digitizers, we spend a lot of hours making sure the designs stitch out not only well, but perfect. Sometimes we spend days just waiting on a test design to come back. When designs are shared it hurts everyone. If you have a favorite site, but share the designs you buy from it, it will hurt you in the long run, when that site goes under, because they can't afford to keep it going. I don't know about most sites, but Dollarstitch is $450.00 per year just for main website hosting, then more on bandwidth purchased on the open market. Then you pay someone to build the site, $4,000 It's just not cheap. When you sell designs for $1.00 you have to sell 350 designs just to pay for the hosting every year (not including extra bandwidth or your domain name) Plus all the updates and all of that. When designs are shared, it sometimes cost you more for your site then you make, in the long run hurting the company.
Cost of being a digitizer
Hosting- $450.00 per year
Site Building- $4,000 +
Updates $200.00+ per year
Cost of digitizing software- $900+
Our time PRICELESS!!
Design sharing hurts everyone,
please think before you share.