It's been about a week now since the first Master Skins have gone up. And so we've had time to evaluate the results.

The results: They're definitely here to stay.  They've done significantly better than we had anticipated.  Or put another way, a skinner could potentially make a full-time living simply making Master skins.

I won't give away the sales figures for other authors but the results for the ones we've put up, which haven't done as well as what Treetog or Adni have done, have ranged from a couple hundred dollars to $500 or so in the first week. And those are dwarfed by what Adni has achieved.

I don't expect Master skins to become more than 1% of the total skins on WinCustomize.com. Or put another way, we'll tighten the moderation restrictions to ensure that they don't become too common because we don't want to give the impression of the site being about paying for skins.

Some people have loudly objected to the selling of skins.  I can't say I understand that. Labor is labor. If it's software, it's okay but if someone makes a skin it has to be free? That doesn't make sense to me.

But the benefits are significant: WinCustomize.com will continue to exist as a result.  The Master skins were WC's last chance.  The # of subscribers we were getting per month was not remotely close enough to justify the expense of the site. deviantART has been interested in providing a whole sub-section for Stardock's skinning stuff (people who think Stardock needs WinCustomize really need a reality check).  So it has been, at times, tempting to close WC and turn it over to deviantART.

A handful of dedicated community members have subscribed. But a site that gets over 3 million unique visitors per month but couldn't manage to get more than a few hundred of them to subscribe just wasn't cutting it.  So the Master skinners along with those who are purchasing their works are not just helping the skinners themselves but they are helping WinCustomize continue to exist.

There are also a lot of journeymen who, next month, we'll begin looking at nominating to become masters. All Masters will be expected to continue to support the community (we don't want Masters come to see us as just a store, we're supposed to be a community, if it ever became purely about the money then again, Stardock would take the most obvious economically justified course -- team up with our friends at deviantART to host the skinning content while we focused our resources on software only).

So the good news is that Master Skinning is doing very well.  One final note, the download count on Master skins is actually meaningless because people who buy them download them from store link, not from WC (we'll have to find a way to display something else other than download count which right now only counts those who re-download the skin after the fact).

Thank you for your support and we hope you are enjoying the new WC!