How Was Your Shapeways Weekend?

October 24, 2011

Every day we try and post cool stories on the Shapeways blog about what people are doing with Shapeways 3D printing from information we gather in the forums and from your model pages. Bart had a great idea to simply use the blog to ask what the Shapeways community has been working on over the weekend, any cool ideas, projects, tips, experiments or links you would like to share? Let us know so we can start the week with a little Shapeways inspiration…

We know what Virtox has been up to, what about you?

Comments

• Bart
  October 24, 2011 at 7:01 am
  I received a Shapeways shipment with three ‘Suzanne Awards’ – 14cm high monkeys that we made as prizes for the Blender Animation festival next weekend. Showed them to my 12 year old niece who was totally amazed that you can actually just make something like that.

• Paul King
  October 24, 2011 at 9:27 am
  How long is a weekend when every day is the same? 😉
  Anyhow, Thursday I finished another model and ordered that along with 2 other designs Ive been working on.
  Friday, I had a kind of ‘bing’ moment with YouTube…
  Saturday was spent mostly trying to promote my YouTube videos of my Shapeways 3D printed items.
  Sunday, dropped my daughter at school for 4:45am for the beginning of her trip to New York. Then spent the rest of the day promoting my YouTube videos of my Shapeways 3D printed items.
  Thanks for the Twitter RT Duann – worked a treat 🙂

• Duann
  October 24, 2011 at 9:32 am
  Hey Paul,
  I noticed you had quite a few views on YouTube, congratulations, do you know the source? how did you promote them?
  Thanks

• Paul King
  October 24, 2011 at 10:48 am
  Hi Duann,
  Well, the funny thing is that I’m not quite sure what is working, but over the last week the 12 videos that I carry AdSense advertising on have in total trebled in viewing figures, predominantly my Dragonscale Chain maille ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys8v1UqOBl0) and Twin Rail Mobius pendant with balls! ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guTSrF7J6Y0) have increased the most.
  I have found that the increased figures come from ‘related videos’ click-throughs from other popular videos of a similar nature. e.g. 2,000+ views on the dragonscale can from my twin rail pendant video & 11,000+ views for my twin rail pendant came from someone else’s video with 110K+ views.
  Now whether YouTube’s relevance algorithms have increased my videos’ exposure due to AdSense inclusion or not is something I am experimenting with, but there was a noticeable jump in viewing figures from the day I included AdSense advertising (YouTube call it ‘monetising’). The algorithms may also take into account what videos I watch, comment on, favourite & channels I subscribe to… again something I am experimenting with.
  I have also been adjusting keywords and video titles to be nearer more popular videos of a similar nature.
  I’ve yet to see the breakdown on yesterday’s viewing figures, but I do know that in total my vids had a 3k+ views jump from the day before.
  So even if my Shapeways models aren’t selling (yet), they are getting exposure and I’m earning a few £s from advertising revenue 🙂
  Cheers, Paul

• Duann
  October 24, 2011 at 10:53 am
  Ah, very interesting, thanks for sharing.

• Lincoln
  October 26, 2011 at 5:48 am
  I worked on trying to make a hollow version of my heart shaped rib cage to be printed at 6 times larger than the original. I also worked on some new designs. None are ready to be uploaded yet.
  I also received my first set of earrings. I love how they came out. I haven’t had time to do a “it arrived” post yet, but will soon. I am thinking about doing a bunch more earrings, but since I don’t wear earrings, it isn’t as much fun as stuff I would actually use.