We’d like to take this opportunity to thank clients and creators across the globe who have helped us in the beta phase of Blend Market. So far over 700 of the world’s leading brands and immersive tech creators have signed up, and the support and feedback that you’ve given us has been incredibly helpful. We are passionate about Blend Market enabling you to create amazing immersive experiences easily, so please keep the feedback coming.
We’ve had over 100 immersive project briefs in the marketplace so far, including briefs from major brands for Augmented Reality (AR) filters, 3D modeling, mobile games, virtual tours, character animation, live scribing in Virtual Reality (VR), product tours, sound recording, VR training, 3D mapping, and 360/180 filming and post-production. If you have an immersive project idea or need help on an existing immersive project we can help, no matter how big or small the idea.
We work hard daily to improve Blend Market, and in the below blog I’m proud to share with you where we’re up to, what you can expect in the coming weeks, and where Blend Market is headed.
Kerry Jones, CTO, and the Blend Media team.
Since beta launch
Since beta launch we’ve been busy making continuous improvements, here are some of the new features we’ve added recently:
A project referral programme, where anyone can refer projects to Blend Market and get paid for the referral. More info on the Project Referral Programme.
The ability to share any files, such as NDAs, designs, and final deliverables privately with people working on your project.
A new project brief builder that makes it as easy as possible for you to write your project brief.
Creators can now add any URL and YouTube or Vimeo video embeds to each project in their portfolio.
Once a project is completed, creators and clients are able to give feedback that will be displayed on each other's profile to help build your reputation within Blend Market. All feedback shared about projects helps us to improve the experience that everyone has with Blend Market.
A new payments dashboard for creators to see the status of payments for all projects they have worked on.
The ability for a client to send a single message to multiple Creators.
A much easier way for creators to add their bank details when setting up their account.
Beyond beta
With all the improvements we’ve been able to make to Blend Market, and another big update being released in the next week or so, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be coming out of beta in early October!
Of course, we’ll be continuing to evolve the marketplace over time and have 100s of feature requests and ideas for how to make it even more useful for you. It’s now easier than ever to find expert AR/VR developers and creators and deliver on immersive content projects. We plan to continue making it even easier for you to create your brilliant work, that is our mission.
The next time you need help with an AR or VR project, get in touch with us and we can help guide you. Or if you already know what you need, then head on over and submit your project brief at Blend Market and we’ll match you with the best creators for your project.
What to expect with the next update
We have a big update coming to Blend Market near the end of September in preparation for our official launch in early October!
Along with a bunch of smaller changes, we have focused this update on two main aspects that are essential to an enjoyable and effective experience: a Blend Market brand refresh, and the ability to support larger and more complex immersive projects.
Look and feel
One improvement you’ll spot straight away is our fresh new look and brand identity. Quite a lot of Blend Market has been redesigned to make it easier to use and understand, we hope you like it. And we’re not done yet, in fact, we’ll never be finished looking for ways to improve the marketplace and we’re already working on improving the usability and the experience of some of its core journeys.
Project milestones
Previously a project in Blend Market would only support a single payment. However, creative projects are not always that straight forward. There are a number of reasons for needing to split projects up into milestones and for these milestones to be delivered in stages by the creator. For example, a client might want to test out a creator by getting them to deliver a small part of the work before committing to the rest of the project. Or the first part of a project needs to be delivered in order to figure out what the following stages and milestones should be and how much work would be involved.
In this release, when a creator sends a quote for a project, they add the deliverables as milestones with an associated delivery date and cost for each one. It is then possible to pay the creator for each milestone separately as each of them is successfully delivered.
A milestone can be added for anything that might incur a cost and they are only funded when and if they are needed and delivered. So a milestone could be for the delivery of certain assets like an AR filter, and milestones could also be added for contingency funds or project overages.
Platform fee
Throughout the beta phase, our platform has been completely free to use. So that we can continue to keep making Blend Market better, as we come out of beta we’ll start charging a platform fee.
The platform fee works in a way that you are probably familiar with in any other online marketplaces. It is charged to the creator only on the successful completion of a project and creators will take this charge into consideration when they are creating their quotes for a project.
More feedback please!
We are always looking for more feedback, so if you have any questions or suggestions please let us know. And, if you can spare us 20 mins of your time we’d love it if you could join one of our user testing video calls, sign up here.
We have a long list of additional features that we are working on, so stay tuned.
