yeah this is true !!! i dont make adopts often but when i do they tend to get tons (exaggeration here, not tons but tons for me.) of favourites and then simply no offers (other than art, which is fine). i dont know if this is the case for others but it makes me hesitant to buy or offer on adopts because the incessant devaluation of adopts makes me feel like im spending more than i ‘should’— even though, as an artist, i know what i’d be spending is reasonable, and lately pretty cheap. i think people are getting used to quick, low priced selling rather than paying bigger amounts. 🫡 maybe. im kind of just talking whatever comes to my brain atp.

it also might just be what ive seen but those who are interested in buying adopts are younger, and older artists make and sell their own or end up trading. it could be because im also a teenager, but most offers i get are from teens who probably cant afford to drop decent sums of money on adopts 💔 idk !!!!

oh my god yes this has been happening to me for years. i constantly advertise my adopts in art discords im in, and on my other socials, but they NEVER sell, and if they do sell, its because ive gotten fed up and reduced the price to almost nothing! i can put hours into an adopt i wanna sell for like $15, but people only seem to want the freebies i make to test out colour palettes or bases or something.

i think the worst part is that sometimes ill get people offering art/ocs on adopts that are set price only, but because i know LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE WILL OFFER, i usually have to end up accepting the offer anyway. i love the art/characters i get in those offers, but some actual money would be helpful to support myself- really makes me wonder if im overpricing sometimes, anyone else get those thoughts?

I try to limit myself to only offer on OCs if i really, really want them, I don’t know if others do the same but I always try to support my friends designs either way if I can’t financially support

this scares me 😶

thank you for making a bulletin about this oh my god

this is just me guessing here, and moreso about commissions in general rather than adopts, but i'd say the current state of the internet has also led to the stagnation of the furry art community. modern algorithms make posting art on any platform absolutely miserable unless you already have a dedicated following, and it's pretty common knowledge that on most platforms fanart gets wayyy more engagement and attention than OC/ just general original art. and while you shouldn't let the number of likes/comments you get determine what you create, people absolutely do and the lack of attention original art gets discourages people from posting said art. even outside of this, again, most social media sites on the modern web are absolutely abysmal for artists or any type of creators; algorithms push corporations and advertisers and creators who already have bigger followings over smaller artists and it's pure luck as to whether or not your art gets seen online. deviantart is basically dead, instagram has a broken algorithm, twitter's gone to shit, tumblr is still there but it's a bit of a weird one, i rarely hear of anyone using furaffinity, hardly anyone posts on forums nowadays- i always saw toyhouse as a kind of supplementary website, several years back you would rarely see people using toyhouse as any sort of main platform, it was a side thing that people would store their OCs and maybe advertise some adopts on, while still mainly posting somewhere like deviantart. with all these other formerly big websites having declined quite significantly, i think this has also led to a decline in toyhouse's community, and the furry art community as a whole. the internet just isn't the same place it once was, it's no longer centred around people and communities, it's centred around advertisers, unfortunately, and with less of these communities comes less focus on original characters, and less demand for art and adopts. i think this is also the reason for people "outgrowing" the furry community; people have always been leaving the community for whatever reasons, that's nothing new, and i don't think the larger number of people leaving now has anything to do with age, as there have always been plenty of adult furries. i would say instead the reason is that, again, the community doesn't feel the same as it once did because the internet is changing. 

and to be clear i'm not trying to romanticize the internet of like 10-20 years ago because it certainly was still a hostile place LOL, just in different ways, but i do think a lot of the communities that existed on the old web or even just the web of 5-10 years ago just cannot exist on the current internet, which sucks :( OK sorry that was a lot LMAO 

1. I have a lot of characters I never use, so buying more seems like a waste

2. I do not have the extra funds like I used to :'( the price of everything has gone up and I have a kid so I just don't have the extra funds to spend on adopts hardly ever.

3. I feel like I've come to a point in my life where I'm tired of adopts and want to focus more so on creating my own things ^^

yup. granted i’ve never been known for my adopts and don’t often make them but i made a batch of like 24 back at christmas and i think 2 of them sold. the rest still sit in a folder lmao. it sucks but at least i never really relied on adopts to begin with

See I think a kinda unrelated issue is the fact that like, common expenses are rising. Rent, and good, etc. because of this ppl who are paying more for this struggle to justify buying smaller things like adopts when they could use that money for extra food. But yeah selling adopts lately has been a super competitive nn dying community nn it sucks :((

i agree with a lot of what you said, but i also see that people just don’t have that much money right now. a lot of people would love to spend money on adopts but can’t because even they cannot afford it :(

Yeah, I made an adopt batch and only friends are interested or offer :/ 

To be fair my art isn’t GREAT but still, they’re cheap and I take anything 

That's a good question :[[ I personally thought it was because of the time of the year, but it might actually be because of what you and your friends suggested now that I think about it... For me, it's because I'm buying a house in 3 months, so every cent matters tbh lol. I try to restrict myself a LOT :'))

Edit: I also do have a lot of characters, so I've just become more picky on the designs I buy now? I feel like it's a waste of money to buy a new design when I have a very similar one already yk? /lh

yeah i think i just have enough characters and am lacking ideas for new ones, but i’ll still take a good design that resonates with me if i see one 🤓 im in the same boat though trying to get anything to sell is impossible. right now i’m trying one of those 50 adopt gacha things again, the first two times i did them they did very well , i’d recommend that to anyone who wouldn’t get too burnt out by making that many

yeah :( I simply don’t know what OCs I’d even use bc the ones I need are very specific but I also have a ton already. and yeah I can’t for the life of me sell any

I dont spend money on them anymore because I dont need anymore ocs