I literally just started and it's been pretty good so far. I think it helps if you spread the word around too ie facebook etc. https://gumroad.com/kevingeorge
It`s more of an easy to setup internet store then a marketplace, it`s not a place where you put stuff up and wait for people to find you but rather something you promote and build yourself.
it`s not a place where you put stuff up and wait for people to find you but rather something you promote and build yourself.
Totally agree with that, people will not randomly get to your Gumroad profile and buy stuff, it's not like let's say the UE4 marketplace where people have a chance of browsing and find your work. In the end, it's as good as you can promote it.
It's only as profitable as the demand for and quality of the content is.
That seems like an over-simplification to me. Maybe you are selling the best assets ever seen for 1$, if no one knows about it, you are not going to sell any. As much as I hate to say it, poor content with good promotion will be many times more profitable than good content with poor promotion. But you see this in every industry nowadays... However, and that is definitely what josh meant here, good content should be your number one priority. It's easier to advertise good content anyway. Just wanted tone down the "if you do good stuff you'll be famous" idea, unfortunately it isn't that simple...
As for scanned assets, I personally think it is not an easy field to get into, not that competition is big or anything like that. The issue with scanned assets is that they are very, very, very specific, and the chances that they'll fit someone's need are rather small. That is one of the reasons I have been sticking to scanned textures only for the moment, it is more easy to use them in various scenarios than let's say, one scanned rock mesh.
Yeah you can never really win with just quality, sure if it's a ground breaking new thing then sure the word would be spread without you doing anything, but other then that it's all about being visible, lower quality stuff sells more and for higher prices everyday, I try to promote my stuff as high quality content, but at the same time I could sell some really random low quality stuff and still get a lot more sales then the guy next to me only because I'm able to push information out to a lot more people then someone just starting out.
Getting seen and build you customer base is 80% of the work.
For example, if a company like gnomon contacts you about making a tutorial for them, they might offer you like 3000 usd for that, but you know they will make that back in around 5 minutes after release, but if you were to release it yourself as someone just starting out, you would probably not even see those 3k in the first year, so your work is worth 1% of the profit and their exposure is worth 99%, not fair but that's how it works.
Couldn't agree more, exposure is key, and it is, for us artists, much harder to build than good content unfortunately!
Free stuff usually really helps building an audience from scratch, and do not underestimate donations. For a long long time I have been making more money from free stuff than from paid one.
I would build some lead generating content and use that to capture emails and facebook fan page audience. depending on the price of what you are selling, you could experiment with facebook ads highly targeted to the right audience. Pretty much the same process as selling anything online. Or do artstation ads, if the price is right. This would probably be more profitable on higher priced courses at the $30-70 I have seen, as you can then afford to be spending 10 bucks in ads to make one sale etc.
the biggest thing is putting out high quality content and marketing it right.
Well I'd say it depends on the scope of your project, if you really want to seriously make a living out of it, then yeah, maybe paying for ads can be an option, otherwise I would probably not do it, at least not at first (although I haven't tried).
What I did, and I had no plans at all when I started, it kinda happened, was making my free photogrammetry tutorial. Mostly because I was spending so much time on forums explaining my process that I thought a full tutorial would be better. And because people LOVE free stuff I actually ended up with a couple thousand downloads after a month or two. That's when I decided to sell my first texture pack, and the fact that I had 1000+ email addresses really helped. Also whenever posting work related to photogrammetry, I always link to my tutorial. Then people get to see my Gumroad page and know that in case they need textures I am there. The tutorial is my "seal of quality". I didn't really planned that process but it did work out better than expected, probably because I didn't expect anything. However my plan was not to make a living out of that, far from it. But more to not just let my work take dust in the corner of a HDD.
TL;DR :
Free stuff = audience & paid stuff = money. You need both
Finally, remember the gaming industry is tiny, it may be interesting to expand your horizons, which I haven't done yet so I do not know if it is worth the effort, but I assume it is.
yea totally, that's a prime example of content marketing, give a ton of value and have something people can sign up for your list to get, and then occasionally deliver a paid product to your fanbase. organic traffic is great and converts well.
with the paid ads stuff you need to be able to track conversions so you can literally see how much you are paying per conversion, but with gumroad I don't think you can add a tracking pixel so that might not be ideal.
you are right about the game industry being super niche, if money is the goal, then focusing on something that has a much broader audience is probably more of a better use of time, but I think if you dominate the niche there are a few people making thousands a month pretty passivley.
If someone wants to experiment with fb ads, I would say target people in game dev schools, desperate to learn and get techniques from people in the industry. You can laser target your ads with parameters like "goes to art institute, likes polycount and 3d studio max" for example. that audience might only be a couple of hundred people, but your conversions would probably be much higher than just targeting people who like video games for example.
Replies
I think it helps if you spread the word around too ie facebook etc.
https://gumroad.com/kevingeorge
Totally agree with that, people will not randomly get to your Gumroad profile and buy stuff, it's not like let's say the UE4 marketplace where people have a chance of browsing and find your work. In the end, it's as good as you can promote it.
However, and that is definitely what josh meant here, good content should be your number one priority. It's easier to advertise good content anyway.
Just wanted tone down the "if you do good stuff you'll be famous" idea, unfortunately it isn't that simple...
As for scanned assets, I personally think it is not an easy field to get into, not that competition is big or anything like that. The issue with scanned assets is that they are very, very, very specific, and the chances that they'll fit someone's need are rather small.
That is one of the reasons I have been sticking to scanned textures only for the moment, it is more easy to use them in various scenarios than let's say, one scanned rock mesh.
Getting seen and build you customer base is 80% of the work.
For example, if a company like gnomon contacts you about making a tutorial for them, they might offer you like 3000 usd for that, but you know they will make that back in around 5 minutes after release, but if you were to release it yourself as someone just starting out, you would probably not even see those 3k in the first year, so your work is worth 1% of the profit and their exposure is worth 99%, not fair but that's how it works.
Free stuff usually really helps building an audience from scratch, and do not underestimate donations. For a long long time I have been making more money from free stuff than from paid one.
the biggest thing is putting out high quality content and marketing it right.
What I did, and I had no plans at all when I started, it kinda happened, was making my free photogrammetry tutorial. Mostly because I was spending so much time on forums explaining my process that I thought a full tutorial would be better. And because people LOVE free stuff I actually ended up with a couple thousand downloads after a month or two. That's when I decided to sell my first texture pack, and the fact that I had 1000+ email addresses really helped.
Also whenever posting work related to photogrammetry, I always link to my tutorial. Then people get to see my Gumroad page and know that in case they need textures I am there. The tutorial is my "seal of quality".
I didn't really planned that process but it did work out better than expected, probably because I didn't expect anything. However my plan was not to make a living out of that, far from it. But more to not just let my work take dust in the corner of a HDD.
TL;DR :
Free stuff = audience & paid stuff = money. You need both
Finally, remember the gaming industry is tiny, it may be interesting to expand your horizons, which I haven't done yet so I do not know if it is worth the effort, but I assume it is.
with the paid ads stuff you need to be able to track conversions so you can literally see how much you are paying per conversion, but with gumroad I don't think you can add a tracking pixel so that might not be ideal.
you are right about the game industry being super niche, if money is the goal, then focusing on something that has a much broader audience is probably more of a better use of time, but I think if you dominate the niche there are a few people making thousands a month pretty passivley.
If someone wants to experiment with fb ads, I would say target people in game dev schools, desperate to learn and get techniques from people in the industry. You can laser target your ads with parameters like "goes to art institute, likes polycount and 3d studio max" for example. that audience might only be a couple of hundred people, but your conversions would probably be much higher than just targeting people who like video games for example.