Selling digital assets as main income?
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You see these various online stores like Unreal Engine 4 marketplaces, Unity asset store, Turbosquid, etc.etc.
Would you be able to make a substantial amount of money(at least $50k a year) if you did this full time?
I have no way to gauge the profitability of this venture. For example, this Russian guy has good stuff, but most of it is a decade old.
So, does that mean that the models still sell or that it's just a failed remnant still present on the site?
Replies
I think the real key is that you need to be able to create high quality content very quickly - the more content you have the more you can hedge your bets on what will sell well. From your other thread it seems like you're just starting to get into this field, if that's the case I would suggest that you don't worry about putting assets on these sort of marketplaces and focus on learning how to make good art first.
That would be instructive on the quality of work, nature of the item, and actual profitability.
From what I've seen, there's 2 major strategies: Have a broad catalog and kick assets out quickly like EQ says, or be a niche artist and serve that niche well. Everyone is going to need a wooden chair at some point, it's just a matter of having the one that a customer buys that day. Maybe you're the one person selling a cannibal-themed chair and you've managed to sell enough to try and find out who's buying, why, and do they want more of the same?
1- Piracy is everywhere. Everything ends up on cgpeers which sucks big time for content creator
2- There are already a TON of completely free assets everywhere. You know ''freebies''!
3- It takes a lot of skill to make a finished product that is sellable. Want to make a weapon? Then you're gonna need to be able to model it, rig it, animate it, texture it, make sounds and effects to even compete with what's already for sale on most marketplace. It's so much work man.
4- Tricky part is to create something that people need. But you can never be sure that what you create is exactly what people are going to need. (vs bespoke stuff).
Sorry if I sound negative but I've explored the idea of selling stuff on turbo or cgtrader myself and quickly realized it's not worth it! I'm pretty sure that big sellers with quality assets and large catalog are small or medium team with more ressources aka dedicated animator, rigger, texturer, modeler etc. Doing everything and quickly is impossible for 1 human.
Better market places, like Unity/UE4, would have given you much better results.
Just start of making stuff on the side of your day job, and when you feel you have a good day to day sale ratio that is able to support you go full time.
I know a couple of people that sell assets full time, so it`s totally possible, but what they all have in common is that they are top artists.
If you haven't got the experience I would say don't focus on the game asset market. It's probably
the sector with the most consistently priced, and of the most consistent quality, comparitively.
The reason being is that most assets can be seen from all angles and up close. VFX assets on the other hand could just be scene fillers, background props, only be seen from a certain distance/camera angle, and might not even need unwrapping.
On the other hand, all game assets generally need to go through the full pipeline and be delivered unwrapped/textured and/or rigged. Not to mention ready to just pop straight in-engine effortlessly.
Offline assets are much, much more forgiving, for reasons mentioned above. VFX hero assets will always be custom built directly by the studio or studio freelance/outsource)
As for the piracy thing, it is definitely off putting. But it's a fact of life. I have well over a hundred free tutorials on my YT channel and a couple of dirt cheap tuts on Gumroad. I recently noticed my paid tuts on P2P sites and it was disheartening. Cheap motherf**kers won't even pay a few dollars. It's rampant but, what can you do? I haven't made a tut, free or otherwise, in months and this was partly the reason. The amount of time and effort that can go into producing tuts is surely worth less than the price of a coffee?
OT: I have nothing encouraging to add to what has already been said. I'm trying this right now and I can only tell you that it is hard!
OT: Not only leveraging game ready assets trying too eke out a living, but there are also nowadays a ton of other avenues 3D Artists are exploiting:
3D Artists Making Money On The Side...