I’ve noticed that many artist out there are starting to create content for various marketplaces. I have some experience about this topic so I can share my ideas. I’m going to be brutally honest so keep that in mind. My experience is from Unity Asset Store and Unreal Marketplace.
Can you make a living out of it?
Short answer is yes but…. it’s not that simple. Time is a very important variable that plays a huge role in this question too. You might get a living out of it but it will take X amount of time to be in that situation. It’s also possible that you will not get there at all. It takes lots of different products until it will be profitable enough to continue doing full time. It took me 1,5 years and it’s still not stable after 3 years. It might work as a nice way to earn something on the side but if your whole living is dependent on it, that would be a huge job.
What does it takes?
At first it takes patience and lots of studying what kind of content you want or need to do in order to compete against other sellers. What’s going to be your thing, niche and after that what are the short and long period plans. Do you have something to offer that is currently missing in a specific marketplace or are you just going to do something that already exists but with better quality?
Be confident in what you do but be realistic about it too. If you are a beginner then I would not recommend you to start selling products. It will be hard to learn the basics of everything and at the same time offer your very limited experience, skills and knowledge to others. Take the time to learn, get more confident with your skills, tools and with your thing that you will be selling. Marketplaces are not really a place where you can simply post your portfolio works either. In the case of Unity or Unreal, you should be very good with those engines so if something breaks, you know what caused it. Otherwise you will be in deep trouble.
It’s going to be your work so act like it. It will require time to make your products, handle support and also all of the required paperwork. Depending on your situation, your future plans and the country legislation you live in, you might need to set up your business, sole proprietorship etc.. Are you able to handle bookkeeping, what about taxes, do you have enough knowledge about things like VAT? Are you good at budgeting so you understand what is going to be your base burn rate (software licenses, power, devices). Do you know how to handle your free time and do you have a good self-discipline?
The most important thing is to find enough information first before you start doing anything. Plan and think of backup plans. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket either so start small and see how things will evolve but always keep your primary work as a backup plan. When you have enough experience selling on marketplaces and you are getting good revenue then you can start to think about next steps. First and foremost, be realistic about your future and don’t go that route where quantity is more important than the quality you produce just so you can theoretically make more money out of it.
Generic or more specific content?
Generic content will be a safe option and something you should start with. It’s a better bet to do that because then your customer group is bigger. On the other hand it might be hard to stand out of the group with that content.
My approach is to make something that is generic but still has some personality in it. In the case of Unreal, it’s also possible to make lots of things that help the customer to tweak things like colors, dirt, damage, buildings etc.. This way you can create something specific that is still generic because customers can tweak things to match with their projects and other packs. It takes time and work but this way you get the best things out of both worlds.
Pricing
“Hmm, well I will offer similar content but with a lower price!” No, just don’t! Don’t make that to be your “thing”. By doing so, you will harm everyone and your whole business will be built on a very wobbly ground.
Pricing is tricky but it can’t really be your only weapon against other competition out there. Here are my ideas about pricing your content.
First thing I acknowledge is that my content might be too pricey for some and that's a totally valid point. I always try to see what the current marketplace price point is for similar products so I won't be pricing things too high or low because that would be bad for me and other sellers too in the long run. I also think about how much customers can get value for their money and how much effort it took from me to create all of that. That's one part of the equation.
Because I like to offer much more than just models and textures it also means I need to do lots of customer service, helping/answering questions, writing documents and such so customers can have a good idea how to use different blueprints etc... Sometimes I also help beginners with things that might be outside the product's scope. I also update these packs as much as I can. Most of these are things that I just like to offer even though some of them are totally optional and something that not many sellers do. That’s my niche and thing that seems to work quite well.
So I would say that 2/3 my total effort goes to something completely else than just making these packs and that's why I need to think that too when I'm pricing my products. This is again something that depends on your content but understand that your time is not free.
Nowadays digital marketplaces are putting out sales very often too. I think that's a good thing for customers but it can also have a negative impact for us sellers because sales can cause spikes and other unpredictable behaviour. This trend is something that none of us can do anything about because it's happening everywhere. Only thing we can do is to set our “base” price high enough so it’s possible to drop it in those sales situations. If your base price is already low then you will be in trouble when those sales hit.
Reviews
I’m sure many of you have some mixed feelings about reviews. Some of us are just simply trying to live with them but I think reviews can also be something that you can use as an advantage to show that you care about how your customers feel about your products. Cheesy, I know but hear me about.
As a seller I really want to have as many 5 star reviews as possible, obviously but that is hard and something that might not be even realistic to aim for. Maybe your product is very complex and someone doesn’t know how to use it. There are lots of beginners out there that buy advanced things without any basic knowledge. This will lead to very unhappy customers. Maybe some of your customers thought they were getting something else when they bought your pack. In that case you should be more accurate with your description. Main point is that there are many scenarios where you think those reviews are not valid at all and in most cases you will be right. The cruel fact is that you don’t have full control over how people will review products.
What you can do is to be honest with your products. Don’t oversell things, at least don’t lie about what your customers will get. If your product is more than just a simple asset pack then be honest about it. Write good documentations so your customer will have all the important info available. Keep that info up to date too.
Make test builds so people can test things first. This way they can see your stuff better, see how well things will perform etc… Bad review is going to hurt much more than a customer who notices that your product is not what he/she needs based on that test build and decides not to get your product.
Make it easy for customers to ask questions, get support and be very active with replying. This way you can limit situations where customers feel frustrated or angry and decide to leave bad reviews because you didn’t give good support. In my experience, good support will generate good reviews if you can help and solve issues. This way both parties will win and is the most optimal situation there is.
How many customers will leave reviews? Well, very few, maybe 2-6% of customers will leave those depending on the product. This makes those reviews very important but one bad review can also bring that average score down very fast too.
This is why I always reply to reviews that I get, no matter what those reviews are. If someone has issues then I want to help to sort those out. Most of the time I’m successful with that and the customer will edit their reviews. Obviously there are situations when this doesn’t happen and in those situations you need to think what you can do about that. Review bombing is a thing and happens everywhere too. In those cases you should contact your marketplace support to deal with that.
Support
I didn't know how much support it really takes to keep customers happy. Many of them are just beginners so I need to offer help and sometimes way more than is needed just to make sure they will be able to use those products. I have also found out that documentation helps to decrease the most common asked questions. This is also something that will take time to do but is worth it.
Setting up good support channels is a must. Email is good but it’s not that fast and makes it hard to share some things. I personally use a Discord server because it’s easy to set up different channels for each product, share information about updates and give different ways for customers to share their ideas/feature suggestions. In some situations customers can help each other and that’s handy too.
Updating content
Updating your products is optional, at least most of the time. I know sellers that don't do updates at all. There’s nothing wrong with that approach but I personally find it very useful to update my products. This way customers see that they are getting way more than what they originally paid for. People just like free stuff. These updates don't even have to be huge but the psychological value you get from them is huge. Listening to customers' ideas and then actually doing them will lead to happy people who will leave good reviews and maybe buy your future products. Basically a win/win scenario where you can keep your products still relevant for a longer period of time and customers also get more value out of them.
In the case of Unreal or Unity, it takes time to keep products up to date with newer engine versions and test that nothing breaks. This is optional but I would highly recommend it so you can have a larger customer base to service.
How to advertise?
Last thing I want to cover is the advertising part. I don’t personally do that much advertising because during my time with social media and marketplaces I found out that around 90% of my customer base is finding my products just by browsing something in the marketplace. Previously I spent a lot of time and effort to post on my social media platforms but I didn’t find that very effective. Social media has changed a lot so it’s very hard to get your voice heard. I could write so much more what I think about social media in general but I won’t go into that with this article. If you don’t have a huge following in social media then you won’t get good results with that. That will basically left us mere mortals out unfortunately because we don’t usually have tens of thousands followers.
Paid advertising might work and I have seen some companies doing that. It will cost so you should budget that into your costs too but you should think where your potential customers will be. I always try to think how much can I get back from that time I use to advertise my products. My personal opinion right now is that my time will be better spent just by creating those products instead of posting ads on social media.
Feel free to post your thoughts and experiences related to this topic. I know that many of these points are no-brainers but I still feel that there are some beginners out there that might be too “blue pilled” with this stuff and how much work it takes vs how much revenue it can generate. That can lead to marketplaces that are full of low quality content with low prices and usually that also means hard times for every seller out there.
Until next time,
Kimmo K.
You can also find me in the following places too:
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