I'm a professional game developer and blogger trying to keep the lights while only working Online. This means I have a business up and running called Bearded Giant Games and my main products are games for the Desktop (Windows and Linux) and Mobile (Android). In between projects I freelance as an article writer to help pay the bills or fund the assets needed for my next project.
Bearded Giant Games was registered in October 2017 and by November 2nd it was up and running. At that point in time I had 0$ left to my name besides some cash needed to survive and pay the bills for November. By all means I was utterly broke. I blogged about my experiences with almost failing my target for sales in a blog post on gamasutra. Since then I manage to stay afloat until Steam sends the first big-ish paycheck at the end of the month. That means, starting January, I'll be running not on savings but just money I managed to raise by selling my games on online stores like itch.io and steam.
This is the first post in a series of, what I hope to be, monthly income reports. I'm doing this on steemit because:
- it can help potential developers see how someone else is performing and figure out if they can afford to take the plunge and
- by providing useful content to steemit I can also, hopefully, find another mean to fund my projects.
Now that the basics are out of the way let's get to the report.
December 2017 income reports
To be able to pay the bills for December and hold out until steam pays out the revenue from my game I relied mostly on freelancing and the sales I get from itch.io + two very generous donations from a few other developers.
Freelancing on upwork netted me: 127$
Ebony Spire: Heresy sales via itch.io: 258.98$
Donations: 230$
Consulting (Game Development): 200$
Patreon: 0$ (the page was setup this month).
Total: 815.98$ via online means only.
It's not much but it's certainly better than what I expected and blogged about on Gamastura. I realize that most people won't be able to survive on this in the US or other Western European countries but I'm lucky enough that I live in a low-cost country (Romania) and I can get by with a minimum of 500$ / month. Based on my calculation's and steam's data dashboard the payout coming from them on December 30th, that I will include in my January's Income Report, will be more than tripple the sum I made this month. However the game's sales from Steam and Itch will be truncated into a single category as to not breach Steam's NDA.
Now, also, please consider that the sum above is a GROSS Sum that I have to pay taxes on, but for a first tryout in a new company I managed to make money to live on from the first month of existence! Not too bad I think, right? What do you guys think? Are you interested in seeing what I also spend the money on in January's post and have a Total earned online, total costs and a remaining net value at the end or just go with how much I earn online from my activities?
Well, spend some time blogging here and see it as some type of savings. Gain enough to have actual influence on here and you can earn a nice side-income on STEEMIT.
Excellent post. RT'd
Hi i think that's fantastic for a 1st month - you actually have income right from the start, from what I know that's very rare.
I also design games with C2 but i have not been able to sell any yet - might you be able to check out my games and give me some tips on what to improve on?
Thanks in advance
Hey @doly! Sure, let me know what your games are and I'll gladly take a look!
And yeah, I needed to be profitable from the start. Just hope I can keep the traction going.
hi again, sorry for slow reply with Christmas period :)
thanks for offering to help, these are the games i designed myself from my gaming portal "COSMOS's Games" https://dolygames.com/games-cosmos-play-free/
i've been struggling in making any income from my self-taught C2 game development so any tips or help is appreciated and my email is cosmos at dolygames dot com - just mention if you email me that you are bacioiuc from Steemit so i know it's you among the many gaming emails i get
Gratz for going after your dream and having it happen! Not many would take the plunge to be broke and believe that they could make a go of it.
I give you a lot of credit. You will go far on just courage alone!
Thanks, hope it all works out!