How much asset store publishers earn ?

Hello,

I am interested to know, how much a publisher on asset store earns. I am looking for stats from real publishers. So, it will be great if anyone can share their revenue reports of asset store.

Here are my stats.

I published my first plugin in March, 2015 & it was free. It is a GUI animation plugin. It was getting around 200 downloads per month. Then I decided to make it paid at $5. I sold only 2 copies at this price. Then I decided to add some new features & increased the price to $10. I sold 4 copies at this price.

So, at the end of 15 months,(May 2016)

$5 x 2 = $10
$10 x 4 = $40

Total $50 in 15 months. Yeah, it made me very rich.

So, please share your reports & let everyone know the truth of asset store.
Thanks.

 

Depends if stuff is in demand, I've made 1500 dollars in about 5 hours before. But other and most times I've made more like 30/60 dollars a month. I guess if some things are useful, they outlive their usefulness, because from 1500 a day to 200 a month down to 99 a month and now down to around 30 a month is a pretty clear sign for me that it's outlived most of the omg hype lol.

 

Isn't it like publishing games? Top earners have a good income and most others don't? I don't think it's a good choice to base your main income on, or else I'd probably have tried to do it.

 

It depends. I sell a couple very niche assets. I could create / list a ton more random things, more complex, but I don't want to spend all my free time supporting them. My time is worth money too.

I've made $60 one month. $42 this month. 2+ years, total like $600. Not enough to live on. In fact, all the money just sits in my paypal account until a rainy day or something.

I am sure the numbers are all over the board. Depends how valuable / useful / interesting / new / hyped / on-sale / promoted your asset it. I don't think I could make assets and sell them as a full time job. I just feel like there's a saturation point for Unity, and once you've sold to X percentage of users, you need a new asset to keep going.

 

This. It depends on the asset.

 

it's our main activity for the past 3 years. Live in California. If you're an artist, you need to have a big library of quality content. if you're a developer you need to fill a hole with a quality, well documented, easy to use tool / script / add-on, editor extension, shader.
Edit: Don't create a model and just sit there thinking it's going to get you wealthy. It's really hard work, tons of extra hours compared to a 9/ 5er, a lot of support hours for developers creating extensions, scripts tools. Basically you can't do the switch until you know it can bring you enough to live, till then you need to keep at it and keep your day job or whatever brings the biggest part of your income.

 

^ That's how you do it.

 

Asset store is a great source of income.
Just make sure it's not your only source of income.

Unless you have something truly needed by the community that's really going to sell don't expect much from the AssetStore. Although it can make enough to cover cost of buying assets; that way you don't have to fork over money which was earned during your 9-5 grind.

 

Its pretty much comparing apples and oranges, it depends 90% on what you made, how much demand is (a common or uncommon thing in games) how much time did you put in it and the size of it, .... Which means that even though you would get 100 asset store submiters to post you stats, the main question you need to ask: and what did you made to get those numbers. Or perhaps you should specify in question what kind of concept are you looking from publishers to compare the numbers for.

 

There are two ways to be profitable on the asset store:
1) Create a unique asset.
or
2) Create an asset that stands out in a saturated niche.

Do that and sales will be quite well.

 

Maybe you should ask the playmaker developer?

 

Between $1,000 - $2000 on normal months for us, after Unity takes their 30%. If we get featured in a sale, that month could be $5,000 - $9,000. But we've spent probably thousands of hours on our main 2 plugins and they've been out for more than 3 years each.

And no, I couldn't live off this alone. Don't expect to ever get to that point on Asset Store sales alone.

 

Revenue alone isn't enough to give you an accurate picture for the store you also need to know at what rank the company usually stays at.

I can only give you a bullet point for my particular data but in general if I average the last 6 months or so I average around $1000 USD per month and average around the 250th most popular publisher. Hopefully those with both higher and lower stats can give you more data, but my informal guess is probably only the top 25-50 publishers make enough money to even contemplate doing only this for their only modest income (and only if there is only a solo person running the publisher). Striking lightning in a bottle with the right asset is just as difficult as doing so with a game. Gaia's, Text Mesh Pro's, Playmaker's, Shader Forge's, and Easy Movie Texture's don't just grow on trees and require a lot of effort, skilled execution, and some level of guessing correctly or lucking into what the market wants.

Unlike a game though when you hit a home run it tends to make you 6 figures not 7 figures. That being said the market currently is a lot less saturated so if you are doing it part time it will at least give you some decent income, whereas a part time game that is good/average will make you almost no income.

 

I see, your "Master Audio: AAA Sound" is on madness sale. Can you please share stats of this plugin before & after madness sale ?

Please..!

 

You said, you stays around 250th most popular publisher. Can you please tell me, how you got that rank ?
I am interested to know, what will be my rank ?

 

$30/month.
You still earn better then me.

 

I wonder if at some point art becomes a better product? I always thought that it was much more difficult to make money with art, but there are only so many niches you can fill with scripts/tools, that often need long-term support and plenty of iteration, while people like Manufactura K4 can knock out potentially an endless amount of high quality art packages that don't need to be supported (unless a mistake was made of course).

Not to mention that art packages are not engine specific, and can be sold on turbosquid/unreal marketplace/etc as well.

 

It's good point to sell your art work everywhere. But for me, art work really pain.
Because, I don't know it. But if you can make art work like Manufactura K4, then you can make living from asset store alone. Because, I believe he must be making at least $10,000 per month.

 

Playmaker developer won't even reply to me about those stats. Because, I am indie developer & they are AAA developer. So, they will just ignore me.

 

These numbers may be because your assets looks too specific. It may be useful to only some people who is looking for those functionalities in their games.

And yeah, congratulations for making a world record of 55 days of wait after asset submission. In return to your patience, Unity should promote any of your asset in 24 hour sale.

 

Your asset store library looks too big. One thing I couldn't understand is, why everything ends with $.90 in all of your assets ? Is there any secret behind it ?

 

I am just looking for number of $$$ people makes from asset store. It motivates me.

 

Typically, we gross (before Unity's cut) about $1000-1300 on Master Audio and roughly half that on Core Gamekit, per month. With 24-hour sales, we've grossed $5,300-$8,000 on a single plugin during those 24 hours.

 

Your poll needs a "Depends" options

 

WOOOO....!!
I wish, one day my plugin will also be featured by Unity & will make at least half of your report.
And let me tell you one thing, your Master Audio looks really cool. I am going to purchase it soon.
Thanks for sharing your data & please keep sharing in future.

 

I put only 2 options YES & NO. Because, I want to know clear answers. No in-between. If there is a depends option, then all votes will go only there.

 

http://unitybuzz.com/stats/companies/

This is a 3rd party website using Unity's internal API and its not a perfect measurement but is as close as I can find. As far as I can tell its run pretty frequently so you'll move around a lot 200 one day and then 600 the next. To get an accurate picture you'll have to average your rank throughout the month. The author only mines the top 800 or so assets in each category so don't be surprised if an asset drops on/off a list if it doesn't sell well.

 

No problem, I don't see any reason this stuff has to be a secret

 

Thanks for sharing that link, that's very informative. I'm 81th at the moment, didn't really expect it ^^

I think we should define "profitable" in the main poll question.

Personally I can earn enough to keep me updating and improving my packs (2 years right now).
When I get into the 24h sales I usually sell about 1000 copies, which is a nice boost, and keeps me motivated.

But, I'm an avid asset buyer, so I often re-invest the earnings in new assets to develop my games, or in new hardware, or buy assets specifically to learn from them... so not much is left at the end of the month.

When I have to focus on other works my income drops about 10% per month until a reasonable yet handy to have minimum.
Now that I'm improving and refreshing my assets, polishing the presentation, doing some propaganda, it went up of about 100%. I expect it to grow even further because I'm really applying a lot this month.

Profitable? I don't know, when not developing/programming games I'm on my assets full time, so I think it's not "profitable" but "fair", as it needs a lot of study and commitment.

Making a living out of it, just on the store? I'm not there yet, but who knows? Is it possible? A few friend AS publishers did it, and have a full family. As a single, I'm doing my best and honing my skills.

In the meantime I learned a lot (programming, shaders, debugging, team work, PR), which is useful if you are an indie dev or work for hire. I think that is the most profitable part.

 

I am the author of Gaia which is a terrain and scene generation tool that has done generally very well.

On my best month so far after the 30% Unity cut, I netted $12,617 USD. Most months are substantially less than this. Depending on your cost of living, if you do something well that solves a community need, and you have a range of products then I think you can make a living at it.

FYI, Gaia has had a man year of my time put into it, and compared to what I could have earned commercially it is not a great result. That said, I love working with Unity and I love the community, so I plan to continue to do more in this space.

 

Was that with a special sale (daily deal, madness, level 11)? If yes, then indeed it's not that great for such a popular tool. If not then it's definitely pretty good. Depending on the average of the other months though.

 

This was as part of the madness sale. The sale started in one month and finished in the next, and helped the overall figures for both months.

 

Oh yes, I had that as well. That's pretty awesome. So yes, you might have done around 18k that day. Hit refresh, wait 3mn, hit refresh again, continue for 24 hours...

 

These are not the publishers you are looking for... *waves hand*

Seriously though, imagine that instead of making 70% of your own asset you could instead make 30% of everybody else's assets. Or 30% of everybody's phone apps. Or 30% of everyone's games.

If riches is what you are looking for then that's the kind of publisher you want to be.

 

Thanks for sharing link.
I am not even in the list. But I am sure, I will be there in future.

 

Your numbers are really great.
But I believe you can charge even more. Because, Gaia is very popular & you have good reviews.
So, you can charge at least $60. What do you say ?

 

One question about madness sale in my mind. If your product is for free in madness sale, then how do you make money ? Or Unity pays you ?
EDIT:
I am talking about Level 11 sale, that's available only to pro users. Types madness sale by mistake.

 

Are you being sarcastic ? then please explain. I couldn't get it.

 

There aren't any free assets in any of the themed sales (including madness). You are thinking of the free section in level 11. I believe if you get featured there you get either $250 or the average of your last 3 months sales whichever is higher. Terms may have changed since it's been over a year since I heard this discussed but I'm sure the basic premise is still the same.

 

Yeah,
I was talking about Level 11 sale, that's available only to pro users.
Typed madness sale by mistake, because madness sale is currently running.!
By the way, where did you read this info ?

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wh...level-11-in-unity-5-news.306534/#post-1995527

 

Thank you very much for link.
But don't you think $250 will be too low. And I think, those paid plugins on level 11 store will earn more then free plugins. What do you say ?

 

This is from last year but here was my experience on the paid part (not free) of level 11 for one of my assets.

http://ladmertech.com/postmortem-level-11-sale-easy-wifi-controller/

For the free section it was whichever was higher from your average or $250 but yes if your asset is already doing over $250 there is no incentive to do the free part. In general I think it's really to gain exposure for a new app or something that just isn't selling but you think is good.

 

I feel like making something that you will use yourself is the best way to go. That way if it doesn't roll in the dough you've still helped yourself

 

Yep - that was why I made Gaia - there was nothing out there at the time that did what I wanted it do do.

 

If I were to compare the sales of my 3 assets I've done I'd agree with this sentiment. The one I wanted myself vastly outperforms the others.

I don't expect this to always hold true, there are some things that you might want but may be the only one or at least extremely niche, but if its broad enough or gets you really excited, chances are it that others will get excited about it and do well to.

It is at least a more solid approach than just chasing money or a viable product that you may not have interest in yourself. That and as an added bonus you'll enjoy your work day a lot more vs. something boring.

 

In addition to this you're always testing your product, ensuring it is as bug free as possible. My asset hasn't made an avalanche of sales or anything, but given I had coded it for myself and I just needed to improve it a bit to sell it I think it was definitely worth while.
And hey, portfolio ey

 

Thanks for sharing your details.
Keep sharing your stats on your website. I will be checking it regularly.

 

Sold one more copy yesterday worth $15. So, total is now $65.

 

I've noticed with some art packages there's a lot of work put in adding new assets to existing art packs. I know with 3dforge they're doing a HD texture update on the interior pack and then will be adding blueprints for it on their website.

The amount of content that goes into some of these packs that you can pick up for $30 on sale sort of blows my mind. It's sad that there's such a limited market for asset makers to sell to(game makers vs game buyers). They're sort of the unseen heroes of game development.