I'm starting a new documented journey in the world of games.

[scheffgames]

Hi folks! As some of you know my html5 business has not been going very well.  After much thought and consideration I arrived at the conclusion that I do like making games too much so I won't quit this path. But I'm making some drastic changes to my whole (nonexistent) marketing/monetization approach and some changes to usability/UI/features and such.

I've started a blog documenting my whole approach:

https://adrianscheff.wordpress.com/

And that's about it - we'll see where this goes.

[mattstyles]

Great work taking additional time to document your journey.

First bit of marketing advice, pay for your own domain, the wordpress.com domain is fine for hobbyists but domains are very cheap and look far more professional. Similarly, emails from your own domain look far more professional than from free services. Whilst I do appreciate this puts your monetisation plans into the red straight away it should help you get it into the black. I'm not a fan of advertising but if you get any sort of traffic that is one way to offset domain and hosting costs.

[Jabadoo]

That was good read, i'll follow your journey closely, because i hope you eventually achieve your goals and because i'm kind of in the same situation myself.

It would be fantastic to make games for living (as indie), but only few are able to do that, seems like sometimes everything else in life is against it. Time is the most crucial thing, the more you can spent time on making games and on the side stuff, the better you get with it. Well that doesn't guarantee anything no matter what, but at least we are doing what we love and thats the main thing. And any time spent on your passion is never wasted.

I hope you make it someday, don't give up.

[bubamara]

Glad you didn't give up, fingers crossed!

[b10b]

Good luck / make it work!

Small daily revenue targets might sound like a more realistic goal than higher daily revenues - however future-income ambitions must properly account for the initial development time / cash-flow gap either way.  For example if it takes a gamedev 4 months to develop a handful of games that go on to generate either $100 or $100,000 a day the cost of those 4 months still needs to be covered upfront irrespective.  Or, in other words, there is no benefit in just aiming low.

Looking forward to reading your next article on CodeCanyon (and other related-diversification!) because you will identify ways to leverage your skills and assets across multiple markets - effectively diluting your upfront cost.

 

[gonzos]

Well, I've just read your first blog post and I have question for you: how you, god damn, steal all of my ideas? The text sound like I wrote it. :-)

Last year I was working in big game company and I decide: it's not for me. I didn't enjoy in work and it should be fun when you decide to make the games.

So I have the plan, and you wrote it :-). Long time ago, when I start with this  (programming), the main goal was-to make the game. Today, I can build any type of game but I have no (clear) idea how to sell it (or how to earn money for living). I'm from Eastern Europe too and my goal is also 100$ per day. I also focus on html5 games, use haxe/openFl as main language with my own framework for fast game build.

Earning money from my own games is not idea about money, it's idea about freedom. If I can earn money from my games, I can be in that 100%. Now, I must do some another stuff for living. I'll keep track your blog and I hope both if us will be successful. :-)

[scheffgames]

On 6/8/2017 at 10:47 PM, mattstyles said:

Great work taking additional time to document your journey.

First bit of marketing advice, pay for your own domain, the wordpress.com domain is fine for hobbyists but domains are very cheap and look far more professional. Similarly, emails from your own domain look far more professional than from free services. Whilst I do appreciate this puts your monetisation plans into the red straight away it should help you get it into the black. I'm not a fan of advertising but if you get any sort of traffic that is one way to offset domain and hosting costs.

I know that hosted domain looks unprofessional but like I said in my HelloWorld - I have to write about the journey as it happens - and it's nothing that redirect won't solve when I'll set up my blog properly.

 

On 6/10/2017 at 0:25 AM, gonzos said:

Earning money from my own games is not idea about money, it's idea about freedom. If I can earn money from my games, I can be in that 100%. Now, I must do some another stuff for living. I'll keep track your blog and I hope both if us will be successful. :-)

Let's hope so! Or even better, let's take the hope out of the ecuation and believe it will happen. There's an old Arnold Scharzenegger book (or big online article, can't remember) where he talks about how he's going about fulfilling his goals - it's very inspirational and doesn't apply necessarily to bodybuilding. Two things he said stayed with me: 1)Work hard and smart - success is sure to follow sooner or later.   2)Know and believe that every hour of work you do brings you closer to your goal.

 

[OkijinGames]

On 11/06/2017 at 9:07 AM, scheffgames said:

There's an old Arnold Schwarzenegger book (or big online article, can't remember) where he talks about how he's going about fulfilling his goals - it's very inspirational and doesn't apply necessarily to bodybuilding. Two things he said stayed with me: 1)Work hard and smart - success is sure to follow sooner or later.   2)Know and believe that every hour of work you do brings you closer to your goal.

He was also saying that we should always give something back to our communities (he was a monthly columnist in Weider magazine if I remember correctly) which you seem to be doing too - good Luck!