Most of you who follow me on Twitter and read my blog posts know me strictly as the dude who makes a bunch of stuff in Game Maker Studio and tweets piles of GIFs each night. You’d be correct in thinking that these things are a big part of my life, but I’d like to start posting more about what I call ‘new-age lifestyles’ and where I think people should be looking if they want to monetize their passions.

More on this very soon, but for now, I leave you with my income report for the month of November.

$

I got a lot done this month and even had enough time to commit my weekend to the #IndiesVsPewDiePie game jam. You can check that out over on GameJolt. If interested, you can vote for my entry by playing it and giving it a positive rating.

Marketplace Sales: $893.14
Contract work: $3150
Other: $1400
TOTAL: $5443.14

Like I said, it has been a good month of #gamedev. This is one of the things that I really want to address in my new series of articles. You can make a living by doing things that you are passionate about. End of story. This is true whether or not you have access to a team of developers or can afford to hire people. Take a look at my resume and you’ll notice that I have zero commercial products floating around, yet I still manage to make ends meet. That’s what I want to help people with. Finding a way to have fun working and being relatively successful while doing it.

Let’s break down those numbers

////////// Marketplace sales: $893.14 //////////

Wow, that’s twice what I made last month! Why? Well, mostly this was due to a sheer increase in content that I had available (returning customers are GREAT). Also, this blog pulled a lot of new people to my little marketplace page, so I thank all of you who shared and retweeted.

I only had one new engine this month. It was fun to make and I only spent about eight hours on it.

////////// Contract work: $3150 //////////

My contract work was more than triple what it was last month. Again, returning customers were a biggie. It is very common for my email inbox to get flooded after a marketplace release. Typically, it’s due to returning customers wanting add-ons and specific features. This ranges from minor tweaks to touch-screen compatibility.

In prior months, I was charging minimum wage for my add-on efforts. I wanted to seal the deal and make sure that I had money coming in. This month I did it differently and charged a premium with just as much success, but much greater returns.

////////// Other: $1400 //////////

Lastly, we have the category that typically makes viewers fairly skeptical. However, this month was very straight forward. People have contacted me about branding, freelance marketing, and web presence advice. I got enough interest that I have started to consult people and charge an hourly premium for Skype calls or business plans.

This avenue was something that was unexpected, but it turned out to be profitable. This is another category that I will be covering in my new series.

Contact/Contribute

If you have comments, concerns, feedback, or anything related to the subject of “indie income”, please contact me through my personal email: zbell91@comcast.net

Thanks for reading,

-Z