The Beginner’s Guide to Selling Game Art Assets Online - Part 2

Lincoln Hughes is a household name in the gaming industry and has created a Gumroad empire through a variety of different methods. In this article, we’ll look at some of the best ways to begin selling game art assets online, how free content can benefit your image and provide value as well as an eye opening explanation that this can be your career. Read part 1 here.

Today we’ll be talking about how to properly price your asset packs, choosing a platform to sell on, collaborating with other sellers, and giving some general marketing tips for people who are just starting to sell their products online.

Please don’t forget to subscribe / share / like / comment if you liked the article, as it’ll really help me out :)

Also, if you’d like to download a bunch of free game art asset resources (concept art stuff / shaders for Unreal 4 ), or buy one of my products, you can check out my Gumroad page here.

Pricing

Figuring out the proper price for your product can be extremely difficult. Especially now when these marketplaces are basically the Wild-West. There’s no regulation on quality, and the sheer amount of content that people are putting out at extremely low prices can make creating financially-viable new products especially hard. As far as I know, there isn’t a clear cut answer to this. You could start by identifying how much time you put into it and how much you feel that you deserve to make based off of a number of different factors - i.e. the quality of your product, how much others are charging for a similar product, if another similar product even exists, how much it will help people, the sheer amount of content in your product, the size of your audience, etc. It isn’t an exact science. 

Also, analysing your motivations for building the product in the first place will help. Some people will release free stuff to build up their audiences, others will release paid stuff to make money, it all just depends on what you want to accomplish. Everybody’s motivations are different, and the results of those motivations have created an opportunity for anyone that’s willing to put in the effort to create.

There’s a common belief I’ve seen in this marketplace scene that by having lower prices, you’ll make more sales and thus more money, and while this can be true to a point, if you haven’t already established your audience, those sales still might not pay off the overall effort you’ve put into building the product. Charging 10$ for a 30 hour long video tutorial might make you some money and help to build up your audience, for sure it’s a great deal, but if you had released it at 100$ (much more reasonable in my opinion), you’d only have to sell a 1/10th of the amount of copies to make the same amount of money, but building your audience would take a backseat to creating profit. You also need to keep in mind that IT’S 30 HOURS OF VIDEO CONTENT...That’s an insane amount of work. When I was in Art College 15 years ago, a single class per semester cost 350 Canadian dollars. With inflation, that’s roughly 450 now! And some of these video tutorials are absolutely better than some (definitely not all) of the classes that I was taking at my college.

Using the 30 Hour Video Tutorial as an example, you could also figure out a way of micro-dosing it to your customers in bite-sized chunks, subscription style, so that they don’t have to buy the whole thing all in one go. Maybe you could do 10 - 3 hour long tutorials that cover specific aspects of the creation process in detail? Or instead, you could set up a Patreon account and slowly release the videos as part of a 2 month long tutorial series for premium customers. Just a few ideas :)

Be reasonable with how the public will perceive your prices compared to other products, and analyse what your final goal with the product will be (money or audience building) and tailor your price to that. Also, keep in mind that it’s much easier to start with a high price and then lower it according to the comments from your audience, rather than increasing the price after initially starting with a low one. 

Which Platform to sell on?

Unreal Marketplace, Artstation Marketplace, and Gumroad; There are so many different marketplaces to choose from when trying to sell your stuff online (and many more than just those). My recommendation: Try them all. See what works and what doesn’t.

When trying to figure out where to sell your stuff, ask yourself a few questions to get in the mind-set of a potential customer of yours: 

-What marketplaces do your followers typically like to buy from? 

-Would you (As an artist who buys digital art products online) buy your product from that Marketplace?

-Is there a big audience for the product that you’re offering on that specific marketplace? Would you buy a Medieval Potion Set for Unreal 4 on Gumroad? Maybe not. Offer your product on a Marketplace that makes the most sense for it.

Also, you’ll have to figure out exactly how much of a financial hit you’ll be willing to part with upon each sale of your digital product, when each Marketplace takes their cut of your profits. 

Here are the current percentages that each Marketplace will take off of each digital sale of your products.

Unreal Marketplace: 12%

Gumroad (Free): 8.5% + 30 cents (US Currency) per sale

Gumroad Premium (Price per month varies depending on how many subscribers you have): 3.5% + 30 cents (US currency) per sale

Artstation Store (Free Membership): 30%

Artstation Store (Pro Membership - 15$ a month): 20%

Artstation Powered Website (Pro Membership): 5%

For my business, by far I’ve made the most amount of sales on my Gumroad page, but that’s mainly because all of my posts and ads in social media were (mostly) devoted to marketing that specific Marketplace. My main Gumroad page is also where I’ve hosted all of my free content, so it consistently had organic traffic flowing to it from outside sources (i.e. articles / free-content websites that link back to me - some of which led to sales). 

I’ve dabbled in both the Artstation / Unreal Marketplaces, but haven’t fully dedicated my marketing to them so they weren’t nearly as profitable. That being said, the potential for growing your business on either of them is massive, as both of them get a ton of traffic everyday from their users.

Collaboration

I think that one of the biggest demotivating factors when attempting to start all of this stuff is the sheer volume of work that will be involved in learning how to do it, and creating all of the content involved. Here’s good news: You don’t have to do everything yourself. You aren’t alone. 

For those that know Tim Simpson, A.K.A Polygon Academy, I’ve worked with the guy for 12 years. We bounce stuff off of each other all the time. We include each other’s work in our posts all over the place. I’m doing it right now by even mentioning him. Try to build relationships with people that you can help and be helped by, as it will help to alleviate your work-load, while assisting in the creation of business results. Share / like / comment on their stuff. Support them however you can.

If you don’t know the person that you’d like to collab with, send them an email, preferably with something that will provide value to them. For example, one of the things I did at the start of my business was sending a few emails to some big-hitters in the online marketplace scene, telling them about my product and asking if they’d like to get 30 percent of each sale after mentioning my product to their audience (it’s called affiliate-marketing). That stuff makes a huge difference. Be tactful about it though, if you’re emailing a big-hitter that does character models, asking him to do an ad for your medieval potion set, that probably won’t work. Also, if you don’t get a response from them, don’t get offended as they’re probably just insanely busy. 

Writing articles is a great marketing collaboration opportunity as well. Sites like 80.lv or Exp-Points have consistent audiences that constantly check out their articles on a daily basis, so by writing an informative article that discusses all of the interesting tidbits and features of your product, and linking your product within, you’re bound to make a few bucks off of it. Doing articles is generally an amazing way to get exposure as well, and inform / show-off the exact process for how you made your product.

Marketing Tips:

So here are a bunch of random little tips concerning the marketing of your products. Back when I was first starting this stuff, this info would’ve been really handy to know:

-Do not forget to include multiple priced versions of your product! A large studio that purchases it for commercial use should definitely need to pay more for it than a student that’s using it to learn a software. Also, you’ll get paid more for the hard work that you’ve put into creating your content.

-Learn a video editing software now. They’re quite straight-forward most of the time, and most of what you’ll be using them for is simple editing / cutting between different video clips that you’ve made. Knowing how to edit videos is probably one of the most useful skills I’ve learned. 

-When doing your marketing posts on any social media platform, try to maximize the amount of screen real-estate that you get for your post. This will make your posts more enticing and visually interesting for anybody that sees them because they’ll take up more space on their phone. For example, for my videos on Facebook and Instagram, I’ll crop them to get a 1:1 aspect ratio, but on Youtube, I’ll use 16:9.

-If you’re interested in seeing some projected stats on where your social media following could be in the next few years (i.e. Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), check out socialblade.com. They have a ton of different stats on basically any social media account, and can let you know how many subscribers you might have in a few years if you continue doing what you’ve been doing.

-When creating ads (i.e. Facebook / Google), really try to think about how and where you would buy your product. Do you typically buy stuff from Gumroad on your phone? I don’t. Maximize your ad placements so that they work with your products. You’ll save money and time.

-If you’re looking for a free screen-recording software, try OBS studio. It’s amazing, free, and easy to use.

-If you’re doing the Gumroad email list route for your marketing, don’t overspam your followers. They really don’t like that. Be careful with automated workflows (i.e. automated email funnels - when somebody buys a product, they receive a bunch of preset emails that spam them over days and weeks), as they can leave your customers wanting to smash you. 

-Be extremely generous with your customers. If somebody really wants a free copy of your product, but can’t afford it, help them out. If a small business wants to buy a commercial license for your product but can’t afford it, work out a deal with them. We’re all trying our best. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

-Don’t fret if your social media posts concerning your product don’t get much traffic. Yes, it can suck. Always remember that the amount of traffic that business posts get is a lot less than traffic from actual users (Facebook). Post on both. People will realize that you’re just starting out and those numbers will build with time. They aren’t a reflection of your value as an artist. 

-Try not to be too wooden in your tutorial videos. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Those mistakes can humanize you and make your videos much more interesting to watch.

-If you’re afraid of speaking during your videos, do it anyways. After awhile, you’ll realize that it doesn’t matter if you screw up. If you massively screwed up in your video, you can edit it out anyways. 

-Try not to say ummmmmm a billion times during your videos. Also, don’t edit out every ummmm during the video editing phase of your tutorial process. It’s ok to say it here and there. You aren’t a robot. This isn’t a movie with a script. This is you being you, showing people how to do what you do. 

-In your marketing videos, remember that you have 3 seconds to get somebody’s attention. Don’t put a 5 second Unreal logo at the start of your video. Put the best shot possible, and follow it by another amazing shot with instant reasons that explain how your product will make their life easier.  

-Always get a second opinion on your videos. Preferably from someone that knows what they’re talking about.

-Don’t think that you’ll be expected to know everything. You aren’t a god. If you don’t know something, say it. I dislike watching videos from know-it-alls anyways.  

-If you have multiple products on the home-page of your online sales platform (i.e. Gumroad), always put the paid ones first.

-Don’t get hung up on small details. For the first 6 months that I started doing this stuff, I focused on what my company should be called. This was a waste of time. Make something simple for it, and focus on actual content creation as your priority. The rest will fall into place after. 

-If you’re looking to create an animated logo, check out Fiverr or look for any online retailer that sells templates on the cheap. 

-For music for your tutorial videos, check out www.artlist.io - it can be expensive depending on your budget, but they have a ton of amazing songs that are there specifically for commercial use.

-Contact podcasts like Game Dev Discussion if you have something interesting to talk about. Those guys are amazing. 

-Most marketplaces have an Analytics section that will give you various stats on the customers that are purchasing your products. You can use that knowledge for a bunch of things, i.e. targeting ads for those countries, seeing what products are selling the most, seeing how many downloads you get per day, etc. These stats can be indispensable when trying to grow your audience because they’ll give you a ton of insights about what your customers want, where they want it the most, and why they might want it.

-Don’t freak out if people steal your stuff. It will happen. There are dozens of websites that will somehow get copies of your product(s), and release them for free to the public - all while collecting money from the ads that they show on their sites, and essentially making money off of your hard work. I remember posting a comment on one of my stolen products on one of these sites, something to the tune of, “If you’d like to support the artist that spent endless time making this product, you can purchase it here,” followed by a link to my site. A couple of days later, I noticed two words underneath my comment: “Fuck You”. Lol. You can create copyright notices against them, or a dozen other things, but in my experience it’s best to just ignore them. The people that actually care about supporting the artists that create all of this content will continue to support them, and the ones that download your product from those sites weren’t ever going to purchase it anyways.

-If you’re a photographer, start taking photos for reference packs to include as content on your site. When you go on vacations and take photos, you can then partially write off parts of your trip as a business expense, because the photo-packs that you’ve created during the trip can be used to justify driving traffic to your website. Talk to an accountant though before you take my word on this, as tax laws can be different from country to country. 

Opening Doors

Since I started my online business, doors have been opening everywhere. The University of Guadalajara in Mexico flew me in to give a speech to 500 people in a massive conference that they hold every year (I was absolutely terrified, but it worked!), and I also became a recipient of Epic’s Megagrant for my Auto-Landscape Master Material (Thank you so much Epic!). Over the past two weeks, I’ve had two of the biggest game companies in the world send me emails looking to set up interviews. It’s insane. I’ve never felt as confident, or positive about my future in the game industry.

I’m not bringing this stuff up to make you jealous, or to rub it in your face how successful I am. I’m telling you this to give you hope that your entire career and life can change because of the hard work that you really should put into creating something extra that’s just for yourself. Not for a company. Not for your producer. The corporation of YOU. 

Conclusion

One of my biggest regrets in the game industry is that I didn’t actually start to market myself up until about two years ago. If I had started this process back in 2005, my stats and numbers would be astronomically higher than they are right now. Please don’t make the same mistake that I did. 

If you’re interested in creating an online business, definitely go out of your way to create value for every person that you interact with on a constant basis with your products, your conversations, and your interactions. 

You aren’t alone. Remember that there are a ton of like-minded individuals out there that are in the same boat as you just getting started. Yes, creating a successful online business will take years of your time, and yes, maybe you will fail, but being your own boss, working on the content that you want is absolutely priceless.

Outro

Really hope that you guys liked the article series! If they really struck a chord with you, don’t forget to like / comment / share them, and if you’d like to subscribe to my various channels, here are some links that might help you out:

Artstation Portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/lincolnhughes

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ArtofLincolnHughes

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lincoln.hughes2d