Hi there! As always, I'm Taaro, Solo Game Dev making Farewell. Making this game is the dream of my life and, therefore, what I want most is to be able to dedicate all the love and effort to it. It doesn't have an intention to generate money, because I already made an analysis of how much I could earn and it wouldn't be profitable, but with an intentionality of closure and love.
This all sounds very nice, but the reality is that I have to be able to live in the meantime, and I need money. For a year, I supported myself with savings from my previous job, but today, due to the economic crisis in Argentina, I am forced to start thinking about alternatives.
So today I wanted to let you know about the projects that I will be working on along with my game, with the objective of having an income that will allow me to continue developing it. Maybe it gives an idea to someone in a similar situation. Just in case, obviously the option as a programmer can always be to work part-time or freelance, but my idea is to aim for passive income. If eventually the day comes that I can't support myself anymore, I will have to opt for that path, but for now, let's ignore it.
Making money with programming courses
In case you didn't know, I am a programmer, and I consider myself a good programmer thanks to the mentors I had. This I feel is a very big advantage because, in general, programming courses aim to solve a problem in a functional way, but sometimes not optimal. They are codes that work but not with poor quality, which may not work for a large project.
In the same way, there are courses that explain design patterns, or some concepts to program well, but I feel that they stay on the surface and only explain their use in their isolated case.
I do not consider that I know how to program better than all of them, nothing close to reality. I only comment that, at least the courses that I have seen, I feel that they have that room for improvement. For that reason, one of the projects I have this year is to find a way to upload courses on programming. I don't know yet where or how or in what language, but it seems to me a good opportunity to use what I have learned.
Making money with Web pages
I have never made web pages. I recently took a React course, but more out of interest than anything else. The thing is that, with an intention to improve my portfolio, to have more knowledge, and to look for new possibilities, I decided to start making web pages and find a way to make money with them.
I understand that there are several ways, either with promotional pages, advertising, affiliates or donations. As I am just starting, I still have a long way to go, but I see a great opportunity in this. I hope I am not wrong.
Making money with Mobile games
Last month, as an interesting project, I made a game using the Spotify API that was very popular among friends and friends of friends, who recommended me to publish it for cell phones. The thing is that, for everything I learned in my previous work, there is so much competition that without investment it seems impossible to become visible.
I feel that it is an interesting option and that it would not take me a lot of time. At the end of the day, it's just adding advertising and making it a little better. The reality is that it is the option that I least expect results, but perhaps I should dedicate more time to it. For now, I will leave it for later this year, after I have done the rest of the ideas.
Making money with Horror games on Steam
In this year I learned a lot about Marketing while making Farewell, and one of the things I learned is the genres that dominate on Steam, and one of them is the horror genre. A friend and I are fascinated by that genre, and we always had the intention of making a game, so, I went and told him about starting a project together.
Our idea is to publish short horror games, so we can publish several in a year. It's a very ambitious idea, but it has a couple of advantages. On the one hand, if it works we would have a new source of income. Besides that, I would have more portoflio under my belt and maybe I could build more renown for Farewell.
What I'm sure of is that we're going to have a good time, so, even if I don't make any money, the reality is that the idea is that they're short games, so we don't lose much.
Summary
All these ideas are projects I have in mind, with the goal of, by the end of the year, having at least 2 passive incomes that represent at least 50% of my costs. My plan is that by June to have a general idea of how it is. Hopefully it will work.
In the meantime, I want to let you know that I am still working on Farewell, every day. I bet on constancy and I keep it, only that I decided to dedicate less time to Marketing and more to other issues in my life. But know that Farewell is the most important project I have and it will not stop building.
And you?
How do you live as Indie Game Dev?
Do you have another projects?
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