10 Creative Ways to Make Money with Unreal Engine

here's 10 creative ways to make money with unreal engine make sure to stick around to the end where it reveals some secrets that most people haven't even thought about maybe one of these ideas will end up making you some decent money who knows but first i need to make some money for myself because renting groceries aren't so cheap anymore are they seriously it feels like i can't walk into the grocery store without having to spend a ton of money now four dollars for a tin of spam are you kidding me it shouldn't be so expensive to make kimchi fried rice man it's so good so if you're interested in learning more about unreal engine and i'm assuming you are because you've clicked on this video you can check out my environment artists survival kit where you're going to learn how to create a beautiful environment like the one you see on your screen right here i also have a course that teaches you how to make anime style textures in substance painter and you get a nice little discount when you buy both at the same time so i'll leave a link in the description for those now let's get into the video okay so i want to talk about some easy stuff first let's start with selling assets on the unreal engine marketplace the epic marketplace is a great place to be if you've got some assets just lying around from previous projects or if you even have some extra time on hand try aiming for non-specific assets that can be used on a broad range of projects and make them appealing to the vast majority of customers as these can be particularly profitable now there's much debate over how likely sellers are to make consistent assets on the marketplace but you can rest assured know that there are many customers looking to buy ready-made assets to save some of their time as well as budget now when i say budget i mean that even aaa studios typically will much rather pay five dollars for a simple model with textures and lods rather than pay a modeler i don't know 25 an hour to create it from scratch i'm just making up these numbers so some great ways in which you can determine whether an asset will be successful is by asking yourself will this save someone time did i put some effort into the branding and presentation of it am i providing the customer with value in the form of after stale support and updates and is this generic enough to be used in various projects when creating assets from my experience it's also crucial that you set a fair price and provide fare using licenses out of every sale you will pocket about 70 while epic receives the rest while this method isn't quite likely to consistently like pay for rent or something the main advantage is that you'll be able to upload your assets and pretty much forget about them i have a few assets uploaded to various sites and they generate me anywhere from like 100 to 200 a month without any effort at all i've completely forgot about them not a bad passive income stream if you ask me and speaking of passive income streams i actually have a huge series on creating passive income so be sure to check out that video in the description as well so for selling assets your sales will just round up at the end of the month and go directly into your bank account if you're curious about how much money you can make the general consensus between sellers is that you'll receive more than you expect but less than you like however a lot of people have made a decent career out of this here's one that not a lot of people know about is selling your parts of your game or code to other developers so in game development one of the golden rules is saving as much time as you can outsourcing many parts of the game and using ready-made assets is the way to go in most cases otherwise most games will take years to finish well they take years anyway but they'll take even longer and by the time they've launched these games aren't relevant anymore this is a big problem in game design it's easy to see how you could pick certain parts of your games to make some quick cash and help your fellow developers save time on their own project so you could sell things like icons scripts apis hud designs like special effects and some rendering engine scripts as well you can sell these individually or bundle them together into various packages some great places to sell these are turbosquid the unreal engine and ud marketplaces hio and the gamedev market the great part about this method is that it doesn't really require a lot of effort on your part you don't really have to worry about creating projects from scratch but rather upload anything you think people would find valuable out of the things that you've already made as a part of your game dev process even if you're starting out and learning how to do different things your small projects could be of use for someone even if it's just for them to see what your process looks like so here's a fun one let's talk about devlocks now if you've been studying unreal engine for a while now there's almost no way you haven't watched a devlog developers are recording their progress and creating their games and uploading them on youtube for other people to watch it's a fantastic way to keep track of your evolution connect with like-minded individuals and receive their support during your dev journey and provide people with informational and entertaining content it's a win-win honestly if you think that there's no money to be made in youtube and you miss the ship for creating like a profitable youtube channel i think you should reconsider making a living solely out of youtube can be really challenging it is i do it this is my full-time job but honestly it doesn't take as long as you think and before long you will see some extra cash flow from each month from your videos it just takes a lot of time and practice and since you already have a youtube channel dedicated to your gamedev passion you could always start filming short tips tricks videos or even like full-blown tutorials for the things you do well not only that youtube is an amazing vehicle for selling your products and your game so as a game developer it does make a lot of sense to start a youtube channel so i wanted to talk about freelancing for a second creating a quick account on sites like upwork or fiverr will open up a lot of possibilities for you there are many people looking to accomplish small tasks or projects in unreal engine and you'll be able to fill some of your time with them for sizable profits especially such a specialized job like unreal engine the jobs you can find range from creating simple cutscenes doing arc viz small assets and environments or writing simple code for all types of issues there are really no limits to how many jobs you can apply to and you get to work on your own time from the comfort of your own home and still get to improve your skills in the process it's a great way to keep working but keep your skills sharp and make sure you don't stagnate there are many advantages for working freelance jobs in the domain of your expertise but the most important one is that you'll face a myriad of problems that you get to solve and improve your own abilities for when you decide to do it full time or when aiming for like a promotion or something everyone loves a swiss army knife and this holds especially true in the workplace so for people who like teaching like myself and educating people let's talk about tutoring or teaching classes if you're fairly confident in your skills and understanding of the development pipeline you could spend your time teaching others what you already know you could structure and create short simple classes and post them on sites like udemy or skillshare and then wait for the cache to roll right into your wallet i mean it's not that simple but you get the idea alternatively if you have a more hands-on approach to teaching there are many sites where you can register as a tutor and offer one-on-one classes to people who want to learn what you know the classes can be held exclusively online and you get to set your own hourly price for what you think your knowledge is worth there are a couple of great places to start you can try like tutor.com and takelessons.com all you need to do is set up a tutor profile and then decide the hours in which you're available your students will come to you and book your lessons now what about creating games i get this question asked a lot creating a game using unreal engine that people will want to play is a lot of hard work it's a massive undertaking but that's a given but the main reason you started learning unreal engine in the first place was your love for the video game industry at least i'm assuming anyway unreal engine is in itself a game engine games is what it does best while creating a game from scratch and supporting yourself with the profits can sometimes be a really massive task some of your side projects could bring you some considerable cash on the side you don't exactly have to code the new witcher to capitalize on your gamedev skills statistically 1 in 5 indie games on steam makes more than fifty thousand dollars with the median lifetime profit sitting somewhere around four thousand dollars obviously game dev is a massive umbrella of stuff that you need to learn and it is very overwhelming and on top of that a lot of luck is involved i wouldn't recommend this as your starting place for making money with unreal engine but as a good end game and if you're really passionate about it i mean go for it but thomas these are all so obvious man give me something better all right creating music videos okay hear me out i feel like focusing on game development only when you know how to use unreal engine might be just detrimental to your finances unreal engine is an amazing tool for video production and it's a common occurrence for it to be used in the creation of short cinematic videos like music videos for instance the greatest thing about this is that there are as many music genres as bugs that you get as working as a beginner in unreal what i'm trying to say is that the possibilities are endless and it's certainly a lot easier to make creative music videos with the tools provided by unreal engine let's say then let's say after effects which has very limited 3d editing capabilities while it's totally true that a music video would take you a lot of time and it doesn't come easily especially if you've never done it before you can use your creativity and leverage the things that you already do well music videos can get as simple or as complex as you want or what the client wants and depending on the genre and the artists you're working with you could certainly make do with the skills that you already have in video production and especially music video production you can earn anything from like 50 to 500 a day according to pay scale so here's another one you might not have thought of creating stereoscopic panoramas and footage 360 videos and panoramas are a really big thing right now and they go for quite exorbitant prices on the internet and luckily with your new unreal engine skills you don't need a stereoscopic camera to take them which is a huge advantage over other creators usually these assets take a lot of effort to make and the equipment is really expensive so it would be wise to profit from the fact that you can create them rather easily with no real additional costs you can even recycle your already made environments and create a couple of quick 360 panoramas or create new ones from scratch and focus your efforts on inducing a sense of wonder in your potential buyers there are a bunch of sites you can upload to like my360shop.com and roundme.com i also get a lot of questions about virtual environments so let's talk about those for a second virtual environments are all the rage right now and i don't see how the fascination with them is going to stop anytime soon from small environments like famous interiors and rooms with hidden stories or eerie places that haunt people's dreams the possibility to create virtual worlds in which people can immerse themselves are really endless not to mention being able to walk through a digital space you created must be exhilarating and i can think of no better or more motivating creativity exercise than this one because it has such a particular and fascinating end result in my opinion people are just beginning to discover the possibilities of virtual environments more and more people are being captivated by this technology every day and you can easily find clients for your projects on sites like sketchbook for instance this is a growing and emerging market and if you're really interested in vr then i suggest you start getting in on it now because it is still a very very young space so we've mentioned vr but what about ar now following the trend of capitalizing on people's needs for escapism augmented reality apps are quite easy to do in unreal engine well when i say quite easy i mean relatively quite easy compared to everything else i've listed once you get familiar with the process there's an untapped market out there full of financial possibilities for people who take the plunge and put some effort into learning how to create these apps now these apps can be as simple or complex as you want ranging from quirky instagram filters to complete mobile games such as pokemon go and ingress prime and the best part they are super fun to create and you can even share them with your friends yet another niche where ar is really hot right now is actually ecommerce many brands use ar to give their customers a better sense of the products that they're buying and the apps usually go for pretty steep prices even the more simple ones a great place to start learning how to create ar apps is coursera and submyapp.com of course this list is great but it doesn't really scratch the surface into the actual details so if you want to learn more like how to create a passive income stream how to set up social media and start growing with a lot of followers and how to sell your first product feel free to check out my completely free passive income series for digital artists that i mentioned earlier i'll leave a link in the description okay thanks guys i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Stylized Station

Views: 353,360

Keywords: make money online, make money unreal engine, how to make money with 3d art, make money, make money from home, make money online 2021, unreal engine, digital artist passive income, passive income ideas 2021

Id: __hm1wjDDrg

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021