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eTox

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2016 is now over. New year. I've learned lots of things during the past year. I feel like this is the thread that I first started and it's like 'home' to me now.

Let me backtrack and tell a little story about me and then I'll share where I am going.

Back in April 2015 I felt that life is not just work/home/work/die and I certainly didn't want to work for someone else. I have always been interested in computer programming and at that time I was playing around with android app development. Obviously I made an app that was fun to me 'vocabulary builder' but was not interesting to anybody else. But that's way before I even thought or knew anything about solving needs...

At that time an idea has always crossed my mind that people are making games and that I not only could make games, but can earn lot's of money from it. So throughout the summer of 2015 I couldn't stop thinking about it. I knew I could figure out ways I could build a game, I knew I was smart and could learn anything related to tech. So my curiosity and interest peaked it's critical during the beginning of August 2015. I viciously started reading all possible game development books. I read tons of articles. I relearned the languages required and by the end of October I have finally created my first baby.

I was 2nd year Accounting student at YorkU and I hated it. Why? Because I joined on the premise that accounting = something very close to business. I was absolutely disgusted when I found out what accounting really was during my first real lectures. I dropped out at the same time I published my game. I couldn't take it. I was lied to and fooled. I had all ambitions for my game now.

November passed and I saw only a handful of downloads. I knew it wasn't the game's fault. I knew it was my assumption was wrong about "make it and they'll come" will work. The great depression followed. I was paralyzed for the whole end of Nov/Dec/Jan. I hated myself for my ambitions and big dreams. I thought I have created a masterpiece and the only thing that made me work my a$$ off during Aug/Sept/Oct on the project were me dreams about the life I will have in riches from my 'baby'. I was so so wrong.

During Feb I started to pick up my pace and little by little started to recover. I learned a little more about game dev. I really hated making games all the long. I never loved it. It's just something that was going to put food on my table. What I had passion for is software engineering.

During March I found out about this book, thanks to @MJ DeMarco narrating it himself on the Fight Mediocrity Youtube's channel. His concepts really resonated with me and I was intrigued. I knew it was the real deal. Not some money grabbing dream selling guru shit. I read the book. I loved it. I had to act.

I gathered all my shit together and saved up for a little under a month and moved back home to Russia where my gf of 5 years at that time was waiting for me. I was never happier before. The book brought me enlightenment, it gave me knowledge and information that I could act upon. It was a turning point in my life. I can't be more thankful to the author.

From April to the end of June I released another game now using a much simpler and more powerful framework Unity. No wonder I still didn't get any downloads. I promised myself not to make games anymore and have nothing to do with software engineering and coding for the rest of my life. I hated it so much so much that I couldn't stand the thought of thinking to write code. In all honesty I just hated myself for the lack of experience and knowledge and that's all. All along came my dreams of good life in riches and being a founder of game development company came crashing down. Who cares? I was really hurt. I was still a child and I probably am still now at 20.

Then I've thought I'd give the forum a try. I was really glad I found my home. I finally found a place on earth and mighty internet where I belong. Up until now I was all alone and thought I was weird all by myself. Now I understand that there are still not a lot of people like that but at least I am not alone.

Throughtout the summer I barely did anything as I couldn't put my hands on importing or selling on Amazon. I didn't understand Facebook ads and how to dropship from Aliexpress. Not that I understand any better now. I didn't do much at all during Aug/Sept/Oct.

Magic started to happen from the end of August. People started downloading my first game. During Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec I have earned around around 7K and all from that one game! Wow! Why did that happen? Because people started slowly finding it and it all snowballed. As people downloaded more and more, the game climbed the rankings more and more and then even more people started downloading the game. Snowball effect!

During Nov/Dec I tried my best with ecom. Now that I had money to spend I generously spent it on learning Facebook ads. I believe I totalled more than 4K on products/fees/ads during that time. I was able to sell two products at a decent profit margin but then again I hated dropshipping for it's reasons...

End of December and begining of January I have really struggled to find my place. I see that Dropshipping is a dead end. Custom merchandise requires money. I feel like all of this ecom thing is just not for me at this time.

I may be wrong but I came to the realization with my lack of intelligence in this field I am just about to waste more money on things that will not work. I need to pivot. I need to do that what I can be good at.

2K17 is the year that I bridge my passion for software and my knowledge of business processes. I would like to devote this year solely to creating a game development business. I've made games, I've made money. I realized where I lacked knowledge, I found ways to come up with solutions. Now I want to put all of my findings to a good test.

I will devote the best I have in both advertisement and software engineering to coming up with a game development studio that will be the fastlane business.

wow I feel great again :)
 
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lowtek

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2016 is now over. New year. I've learned lots of things during the past year. I feel like this is the thread that I first started and it's like 'home' to me now.

Let me backtrack and tell a little story about me and then I'll share where I am going.

Back in April 2015 I felt that life is not just work/home/work/die and I certainly didn't want to work for someone else. I have always been interested in computer programming and at that time I was playing around with android app development. Obviously I made an app that was fun to me 'vocabulary builder' but was not interesting to anybody else. But that's way before I even thought or knew anything about solving needs...

At that time an idea has always crossed my mind that people are making games and that I not only could make games, but can earn lot's of money from it. So throughout the summer of 2015 I couldn't stop thinking about it. I knew I could figure out ways I could build a game, I knew I was smart and could learn anything related to tech. So my curiosity and interest peaked it's critical during the beginning of August 2015. I viciously started reading all possible game development books. I read tons of articles. I relearned the languages required and by the end of October I have finally created my first baby.

I was 2nd year Accounting student at YorkU and I hated it. Why? Because I joined on the premise that accounting = something very close to business. I was absolutely disgusted when I found out what accounting really was during my first real lectures. I dropped out at the same time I published my game. I couldn't take it. I was lied to and fooled. I had all ambitions for my game now.

November passed and I saw only a handful of downloads. I knew it wasn't the game's fault. I knew it was my assumption was wrong about "make it and they'll come" will work. The great depression followed. I was paralyzed for the whole end of Nov/Dec/Jan. I hated myself for my ambitions and big dreams. I thought I have created a masterpiece and the only thing that made me work my a$$ off during Aug/Sept/Oct on the project were me dreams about the life I will have in riches from my 'baby'. I was so so wrong.

During Feb I started to pick up my pace and little by little started to recover. I learned a little more about game dev. I really hated making games all the long. I never loved it. It's just something that was going to put food on my table. What I had passion for is software engineering.

During March I found out about this book, thanks to @MJ DeMarco narrating it himself on the Fight Mediocrity Youtube's channel. His concepts really resonated with me and I was intrigued. I knew it was the real deal. Not some money grabbing dream selling guru shit. I read the book. I loved it. I had to act.

I gathered all my shit together and saved up for a little under a month and moved back home to Russia where my gf of 5 years at that time was waiting for me. I was never happier before. The book brought me enlightenment, it gave me knowledge and information that I could act upon. It was a turning point in my life. I can't be more thankful to the author.

From April to the end of June I released another game now using a much simpler and more powerful framework Unity. No wonder I still didn't get any downloads. I promised myself not to make games anymore and have nothing to do with software engineering and coding for the rest of my life. I hated it so much so much that I couldn't stand the thought of thinking to write code. In all honesty I just hated myself for the lack of experience and knowledge and that's all. All along came my dreams of good life in riches and being a founder of game development company came crashing down. Who cares? I was really hurt. I was still a child and I probably am still now at 20.

Then I've thought I'd give the forum a try. I was really glad I found my home. I finally found a place on earth and mighty internet where I belong. Up until now I was all alone and thought I was weird all by myself. Now I understand that there are still not a lot of people like that but at least I am not alone.

Throughtout the summer I barely did anything as I couldn't put my hands on importing or selling on Amazon. I didn't understand Facebook ads and how to dropship from Aliexpress. Not that I understand any better now. I didn't do much at all during Aug/Sept/Oct.

Magic started to happen from the end of August. People started downloading my first game. During Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec I have earned around around 7K and all from that one game! Wow! Why did that happen? Because people started slowly finding it and it all snowballed. As people downloaded more and more, the game climbed the rankings more and more and then even more people started downloading the game. Snowball effect!

During Nov/Dec I tried my best with ecom. Now that I had money to spend I generously spent it on learning Facebook ads. I believe I totalled more than 4K on products/fees/ads during that time. I was able to sell two products at a decent profit margin but then again I hated dropshipping for it's reasons...

End of December and begining of January I have really struggled to find my place. I see that Dropshipping is a dead end. Custom merchandise requires money. I feel like all of this ecom thing is just not for me at this time.

I may be wrong but I came to the realization with my lack of intelligence in this field I am just about to waste more money on things that will not work. I need to pivot. I need to do that what I can be good at.

2K17 is the year that I bridge my passion for software and my knowledge of business processes. I would like to devote this year solely to creating a game development business. I've made games, I've made money. I realized where I lacked knowledge, I found ways to come up with solutions. Now I want to put all of my findings to a good test.

I will devote the best I have in both advertisement and software engineering to coming up with a game development studio that will be the fastlane business.

wow I feel great again :)


Congrats on getting some traction selling games. That's no small feat. It's an incredibly saturated field with lots of competition. Look forward to seeing what you can do moving forward.
 

eTox

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@lowtek thank you. :) It's going to be a hard battle but I am not intending to give up easily. I believe I can apply everything I've learned up till now and make it a real business.

Will share my progress as I go.
 

eTox

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I thought business was easy.
but,

It's pretty damn hard.

It dawned on me yesterday that until this time I was thinking that "business is easy". I was confusing the thoughts of "easy" meaning in "relatively fast compared to other available options".

Therefore business is hard, really really hard because it requires enormous amounts of patience, persistence, and dedication just to name a few and I have a feeling that I am not ready for that yet.

Being in business is easy, hey I was in business, right? I dropped 5K made 1K back, I was in business. But what's the point of such venture?

Building a business that's profitable is really really really hard. It's a pain, and it's by no means easy. It's boring at times, it's tough, and 99% of the time you are lost thinking "when is it and will it actually work?" because it's hard to see real progress when you are just starting out.

I feel like it's a really wavy ocean. One month I am making some money, the other month I am making none. I feel like life is teaching me emotional stability because all of this worrying surely will not get me anywhere. Life sucks during this moment, at least I can put myself through more pain, pressure and cliffs and maybe then... nah, it's never gonna happen.
 
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fhs8

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I am now stuck at selecting products. I feel so overwhelmed, there are so many things to choose but when I come up with one and go check out amazon sales prices and volumes I get so discouraged because:
  1. so many people are selling
  2. low margins after import and shipping
Low margins as in you couldn't make $10 an order? Nothing wrong with making 5% an order.
Current strategy:
  • Look for products that have at least $10 profit margin (products no cheaper to sell than $25)
  • Find and concentrate on niche items to be able to brand around a niche
  • find preferably those products that would be boring to sell for other people (not very popular or known items)

If anyone has any strategies or suggestions for finding the first product to sell please share, thank you!

Where did you get the $10 profit margin from? ...Because each order has to make a $10+ profit in order for you to get off the couch and start working?

I think I need a break for today.... I can't throw such money at the screen atm to validate the demand. At this rate, getting a single test sale will cost more than the product itself...

You didn't do research beforehand on the CPC/CPA/ICC? That's like the first thing I would do. Seriously what are you doing?

How did you set the price of the product? Do you realize product pricing changes conversion rates and CPA? Profit can be higher on a lower priced product. You also have very limited product selection. More product selection = higher conversion rates in most cases. Also how you advertise may be wrong. If I was a consumer and went to your website the first thing I would do is go on Amazon and get it cheaper.
 

Lex DeVille

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2K17 is the year that I bridge my passion for software and my knowledge of business processes. I would like to devote this year solely to creating a game development business. I've made games, I've made money. I realized where I lacked knowledge, I found ways to come up with solutions. Now I want to put all of my findings to a good test.

I will devote the best I have in both advertisement and software engineering to coming up with a game development studio that will be the fastlane business.

You may find interest in the book The Fourth Transformation.

The current game market may be saturated, but the one that's coming is not.

The book just came out in Sept. and describes why smart businesses will start preparing for the next wave of gaming.

You don't necessarily have to develop games. Just get a feel for where things are going and bring together people who can.
 

eTox

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You may find interest in the book The Fourth Transformation.

The current game market may be saturated, but the one that's coming is not.

The book just came out in Sept. and describes why smart businesses will start preparing for the next wave of gaming.

You don't necessarily have to develop games. Just get a feel for where things are going and bring together people who can.

Thank you @SinisterLex for your suggestion for the book and your opinion on the matter.

My current stance is that:
  • I do believe that the current mobile game market is not saturated.
  • I believe that it is cluttered with money grabbing shit and that the market desperately needs more games that are focused on the casual gamer who is willing to drop couple bucks here and there for new experiences that are worth it.
  • The market is saturated with crap that offers no value, clutters the app stores and tries to milk every last penny from the whales in return for marginal increase in gameplay.
And lastly, I believe that there is an abundance of money to be made right here and right now, with simple 2d games that offer valuable gameplay experience to the average player.

My wild thoughts:

My goal is not to make a billion dollars entering a new market and serving early adopters in order to later become a dominant player. My goal is to make a decent living serving the need that is already there but is not being fulfilled by others due to lack of knowledge and funds in the marketing sphere of mobile game business.

I just find it funny that everyone who actually tried to make games screams that it's impossible to make money anymore and that it's over saturated and the days have passed. No, I believe it's the same thing that's happening on Amazon or with dropshipping right now? Everyone selling the same crap that offers no value to the customer. Do you think it's possible to make money that way without having a unique angle to it?
 
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Andy Black

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I thought business was easy.
but,

It's pretty damn hard.

It dawned on me yesterday that until this time I was thinking that "business is easy". I was confusing the thoughts of "easy" meaning in "relatively fast compared to other available options".

Therefore business is hard, really really hard because it requires enormous amounts of patience, persistence, and dedication just to name a few and I have a feeling that I am not ready for that yet.

Being in business is easy, hey I was in business, right? I dropped 5K made 1K back, I was in business. But what's the point of such venture?

Building a business that's profitable is really really really hard. It's a pain, and it's by no means easy. It's boring at times, it's tough, and 99% of the time you are lost thinking "when is it and will it actually work?" because it's hard to see real progress when you are just starting out.

I feel like it's a really wavy ocean. One month I am making some money, the other month I am making none. I feel like life is teaching me emotional stability because all of this worrying surely will not get me anywhere. Life sucks during this moment, at least I can put myself through more pain, pressure and cliffs and maybe then... nah, it's never gonna happen.
Business is hard because we have to unlearn so many habits and ways of thinking. Then it becomes simple again.


Add value. Get paid.

Get started. Keep going.

Fall down. Get up.



Pretty simple really (until we start complicating it).
 

DBXI

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Just read through this thread @eTox I can relate in alot of ways with trying alot of different business models. I would say in the beginning this is ok mostly because you don't know what the hell you want to do and what you like to do or even know how to process all the information you are being assaulted with. You don't really have to like the business you are in but you need to believe in your solution / product / idea. To me though I like trying to mix things I like to do with my business ventures. I think some overlap is good. Just remember to validate your idea first with small tests which was something I didn't do a very good job at initially. I've since learned my lesson. I dropped about 10k on my first product and it pretty much tanked. Thankfully I was able to recover my cost out of that product. If I would have tested smaller quantities I would have found 1) demand wasn't really there 2) the quality in a bigger production batch wasn't great 3) would have received early feedback from customers and could have improved.

I now test everything in test runs. You can do this with in ecom with small "sample" orders (read Walter's and Bio's threads), you can do this on your own ecom stores with landing pages, with apps again with landing pages or run FB ads to see if you get clicks BEFORE you drop thousands of dollars on development or hundreds of hours on time.

No problem / no need / no demand = no go!

I like your action taking and hustle but to me it sounds like you need to spend more time on researching the market and validating your ideas. And by the way, a successful test is not your mom or gf or bro telling you it's a sweet idea and they would totally download it. An example (it will vary of course) validate would be 500 clicks on your landing page, 50 add to carts, and 5 of them actually try and buy it. These people are willing to trade $$$ for your solution. Or a FB ad targeted at users who like the game "Cookie Lizard" and you run a nice mockup design at them and see how many clicks you get on that ad. You could do surveys on forums or FB groups. You could rent / but an email list and see what kind of open rates you get. Tons of ways. The point is start small, test, validate, refine, go bigger, profit, repeat the process.

Read every gold thread to any industry that interests you. Read about others who are living the life you want to live and try and model yourself after them. Obviously you want to be you but you can learn a lot by looking at others who have already battled through the same obstacles you are headed into.

Check out this thread by @AndrewNC
(helped me a ton):
Notable! - Don't read this thread | and you won't get rich.
 
Last edited:

fhs8

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My current stance is that:
  • I do believe that the current mobile game market is not saturated.
  • I believe that it is cluttered with money grabbing shit and that the market desperately needs more games that are focused on the casual gamer who is willing to drop couple bucks here and there for new experiences that are worth it.
  • The market is saturated with crap that offers no value, clutters the app stores and tries to milk every last penny from the whales in return for marginal increase in gameplay.

Then you need to change your stance because you're wrong. Do you know how many mobile games there are out there? Over 500+ games a day are released on Iphone. That's almost 200,000 a year. Even if 95% were crap that means 10,000 are good. You don't have experience in making games, gui, graphics, or sounds and most game apps in the top 500 can't be made by a single person. There's no reason to think that you won't release crap.

Also there is a reason why tons of games try to milk money out of people. Just compare the top 50 grossing paid app vs the top 500 grossing free app. It's sad but that's the state of mobile gaming. Case closed.
 
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eTox

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Then you need to change your stance because you're wrong. Do you know how many mobile games there are out there? Over 500+ games a day are released on Iphone. That's almost 200,000 a year. Even if 95% were crap that means 10,000 are good. You don't have experience in making games, gui, graphics, or sounds and most game apps in the top 500 can't be made by a single person. There's no reason to think that you won't release crap.

Also there is a reason why tons of games try to milk money out of people. Just compare the top 50 grossing paid app vs the top 500 grossing app. It's sad but that's the state of mobile gaming. Case closed.

As much as I do agree with you, I also strongly disagree. I would rather cry with bloody tears a year down the line than dismiss this case that quickly.
I know there is a ton of money to be made there and I will prove it. I am not setting a goal to make a billion, but I believe a couple million is possible.

If everyone is milking gamers and there are only top 500 games that make the bank and everyone fails then why would I jump of the same roof as every other miserable developer out there?

I want to cater to the average joe that want's a new game but doesn't want to spend hundreds on it to win it and I will prove that it will work.

The worst case scenario is that I'll spend a year and will fail miserably and all of you can laugh at me wholeheartedly for trying, I endorse it. But at the current state of my affairs I see no other fancy option that'll bring me closer to my goal.

@fhs8 thank you for being harsh and critical. I really appreciate when people challenge my beliefs. You rock :)
 

DBXI

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What makes your app / game different from your competitors and why would it make me want to spend my $$ on it?
How many downloads are your competitors getting?
How are they using ads to monetize their app?
How are they using IAP to monetize their app?
What is the total market size in revenue for your particular niche?
 

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