I knew this month would be a good one. I had a lot of invoices out at the start of August, but I wasn’t certain if I’d be able to eclipse last month’s incredible earnings.
I can safely say that my expectations have been surpassed yet again! Seriously, the results of every single month over the past half a year have surprised me beyond measure.
August Online Earnings
$15 – Myriad Online earnings
$82 – Advertising
$290 (+$230) – Licensing
$360 (+$40) – “Making Money With HTML5” eBook sales
$1286 (+$386) – HTML5 partnered earnings
$5060 (-$40) – HTML5 earnings
During August 2012 I earned a total of $7093 (+$698) online! This is my new personal best, but I also think it will be the climax of my earnings for a while.
Myriad Online
During its long hiatus my major project Myriad Online has managed to maintain a small community presence, and has even contributed to my monthly earnings somewhat consistently. The reason that Myriad went on hiatus in the first place was due to money issues; I couldn’t support myself financially at the time. I decided I had to establish an income before being able to truly dedicate myself to the project. So that’s what I did. In half a year I’ve managed to get to this point where I’m making thousands of dollars per month online. And quite frankly I still can’t believe it.
During August I felt comfortable enough to take Myriad off of hiatus and begin working on it again. Not a lot of progress was made but it was a start. For this new month of September I’m resuming full-time work on the project. I’m taking a brand new stance on design and will be working to make Myriad not only an excellent game but also a sizable part of my monthly income.
My goal is that this project will eventually fuel the majority of my income. I’m excited to see where I can take it now that I have some financial stability behind me.
If you’d like to join us during our initial alpha testing stage we currently require a $10 donation. This helps fund the game, makes it less vulnerable to exploitation, and ensures our testers are people that are truly interested in the project. Check out the official Myriad Online website for more info.
Advertising
You may notice that “Advertising” is a new section in this month’s income report. Since being burned by Google I’ve been hesitant to bother with ads again, but last month I decided to sign up for Leadbolt and re-evaluate my options.
I figure that ads are just another income stream that can help me diversify, and I really should be looking at them seriously despite my bad experience with Google. I just need to choose the right providers.
So this month I re-activated my Infolinks account and added in-text ads to this blog. They’re non-intrusive and the earnings are surprising decent. I don’t want to add obnoxious banner ads everywhere so I felt like this was a better option.
I also sold some custom advertising space on this blog for a decent fee. On that note, check out the HTML5 game creation software Construct 2! I prefer selling my own ad space directly like this because it keeps me in control.
Finally, I’m continuing my efforts to establish some mobile ad earnings. Hopefully these will start to come into fruition soon and ad revenue will become a staple part of my online income once again.
eBook
My upcoming eBook “Making Money With HTML5” received a lot of pre-orders this month when I expected only a few. I had planned to finish the book by the end of August but that just didn’t happen…I was distracted by other work and real life, and ultimately not enough progress was made. But I’ve now gone through an initial editorial process and work is continuing at a steady rate.
I definitely do not plan on finishing any later than the end of September. Now that I think about it, for my monthly challenge I’m going to try and write part of the book every single day of the month. I want to fulfill those pre-orders! To the people that actually have pre-ordered: I appreciate your patience and I hope to have something for you soon.
App
My undisclosed mobile app that was in development has been canceled due to lack of progress. I realized the project just had no place in my schedule at the moment, and the artist I was working with was not able to work at the pace I wanted him to. In the future I may resume work on the app with a hired artist but for now it’s better to cut my losses.
Dropping a project which I have invested a lot of time into is not an easy decision, nor one I like to make often.
What’s Next?
I currently have the tidiest schedule I’ve had in months, which is entirely on purpose. During September I’ll be working exclusively on Myriad Online and my eBook. I have a steady portfolio of HTML5 games now and a lot of my publishers are currently on holiday or in a transitional stage (rewriting their API or launching their store) so this is a chance for me to move my focus away from HTML5, for a month at least.
I’ll still be trying to get any deals I can and taking the time to fulfill them, but I will not be creating any new HTML5 games this month.
That means I expect my overall earnings to be dramatically lower during September. The last couple of months have been very good but I feel like they are the exception. If I can earn $3000 this month I’ll be surprised.
This will be a quiet month for me but I have heaps to do. I’ll be spending a lot of time chipping away at the code base behind Myriad Online and writing my book, plus mid-way through the month I’ll be moving out of my parent’s place which will be hectic. I’m also going to try and blog more this month…but who knows how that will work out!
Finally, September is my last month as a teenager, so if there’s a bunch of drunken posts around the 27th, well, please ignore them!
Matthew
The biggest part of your income ($5060 (-$40) – HTML5 earnings), what is it exactly? You selling your games to publishers?
Yes, exactly. Take a look through my previous income reports for more info.
How many new games did you release this month? Can we see them? Where are all your games available?
I created 2 new games last month as part of my August Challenge (check previous blog post for screens). However I keep my HTML5 work mostly private, currently.
Hi TV,
I was wondering why you kept all your HTML5 work private? I tend to read (and enjoy) every blog post you make – it’d be interesting to see what kind of level of quality is needed in an HTML5 game to actually make money, though.
Lately I’ve kept them private simply because these games are made for publishers, not for my audience. So it takes extra effort and time to publish them for players, when I don’t really have a reason to.
But, I’m considering making my work more public in the future.
Nice to see a breakdown of your earnings this month. Look forward to seeing how this grows and changes long term. Do you intend on posting monthly financial updates through to next year?
Yes, I certainly do. I enjoy writing these posts so I’ll keep it up.
Inspiring as always. Thanks for the update on your book. One of the reasons I have not yet ordered your book is not knowing when it would be available. Knowing it is coming soon will hopefully inspire others to take the plunge and order one.
Thanks xot. I’m working on it as much as possible
Out of all the advertising types, those hover ads are some of my least favourite. It’s interesting to hear you find them non-intrusive
.
And before you ask, I can’t elaborate more on why I don’t like them. I don’t know, I just don’t.
I find if you don’t hover over them, it’s like there’s no ads at all