As the title suggests, I’m interested in hearing from ppl who have put stuff on the marketplace how profitable it is. I don’t need numbers if you don’t feel like sharing, but I’m interested if it’s something you could make a living off, or if it’s usually just a little money on the side. I’m primarily thinking of props, environments and materials.
That’s going to depend on what you’re selling. If its something that is non-genre specific and could be used with every project type and is needed by the community, you can expect to make a decent profit. However, if it’s something that only applies to a specific title, then it may not sell as well. As far as making a living off of it? Probably not, unless you incorporate the assets into other engines as well. There are some teams that do make a living off of the creation of assets though.
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Well Epic’s market place is not the only game in town as far as digital art assets goes so like any other type of marketplace it depends on how serious the effort. There are more than a few who make a full time living at it.
Depends what you make, how good you make it and how many and whether you support it long term or not. If you those very well then yes you can make a living.
This is kind of a broad question and I think it would be really helpful to give a few examples on what you would like to make for the Marketplace. That way the sellers can better answer the question. This is a very good question to bring up!
Well if anyone could answer that question as a formulated response then one would be a billionaire overnight. 
Assuming that I’m typical of the average consumer, be it DCC art assets or a new pair of pants, what I’m looking for is typical of the average window shopper and the key elements that push my buying button are presentation and product branding at a fair price and fair use licensing.
I like products that saves time.
I like products that are updated to the latest engine builds.
I like products with strong after sale support.
I like products with fair use licensing.
Of all things though as to making a living in the DCC marketplace is as always brand identification. If you can build a rep as a top producer of usable assets at a fair price people will just buy your stuff as part of a collection of assets.
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The only stats I know of from sales is that Generic Shooter has sold over 1000 copies (because the thread says so), and you get a share of 70% revenue from the sales, Epic gets 30%. I believe Allar started selling GS at $29.99 USD, so if we keep the price the same (even though it has gone up) and have 1000 units sold, that equates to nearly $21k, but you have to remember that it is a very broad and well, generic asset that can be used in a wide selection of genres and games.
There is some more info in this thread: How many people typically buy marketplace items? - Marketplace - Unreal Engine Forums
Hey Frepp73!
To answer your question I would say it’s very profitable. I’m working full time towards making the marketplace something I could hopefully earn a living from. I have assets in pretty much every category you listed: environments, props and soon to be materials. Would I consider myself to have arrived just yet? Not quite, but I do see myself progressing towards it. Hard work is essential. You want to make your assets high quality and distinctive, while also ensuring affordability. The more packs you have on there the better, but make sure you don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Overall I believe it’s something you have to work towards, very few will hit it right off the bat. Those that do offer products that are universal in appeal, a good example is Allar’s Generic Shooter which has been mentioned.
Another important thing to note is your relations with your customers. These are the people who support you, make sure you treat them right! Always be there to support them in anything they need, whether it’s help using your content, listening to feedback, answering questions or just generally engaging with them. I’ve been honored to have some of the best customers a seller could ask for, and getting to interact with them has been an enjoyable experience. I like to treat my customers the same way I as a fellow customer would like to be treated. =)
Hope this helps to answer your question!
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No this is not good, ,now we want the figures ! …and how much did you earn exactly, how much did you pay your house, your adress, your pet’s name and the color of your fridge 
I’m sorry Oliver, all of that information is G14 classified. =P
Yep 
If you are good at 3D art and it comes pretty easily, go for it. What have you got ot lose but a little time?
Just make sure you put a good level of polish into your product and price it to be competitive to other similar packs already out there, and you should be able to make a nice bit of pocket money at the very least 
[QUOTE=apoisonedgift;499861]
If you are good at 3D art and it comes pretty easily, go for it. What have you got ot lose but a little time?/QUOTE]
Well that’s exactly what you have to loose time, which is the most valuable thing we have in life So you look at what will be the best use of this free time, tracking down clients and doing freelance work or putting something up on the marketplace and playing the long game. In terms of the OPs question about profitability it’s going to depend entirely on what you are selling, what people are willing to pay for that thing and how much competition/demand there is. For our experience we are looking at breaking even in 12-14 months of sales at the current rate but for an outfit like Ironbelly there’s more to consider than just the outright sales however as a single freelancer I would think of it in those terms. Do I do something now, sell it for say $1500 and move on, or do I make it for the marketplace and sell $100-$200 per month? Over 1-2 years it’s going to make sense but you have to weigh your short term versus long term priorities
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I have created Realistic Blueprint weapons. I would say that it has been worth my time to do it.
It was a big investment up front(time, creating the first version). But now it is a relatively steady extra income without much work to support it. Not that I don’t support it, but I have made some videos explaining the most common things, so I don’t get too many support requests. I sell on average one copy a day when I don’t count discount sales.
If you do more, you will sell more. I have had a 6 month period where life and work took up much of my time, and I didn’t develop much on it or did other products and my sales have declined because of it. I have a major update coming, I’m looking forward to seeing if that will help boost sales again.
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At the CEGC 2016 was a interesting presentation about “Publishing to the UE Marketplace”.
https://youtu.be/JL4X6rb8zSw?t=9682
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Thanks for all the replies. In my case, I’m running a company that mainly does archviz, and often we need to make specific models (for instance, they customer may say that they NEED to have a particular chair or table in the scene), which means that we’ve already some of the work, and since we make the models and only sell the finished product to our customers, we have models that we could put on the marketplace to make a little extra money. This would primarily be props and materials. We have very good 3D artists and the models we make are made for UE4, so the work is already more or less . Seems it might be worth trying =)
If you all ready have the assets then it sounds more like a case of packaging so you might as well give it a go just to learn the process of what it would take to get your product onto the market place. What paper work needs to be , set your pricing, how does it need to be packaged.
Also might as well look at other market places like Unity or Daz 3D
Hey Ironbelly,
Is the $100-$200 hypothetical, or representative of the success of your packs? I would have thought given the quality and universal appeal to those weapons (Nearly every game today has guns) it would be far more successful.
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Just make sure you sell something which appeal and usable across lots of genres… If you are an artist, do not create very detail winged monster which while they are very beautiful, the purchasers are scared to buy them because they are instantly recognized… lol