Preface (Nonsense)
There has always been a voice, some books, some people, telling me that technical workers ultimately serve the ideas of those who claim to be 'integrating resources.'
I was indignant and resentful. At the same time, I also questioned whether the direction I chose was correct.
I often ponder a question,what it would be like if someone with technical skills also had ideas.
So I spent a lot of time understanding the essence of this society, looking at the different choices made by various people and the different results they led to. This is not over a hundred years ago; it is no longer as exciting and full of unknowns as exploring a new continent. Now, whatever you do, you can basically see what your future will look like because there are too many ready-made people and cases to refer to, and you can assess the difficulty and risks.
So, as an ordinary person, wethe only capital we have is diligence, accurately identify the goals we want to achieve, and put all our limited diligence into it. For example, I was controlled by my parents when I was young, by teachers when I was in school, and by leaders when I grew up. What I want is freedom... So, as the poor dad and rich dad said, to escape the rat race, you must constantly create passive income instead of selling your value by the hour.
Now, after slightly going off-topic, let's get back to the main point. Since this is a column about the Unreal Engine, I will only write about how I created passive income in this field.
I released a UE4 xml plugin at a very low cost in April 2018 and uploaded it toUnreal Marketplace (Fab), and after some deliberate operations, it gained some exposure. To this day, it can add an average of 600~1000 (CNY) of passive income for me each month (sometimes no one buys in a month, and sometimes there are suddenly many purchases in another month),and I have never managed it.(At most, I just changed the version number and uploaded new version files), you might not find this small profit interesting, but when I have 20 such small profits in a month (I am slowly approaching this number), and all of these are passive, then the difference becomes obvious.
What to do (Finding Demand Stage)
A large number of people actually do not know what they want to do. Since we want passive income this time, let's take it step by step. Borrowing a phrase of absolute justice, if you do not know what you want to do, then“find other people's problems and solve them.”Moreover, the cost of solving this problem must not be high, so I opened Google to search for xml.
Every suggestion that pops up here is a potential demand. Among them, xml blueprint is something with relatively high demand because there were still very few people operating xml in blueprints at that time.
Then I searched for xml in the Unreal Marketplace and found that there was only one potential competitor at that time (now, the first one on the left is mine, and the third one onwards are later entrants).
There are no more than 4 competitors, and there is still room for surpassing, so it can be done.So the second plugin is just a simple encapsulation of the official xml module, with room for improvement.
How to do it (Reducing Costs)
The reading club on Zhihu is very interesting. Although the books are written by great authors, the audience will transform their admiration for the great authors into appreciation for the speaker. So, Tinyxml is written by someone else (with a permissive license), and I integrated it into UE4 for use. Standing on the shoulders of giants is not a bad idea.
Even the smallest demand will have someone willing to pay.
When I was still a stubborn technical person, I might have looked down on my current self. Now it seems that wasfoolish..
Integrating a plugin is not a big deal; it is just encapsulating and exposing nodes for blueprint use. Since the product is ready, how can I let potential users discover my product? First, we must transform ourselves into novices and then search for 'ue4 xml blueprint' on Google.
In these already high-exposure places, kindly answering questions and quietly attaching a small tail of the plugin is enough, just like I am kindly writing this article and will quietly attach my plugin address at the end.
These operations are called SEO, which is another discipline. The effect is that the following post is mine, appearing on the homepage.
At the same time, the keyword 'ue4 xml blueprint' will also search out my plugin, which is also on Google's homepage.
The rest is just waiting for the effects to accumulate over time. Even in 1 or 2 years, this plugin might still sell, just like those who sell houses say, 'the leeks come in waves.'
Conclusion
The purpose of this article is not to tell you how much money can be made by making plugins in the Unreal Marketplace, but rather to share some experiences of an ordinary, somewhat confused technical person pursuing freedom.
Technical people need an open mind to let their skills serve their ideas.Once the mind is open, there are many things I want to do, but unfortunately, one person's ability limits me to take it slow.
Since this is a column related to Unreal, I will only talk about Unreal. If you read this article and have some fleeting thoughts, then go for it.
There are so many plugins in Unity that provide functionalities that Unreal does not have; go make a version for Unreal, haha. (This is indeed a feasible plan; I originally intended to do so and even specifically worked for a Unity company (Pathea) for a year. But now there are more important things to do.)
I used to be very idealistic, but now I just want my sister to be able to live a wealthy life in the future. After all, making life better is the ultimate goal for most people.
Although this is a topic related to Unreal, do not limit yourself to Unreal (just like me, who always claims to focus on game development and web technology, the web field has more opportunities). I believe most readers of this article are programmers, and the same mindset applies: utilize your skills and apply them to other fields, and it will truly be unstoppable.