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Asset Developers, where do you promote your assets?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Stephan-B, Jun 20, 2014.

  1. Stephan-B

    Stephan-B

    Unity Technologies

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    Obviously, promoting your Unity Asset in the Asset Store forum and to some extent the Work In Progress forum is a given.

    No doubt participating in Asset Store promotions has been successful for many of you. However, what I am actually interested in is learning about any good external web sites, communities, places where you have had success promoting and marketing your products?

    Are any of you active with any Unity user groups or had success getting some of them to showcase / introduce your product to their members?
     
  2. Dustin-Horne

    Dustin-Horne

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    Personally I don't do any real outside promotion. I did a quick getting started tutorial post on my blog which gets a fair amount of traffic. I also have it in my signature so when I'm participating in other discussions around the forum it's visible. Also, I offer two purchase options (Asset Store and Fast Spring) and while 90%+ of my sales are through the asset store, the additional option is nice for those who can't or don't want to use the asset store.
     
  3. Acumen

    Acumen

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    Twitter is a nice way, since the AssetStore has its own handle and is reaaally supportive of the assets authors.
    Other than that whereelse should you get most traffic than from unity's own page. It's not billions of users, yet :)
    And a site where you could do to and just advertize your product....how would feel about such a site personally ? I would never visit or even use it :)
    This is a niche we are targetting - well a really big niche - but there are no big external sites covering assets for a product in an impacting manner.

    Being active on the forums, offering help and NOT constantly talk about a product in other threads surely helps to shape your public reputation and people may get interested in checking out your stuff :)
    There just is no secret shortcut - 1000% same procedure as with game development/selling.
     
  4. randomperson42

    randomperson42

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    This is something I would like to know as well. I haven't done any special to promote my assets.
     
  5. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

    Volunteer Moderator Moderator

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    Yep. Just don't go digging through all old threads that are vaguely related to your product and post the same message in all of them. That's spam and will be deleted. It's fine to mention your product in a current thread as long as it's relevant, and not overtly rude (such as trying to push it in a thread about a competing product).

    --Eric
     
  6. JohnRossitter

    JohnRossitter

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    The whole process sees to be very hit and miss. Yes we do appeal to a very niche audience, but I think more could be done to promote newer packages and assets. The sales are cool and all that, but it seems like (and Im not accusing anyone of anything) it's a bit of a teachers pet style club to get into the sales. With all of the Indie Game review sites out there you would think that there would be something like this for Unity Assets too.

    It's also very easy for great assets to get lost in the mix and just fall behind in ratings because of this.

    Another big problem is that users rarely rate assets, so you may have thousands of downloads, but no one would know it because users don't bother to rate them. Case In point I have one asset that pulls about 100 downloads a month, I have 4 ratings and 2 comments...wtf!?
     
  7. lilymontoute

    lilymontoute

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    We promote our assets mainly through the forums and Twitter.

    I try to make it out to local Unity groups whenever possible - we have a set of fantastic user groups in TX (Houston, Austin, and Dallas), and have actually found a large number of people there interested in the assets that we work on.

    I would love to see something like a community site that goes through and reviews/spotlights various assets. I think we'll get to that point soon. The store is growing quite a bit these days, and more of Unity's community in general is keeping an eye on the store. When the store first started out, many people I talked to didn't even know how to open the Asset Store... that has completely changed these days.
     
  8. Acumen

    Acumen

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    The problem is exactly the same as with games on mobile/whatever market, imo.
    It's not anyone's task to make sure the product gets exposure than the creator alone. We might get some mentions on social media or the forums or even a unity conference, but that is just a chance. We don't have any entitlement or guarantue that unity or asset store owes us any exposure apart from being listed on the store.
    Of course it's hit and miss. We don't know what asset will be popular. This is not welfare. Not wveryone gets a nice dinner by just showing up.
    An example: We thought we had a clue about what people enjoy, yet our second product sells significantly lower than the first, even though we worked on it twice as long. I can't blame unity or its users for that.
    Indie game review sites ? These sites that mostly only benefit the creators (who ask for money for reviews) and trick poor devs into thinking this will help them ?

    I don't think that it's easy for great assets to get lost.
    Since everyone has the same issues about not getting too many ratings, I don't see that as a problem, per se.

    Tools that extend unitys workflow greatly, look and feel professional and serve a loooot of people's needs, get more love. That's just the way the world works.
    So our task is to hit that sweet spot. We certainly can't expect some poor man's saviour via unity.
    It's highly subjective on what makes a "great asset" :)
     
  9. Stephan-B

    Stephan-B

    Unity Technologies

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    I am starting to look at Unity User Groups but the only issue there is location. If you happen to be lucky enough to be close to one or several active users groups then that is pretty awesome. The alternative is to reach out to the user group and perhaps find one of their members and provide him / her with a copy of your product for them to introduce / demo to their users.

    In the past, I used to attend trade shows like Comdex, CES, NAB, etc where we would demo our products to attendees. It could be interesting for Unity to consider expanding / creating a larger exhibit area at Unite where Asset Developers could pay for space to show their product to attendees. This could be of interest to Unite attendees and another avenue for Asset Developers to showcase their products.

    Given that Unite goes around the world, it would likely be cost prohibitive to go to each of those but perhaps more realistic to show up at a more local Unite event. Unity would have to keep the cost for space reasonable since I believe very few Asset Developer would be able to justify an expense in $5,000 (including travel, lodging, exhibitor costs, etc). Perhaps it would make sense for Unite to keep the exhibit costs down for Asset Developers since in many cases travel expenses alone could be prohibitive. If having a large exhibit area makes it more attractive for Unite attendees and helps grow attendance then maybe it would make sense. Just thinking out loud here.
     
  10. lilymontoute

    lilymontoute

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    Agreed, I would love to see a space for Asset Store developers, both large and small, to showcase their products at Unite at a reasonable rate. Right now, most booths are going to the larger middleware developers, or platform/service developers. Getting some of the very talented individuals and smaller companies that make up the backbone of the Asset Store ecosystem to show their stuff off to attendees would be awesome.
     
  11. Stephan-B

    Stephan-B

    Unity Technologies

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    I am convinced that figuring out some way to make it easier for Asset Developers to have some presence at Unite would of increased value to Unite Attendees and of even greater value to those Asset Developers. The more successful Asset Developers are in general, the better it is for Unity, for its users and for those developers.
     
  12. JohnRossitter

    JohnRossitter

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    I think that a weekly webcast on the Unity site with a handful of asset developers would be great.
     
  13. Aiursrage2k

    Aiursrage2k

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    People seem to mostly rate something if they really like it or really hate it.
    Your first kit was a 2d infinite runner, so anyone that wanted to buy a 2d platformer would buy it, your second one i am not even sure what it was but it was alot more niche. The more niche you go the less people will buy it. You sell something that everyone can use like say a GUI then everyone will buy it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2014