{"id":5909,"date":"2020-09-14T13:17:20","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T12:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=5909"},"modified":"2020-09-14T13:17:22","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T12:17:22","slug":"the-super-helpful-2020-indie-games-company-costs-breakdown-smorgasbord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2020\/09\/14\/the-super-helpful-2020-indie-games-company-costs-breakdown-smorgasbord\/","title":{"rendered":"The super-helpful 2020 indie games company costs breakdown smorgasbord"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a continuing war with the patronizing wordpress ‘headline clickbait analyzer, I tried using smorgasbord to rate as an uncommon word…but no joy. Enjoy this non-clikbait post I guess…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much does it cost to run a one-man indie game studio in the UK? What are all those costs that you don’t think about? I have no idea! but I can tell you what it costs to run positech games<\/a>, if that’s interesting? Lets assume so:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEB HOSTING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a dedicated server with liquidweb. Its possibly overkill, but it runs this blog, a lot of back-end stats reporting stuff and the challenges system for gratuitous space battles, the web pages for a handful of different domains and about a dozen games. Its also handy as a ftp-drop for sending stuff to people without worrying about dropbox accounts\/limits\/costs etc. The cost of this is $219 \/ month<\/strong>. A dedicated server is l33t because I can reboot it at will, install any version of php or whatever I want, and I’m not at the mercy of sharing a physical box with someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACCOUNTANT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a proper Limited Company, and its hellish without an accountant if you deal with VAT and multiple currencies, and multiple banks accounts and business investments etc…so I have an accountant in the UK that charges me roughly $135 \/ month<\/strong>. They are more like bookkeepers than accountants, as I handle my own VAT and don’t do any clever tax avoidance\/offshore nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MAILING LIST<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use ymlp to maintain a small mailing list of about 10,000 people. I send one email a month and this costs me about $30\/month<\/strong>. This means I don’t have to worry about my domain being seen as spam, and they can handle opt-in and unsubscribe handling etc. Not 100% sure its good value for money, always hovering on cancelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COMPANIES HOUSE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To have a limited-liability company in the UK you have to pay an annual registration fee. Worked out on a monthly basis its just $1.40\/month<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

APPLE DEVELOPER FEES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To sell games on apples store, and some other stuff, you need to pay them money (WTF?) looks like in the last 12 months I’ve paid them roughly $7\/month <\/strong>for this honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANTI-VIRUS SUBSCRIPTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do not risk being without it. I use malwarebytes paid version, works out at $3.25\/month<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BACKUP SOFTWARE SUBSCRIPTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, don’t risk it. I use carbonite, and it works out at $6\/month<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BANK SOFTWARE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use quickfile, to do automated tax-payments and access bank accounts remotely. It costs me about $5\/month<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

INTERNET ACCESS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have fiber-to-the-premises (140 mbps down, 30 up) and a landline phone (I know old people!) and monthly this costs me a whopping $80\/month.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything else I can think of is one-off payments for equipment, like a new PC or whatever, and project-specific stuff like PR or marketing\/advertising budgets, or obviously what it costs me to hire people to do art\/music\/code and so on. But these are the current ‘fixed costs’ of positech. A summary:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Web Hosting<\/td> $  219.00<\/td>45.00%<\/td><\/tr>
Accountant<\/td> $  135.00<\/td>27.74%<\/td><\/tr>
Mailing List<\/td> $    30.00<\/td>6.16%<\/td><\/tr>
Companies House<\/td> $       1.40<\/td>0.29%<\/td><\/tr>
Apple<\/td> $       7.00<\/td>1.44%<\/td><\/tr>
Antivirus<\/td> $       3.25<\/td>0.67%<\/td><\/tr>
Backup<\/td> $       6.00<\/td>1.23%<\/td><\/tr>
Banking<\/td> $       5.00<\/td>1.03%<\/td><\/tr>
Internet<\/td> $    80.00<\/td>16.44%<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td> $  486.65<\/td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now I actually write it all out, it seems like quite a lot. Almost $500 to just exist, without eating or paying any other bills, or hiring anyone to do anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a continuing war with the patronizing wordpress ‘headline clickbait analyzer, I tried using smorgasbord to rate as an uncommon word…but no joy. Enjoy this non-clikbait post I guess… How much does it cost to run a one-man indie game studio in the UK? What are all those costs that you don’t think about? I<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… The super-helpful 2020 indie games company costs breakdown smorgasbord<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5910,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5909\/revisions\/5910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}