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Unity Asset Store Publisher: How to Create and Sell Unity Assets?

Here you can find a Tutorial for Unity Asset Store Publisher about Asset Publishing in the Unity Asset Store, but rather on how to Create and Sell Unity Assets as effectively as possible.
Additional Files to this Tutorial can be downloaded on Unity Asset Store.

Unity Asset Store — Download Button

Hello, guys! I’m Andrey Sirota:
founder of Makaka Games, and a full-time Publisher in the Unity Asset Store.

This tutorial is about 7 years of experience, mistakes and success, nuances of business and helping people in solving their tasks. It’s a product that I’m really proud of.

I have studied all the materials that I could find about Unity Asset Store on the Web in English and Russian (really, guys, every blue link and my personal interviews with other Asset Store Publishers), but this is not enough to understand the overall picture.

That’s why, I decided to write a Tutorial, which answers all the critical questions. Subscribe on YouTube, and welcome to the Publisher Community.

For Unity Publishers. By Unity Publisher.

Here I’ve systemized all accumulated knowledge and experience concerning the business in the Unity Asset Store.

Ratings and reviews on the Unity Asset Store — Sell Unity Assets

Contents

What People Love in Digital Assets

I spent a lot of time and money on finding out what business is. Business is to benefit people. To understand how to benefit people, you need to find out what people love.

So, people really love numbers.

Here they are:

Got a thought?

Whether you’re a programmer, game designer, texture artist or 3D modeler, the Unity Asset Store is a great place to share and sell your creations with the growing Unity developer community!

What if I show you how this can be applied to your products (i.e. Unity Assets)?

What if I tell you what exactly and how to Sell Unity Assets to earn money, while others remain outsiders?

Unity Asset Value

To sell Unity Assets on Asset Store, you have to give people more value than the product itself. The great value is in numbers, modules, integrations with other popular assets, bonuses, optimizations and so on.

Pay attention to the value of your product:

Got a thought? Then welcome to business, my friend.

Review for Publisher Book — Unity Asset Store

Why do you need to become a Unity Publisher?

Free to make decisions. Freely decide what to do and what not for the result. You will have next Advantages:

  • Making Games/Apps,
  • GEO-Independence,
  • Own Business,
  • Happiness,
  • One of the highest revenue share in the Online Market: 70%.

What to Sell?

There are several ways of your development in the store.

Way 1: Unique Asset

You can come up with some unique technology that everyone needs, develop it over the years, and invest the soul in it. In a word, you will focus on the development of a single product.

Fundamental Product

If it is something fundamental that can become a part of the engine, then either Unity Technologies will buy your product if it is fantastic (TextMesh Pro), or Unity Technologies will quietly develop a similar tool, and it can kill your sales in the future.

Shader Forge vs Shader Graph

A little later, after Shader Graph was issued by Unity Technologies, the author of Shader Forge made the asset free for everyone ($85 earlier) and announced the termination of further development.

Shader Forge was very popular, and many companies integrated it into their pipelines. Now in the future they will have to abandon it, as there will not be support from the authors for new Unity versions.

The author of Shader Forge managed to make good money, but at one point the sales stopped.

Not Fundamental, but one of a kind.

If your product does not pretend to be a part of the engine, but no game in a particular genre can do without it, then luck is on your side.

Corgi Engine vs 2D Game Kit

Corgi Engine is the best system for 2D platformer creating, which exceeds many times in the functional 2D Game Kit by Unity Technologies.

Here is an entirely different situation than with Shader Forge. Firstly, this is not part of the engine, but something applied, like a game template. So, why Unity Technologies develop 2D Game Kit?

Simply because they should extremely provide its users with a free and modern template for 2D games (for educational purposes, for newbies, for people without money). Professionals will prefer Corgi Engine.

Way 2: Regular Assets

If you are a 3D artist, then you can make unique copies of popular models endlessly. 

For example, animals, props, buildings, etc. Even if the store has many similar models, you can always make them in a different style, and it will definitely find his buyer. 

Moreover, you can adapt them for Unreal Engine, Godot Engine, and work on several fronts.

That is, you can always offer your own interpretation of banal things. Here you can win by the number of products in the store. You will not get rich at one time, but you will always have a job and a profit.

Way 3: Mix

The best approach is to alternate the development of unique assets and regular assets. Thus, you are insured from all sides, and also you get a chance to extract super profits.

Product

How to create any product?

Unity Asset, game, music, video, clothes, food, house – it does not matter what a thing. The whole point in addressing to the primary source (or its modification, most likely) and rethinking it in a new way.

No matter how many competitors in your niche (3D models, icons, scripting, etc.) because you can always do better and give more value. Let’s see how this is done by creating a new scenario through modification of the old one by James Cameron (filmmaker):

How to create any product

A Classic Mistake in creating a New Product: MVP

Today is the 15th of May 2018. For almost 2 months (in total) I’ve been working on a new Unity Asset called Throw Object (docs), which will be integrated into several of my other assets.

This is not a new feature for existing assets, but a steep improvement and greater modularity. As a separate product – it’s something new with many customizations.

And only today I realized that with respect to the new product, I made a classic mistake of startupers. This was told by some mentors from Business Incubator of the Higher School of Economics and “Valley” course by Like Center in Moscow.

The product itself was done one month ago. At that time, it was necessary to submit it to the Asset Store.

But suddenly, I came up with one new feature, which implementation showed me an architectural error of the whole project: any next innovation could not work properly.

I emphasize that without this new feature, the project code was stable and worked perfectly. This was the most suitable time for submitting to the moderation, and I missed it.

It’s certainly great that now the product will be better & more qualitative, but it’s a bad business approach that kills sales to zero, and development costs become more serious.

If you have MVP (Minimum Viable Product), then you need to:

  1. Immediately test the market.
  2. Analyze the results.
  3. Correct the product (presentation, features, price).
  4. See if there is a reason for further development.

Naming, icons & presentation

Throw Object (docs) asset is designed for 3D space (although it can easily be adapted for 2D), and its first-view presentation searching for asset store is not appeared correctly (as if only for 2D).

With such a small canvas size of the Icon Cover, I was unable to place images in 3D clearly enough, so I just had to make icons in 2D. But I still have to show that the product is designed for 3D.

So, I made new icons and added a 3D prefix to the product name: “Throw Object 3D”.

Throw Control — Unity Asset — Icon Changing

The icon is the first thing that customers see when searching in a store. The next things are name and rating. So, it is critical that your icon and name convey the full essence of your product. You also need to learn about naming and SEO further in the tutorial. Logos and branding are so important.

In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English but are great in remembering signs.

Karl Lagerfeld – German creative director, artist, and photographer.

Modularity

I use a modular design for some of my assets.

It’s a design approach that subdivides any product into smaller parts – mini products (modules), that can be independently published in the store and then used in different projects.

For example: 

So, there is a reduction in cost for some customers. Not all people need to buy a large and expensive package for $30. Some people may need a small part of it at a lower cost. Everyone has different needs and different financial opportunities, so you can satisfy every customer in a simple way.

This is a win-win situation for all. The more you sell, the more happy people in the world.

Thus, a multilevel nesting is obtained. So, on each asset store and documentation page, I include the link to the Map of Assets to help my clients decide which exactly the product they need.

Map of Assets

So, if your products have modularity, and they are connected with each other, then you need to clearly present these connections in addition to mentioning them in the asset description. I use a mind map to solve this task with MindNode. You can export a PDF file with active links and upload it to your website.

Therefore, you can use my full-screen interactive map to see how are my Unity Assets related to each other. The sharp (▷) tip shows that the ancestor contains this product.

DLC & 3rd Party Assets

You could observe a similar modular mechanics with DLC in Steam or Origin (The Sims 4 & thematic add-ons). But in this case, the dependencies are slightly different. You can’t run the add-on without the base product (The Sims 4 Seasons requires The Sims 4 game (sold separately) and all game updates to play).

Such a method can also be used in the Unity Asset Store, and not necessarily with your own product. Pay attention to asset called Modular Traffic for PlayMaker. It requires PlayMaker plugin to work. For such situations, Asset Store product pages have a separate native section called “Package dependencies”:

Unity Asset Store product pages have a separate native section called “Package dependencies” for Modular Assets.

Let’s consider the situation when you provide the Main Asset and optional Add-ons for it. The Main Asset can have references to the Add-on to set up the environment, and other things.

When Importing the Add-on, you can add Custom Scripting Symbol in settings via code:
Project Settings > Player > Others > Scripts Compilation > Scripting Define Symbols.

In the code of Main Asset, you can check this symbol using the known way with Compiler Directive when you target your code for a Specific Platform.

Cooperation

You can cooperate with 3rd-party Publishers and ask them to add a link to your asset or add your video demo on their asset’s pages. The same actions are necessary on your part. Just ask, people are usually very responsive, and it is beneficial to both parties.

So, I recorded a new promo video for my AR Camera Lite with Cute Zoo Unity Asset by SURIYUN. Then I just wrote to the asset author and asked to add my promo video to the “Cute Zoo” page. Success! Everyone is happy. If you want me to use your assets in my promo videos, then just contact me.

Bundles

Currently, the Unity Asset Store does not have a tool that allows you to automatically combine groups of packages at a target price, but you can use the Upgrade Mechanics of the store to avoid uploading separate packages to the bundle package with the next message in the description: “After purchasing this bundle, visit each package listed below, add to your assets, and you will be able to get them for free”.

So, you must set upgrade from your bundle to each separate package with the next characteristics:

  • Price = Free;
  • Type = Lite Edition.

This way, users buy the bundle at the target price and download each package from its page.

Packages in bundles do not have to be nested in each other. You can freely combine your packages as you want into the bundles.

Unity Asset Store — Download Button

Check my example of bundle: AR Foundation Bundle — Complete Collection of AR Projects & AR Tools. Templates are ready to Build for iOS/Android and Upload to App Store/Google Play. Create your own AR App or Develop an AR Game in 1 day!

Example with 3D Models: Zoo

If you have a large 3D package with a whole zoo of animals, then it makes sense to sell each animal or group of animals separately. Check Cute Zoo Mega Bundle.

On the other hand, the whole zoo should cost less than all animals in total. Thus, if the customer buys a whole zoo, he will save some money. The publisher, in this case, is still in the win because a one-time payment for the zoo from the customer is more than payment for one animal or a small group of animals.

Even if, you sell a whole zoo well, and people do not buy some animals separately, it does not mean that they need to be removed from the store because they are good marketing tools to attract people to the more expensive of your packages.

Unity Versions

You should regularly publish updates for new versions of Unity.
And it is necessary for two reasons: errors and loyalty.

The Unity engine is constantly being improved:

  • Something changes its architecture (TextMesh PRO & Unity 2018.2). 
  • Something becomes obsolete and is replaced by a new code (warnings, which indicate you to rename some fields or methods because with some next Unity version, they will be removed, and your code get the errors).
  • Something is removed forever (Everyplay). 

Minor changes appear with new patches (2021.1.2), and large ones with major versions (2022.2).

To keep your asset clean (i.e. no warnings) and error-free, you need to check it for compatibility with new versions of Unity. Even if the asset does not contain errors or warnings, you still need to upload updates to the store. It shows to your potential customers that you are involved in a project and support it despite the fact that new features are not being implemented. It causes trust in the product and increases loyalty, and as a result – increasing of sales.

Checklist: How To Create Unity Asset?

Publishing Unity Assets in a store is always a process with the same actions. These actions can be optimized and standardized to avoid mistakes and save the developer time.

Over the years of publishing in the Unity Asset Store, I have developed my own PDF-Checklist for Creating a New Unity Asset in any Category.

Andrey Sirota, Founder of Makaka Games
Checklist: How To Create Unity Asset? Tutorial

Using the Asset Checklist (PDF-file with clickable links), you can easily create high-quality products. It can also be used when you need to create a Product Update.

Company & Marketing

Openness: First Principle in Company Development

One of the principles by which I develop Makaka Games is openness.

Talk about your current work, plans, share screenshots and videos, communicate with your subscribers. All this gives you a chance to be noticed, and increases loyalty to you and your products.

All Marketing consists in telling about every step: about victories and failures. It increases trust, activity, and so on. Even text posts, even without any images, but at least what do you have the strength for.

An Image Post is better, a Video Post is even better, and adding Shorts from this Video is even better.

Here is my review post on Unity Discussions that has caused another positive feedback about 3rd-party Maintainer asset. Publisher can respond to each message, make a screenshot and tell about it on other Social Networks.

Review Post on Unity Discussions about Maintainer

Example with China

There is Great Firewall of China and users from China can’t open YouTube to watch the promo video of my assets. One Chinese user asked me on my blog to share an asset video with him. 

So, it took 5 min for me, but I provided the personal video link and the user became my client. Profit.

Service for China

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is designed to help people find what they really want to find.

In 2017, I got acquainted with SEO in more detail, making sure that this area of knowledge provides an opportunity for prompt and accurate satisfaction of people’s search queries.

Today, search engines exclude virtually any fraud.

SEO works everywhere on the Internet: on any website, forum, social network. The SEO rules differ on different websites. So, searching in the Unity Asset store differs from searching in YouTube or Google.  

The more information about your product in any search engine and the more qualitative your information, the easier it is for people to find your product & make them happy.

Any media resources will help you with this:

That is, the more you are open to the world, the better it affects for SEO. The more information you provide about the product, the higher the conversion of visitors into buyers.

SEO is a whole science, so I recommend that you study specialized resources on this topic.

Brand Name

In 1992, little Andrey said his first long word: “Macaque” (Makaka in Russian). So, “Makaka” studio history began. January 6, 2015: in the 9-minute stream of super-revolutionary neural connections came up with a name for my own game development studio.

I needed this action to be able to publish my first Unity Game called “Kaspi Kitten” in the digital mobile app stores. “Kaspi Kitten” is the game about saving kittens from abduction by aliens.

Here I remembered my first long word. The same day, the domain was registered: https://makaka.org.

I really wanted the .com domain zone, but it was already unavailable by that time. Today, the original goal of the whole .org zone has lost its relevance, and here you can register websites of any genre, not just non-profit organizations.

The “Makaka” name was completely uninformative and does not reflect the essence of the company’s activities. Good examples of the initial choice of the name can be spied in successful cases:

  • Apple Computer (abandoned the “Computer” prefix in 2007),
  • Unity Technologies (shortened the main product name from Unity3D to Unity).

They changed names to less informative because they can already afford it, having behind their shoulders successful brands that are known all over the world. It’s not my case and not the case for most publishers in the Asset Store.

After studying different names of game companies, taking SEO into account, I decided to change the name from Makaka to Makaka Games. That is, I did everything on the contrary, “returning to the roots”.

If you do a rebranding, then do it in all aspects. The studio logo in 3 instants has changed from children’s role to a more neutral, harmonious and mysterious look. Most of all, I like how it looks in the favicon format on the browser tab.

Makaka Games | Logo Evolution | Augmented Reality
Makaka Games | Logo Evolution
makaka.org Header Example
Watermark of makaka.org

SEO counts behavioral factors. This is how the user behaves on your web resource, on what buttons he presses, how much time he spends on a particular page, and so on. 

If your Header Logo (and also every element) on the website looks bad, it means the user will have less confidence in your website, and he will leave the page early, which will badly affect the SEO performance.

Website, Documentation & Articles

You really need to have a website with a unique second-level domain to solve 3 issues at once:

  • Follow the Submission Guidelines of Unity Asset Store: points 4.1.b and 2.3;
  • Provide Public Docs to be more open to Users and Search Engines (it’s good for SEO);
  • Create PDF Docs conveniently (it’s needed to put them in the package before uploading to store).
Shortened Link to the Asset

You can create a Shortened URL for your Unity Asset in the Asset Store and use it Everywhere. Example: https://makaka.org/o/ar .

If the final link was changed, you can easily make a redirect with the next tools:

Additional Information in the Docs

If the Docs contain Affiliate Links or Ads, warn about it at the very beginning.

Take a note of the emails (or any support platform which you use) that people write to you, and include in the documentation the most valuable and repetitive information.

Any related & useful information on the subject of your product creates good background for SEO of your website, and also (and most valuable) for people. You can create separate pages/articles/tutorials for this goal when the information is large enough.

The more detailed and richer your documentation, the less work you will have to process emails during support.

If you are a 3D-Artist, then you can tell about the relevant workflow: 

  • How exactly do you model? 
  • And what tools are used? 
  • How much time do you spend on your actions? 
  • What features do you use in your work?

The coolest thing you can do is act on the following scenario:

  1. Make a video lesson.
  2. Upload it to YouTube.
  3. Create an article with this video on your website.
  4. Duplicate the text (which you spoke in the video) in the article in text variant.
  5. Also, paste this text for YouTube video in subtitles & description.

So, you will make a material for the several search platforms with good SEO.

PDF
Preparing your page before Creating the PDF

You can create a duplicated Private Post and remove unwanted elements here. Unwanted elements outside the post text can be removed by Chrome Developer Tools by deleting target HTML tags.

Before Creating the PDF, check that your page is shown completely:

  • Load Images manually by scrolling down if Lazy Loading is on.
  • Expand folded sections.

Unwanted Elements:

Creating the PDF

You can easily create a PDF-file of your documentation with the next options:

  • Google Chrome > File > Print > Save as PDF;
  • Print Friendly & PDF: web-service and extension for Google Chrome.

P.S. You can also fix links in generated PDF with PDF Expert.

Asset Store

Free Unity Assets

You know, most people want to download all for free. That is, some people by default look for assets in the store only with a free price tag. Therefore, your product can be unreachable for these people.

So, bring the Power of SEO and make free asset for Promo Purposes.

Or you can make a free version of your paid product, but with limited functionality. In both cases, people who originally did not intend to buy anything can become your customers.

For example, people can test a free version of your paid product, make sure of the quality of your product and understand that they need to buy the full version. Or your completely free product will lead people to your other paid products.

So, once I was looking for clouds and I found the free asset called Farland Skies – Cloudy Crown. I tested it, and I loved it. In the end, I bought a pro version with more functionality because the asset has excellent quality and creates days and nights in the game: Farland Skies – Cloudy Crown Pro.

I also have 2 free packages with mobile icons (because most of my assets are designed for mobiles):

They collect more than 100 downloads per month.

Gift Program

You can reward your customers for certain actions. So, I have a Gift Program.

Upgrades

If the client bought some Unity Asset, then he can easily get a discount for the next product using Upgrade Mechanics.

You can see the resulting price with the discount on the Asset Page when you are eligible. People love upgrades, and sometimes people use such opportunity, as I can see from the sales statistics.

Unity Asset Store - Upgrade Mechanics
Lite Edition

You can create upgrades between different assets using the “Lite Edition” option wherever it’s possible. The only limitation here is the price. You can upgrade from a lower price asset to a higher price asset. Use this way also to Create Bundles.

Major Edition

Major Edition is used when you release a new paid version of your asset: also known as Paid Upgrade. With this mechanics, your reviews can be saved on the asset store. Use this way also to prevent piracy.

Lists

The Unity Asset Store supports the lists of assets. In addition to the map of assets, you can make thematic lists to differentiate assets by different parameters to orient the customer: animals, houses, 3D, 2D, vector tools, VR, Complete Projects, Gallery, Editor Tools, AR Projects, and so on.

List of Unity Assets

Lists can be seen on the publisher’s page. So, it’s easier for people to find suitable assets.

Search and Prices

  1. Sales are important in Unity Asset Store, but let’s consider the next points without them.
  2. The Search here is very specific. It’s not a Google. It works very clumsily, without AI, there are direct instructions. The relevance of the search does not depend on the quality of the asset, unfortunately.
  3. Asset will rise in the search results when changing the price in any direction.
  4. Assets with higher prices are shown higher in the search.
  5. Assets with a price of $20 and above can participate in the sales by invitation from the Asset Store Team.
  6. You are breaking the search engine when adding more words in the Title. Fewer keywords = higher position and relevance in the search.

Social Media and Videos

Unity Answers

You can help people find answers to the questions they ask, advertising your product or your website (e.g. “2018.2 TextMesh Pro. Plugin Errors”). You must answer briefly and clearly, and give more information on the link to the post of your website. This will lead Unity Developers to your website.

Unity Answers — Example of Helpful Answer — Best Answer

Find thematic questions (Google Search) related to your asset and answer to help people solve the task with the help of your asset. Don’t spam in all questions which are very little about the topic and don’t post same messages. You will be blocked. Very strictly select questions that you can clearly answer. Answer individually, considering the specifics of each question.

Unity Forums

All Asset Store Publishers are invited to join the publisher section of Unity forums. This subforum is a platform for publishers to grow as a community by holding discussions and sharing ideas. 

You must promote your assets in the “Assets and Asset Store” forum section. Topics on the forum are quickly appeared in Google Search, while adding any page of your website to the Google Search can take some months.

Unity Forums — Example of Asset Thread — Asset Support

Moreover, some developers love to communicate with the publishers on this forum, so:

  • Save the topic links in your notes (because you can lose them) — Example;
  • Post Information of Product Updates as new messages in your topics;
  • Subscribe to Email Notifications to answers the customers timely.

Videos

You need to make a video for every update you make, every single piece of your news because the video is a trend. When you make a video, you have to upload it to every social network, and not only on YouTube. Not the only link, you need to make native uploading for each social network to increase views because native videos are played automatically.

Facebook

And when you share your native video on Facebook in thematic groups (like Unity AR Foundation), you need to only paste the video link in your post and the description will be loaded automatically. Profit.

Video Tutorials for Unity Asset Publisher

Here you can find some video tips to help you with Asset Creating.

How to test Unity Asset before Publishing with Unity Publisher Portal?

When you publish your Unity Asset, you need to make sure that your product is installed correctly at the first download by your client. It’s Especially relevant for Complete Projects or Plugins in which Project Settings play a crucial role. There are 2 ways to do it:

  1. You can download the Unity Package from the Package Draft on Publisher Portal:
    All Packages > Draft > Target Package > Package Upload > Uploading Menu (3 Points) > Download.
  2. At the stage of Uploading the Package to the Unity Asset Store from Unity software, the Unity Package is temporarily created on your computer. Watch the Tutorial below to get this temporary package.

How to identify files within Unity with GUID and why it can be useful?

Unity GUID is a file identifier within Unity. Video Tutorial shows why it can be useful when dealing with Unity Asset Collection, where Assets are connected to each other.

Here you can find the full article about Unity GUID.


Is it Expensive to be a Unity Mobile Game Developer?

Since I provide cross-platform AR Unity Assets, the video below shows my building testing environment to cover iOS and Android devices. For more info, check the article about Mobile Testing with Unity.


Licensing in Unity Asset Store

The biggest risk when you sell Unity Assets online (icons, plugins, 3D models, templates, etc.) is licensing and piracy. Both of these boring questions can make any IT Business unprofitable.

So, here I will guide you in this topic and just, for example, compare licenses for Unity Assets and for WordPress Plugins/Themes.

IT Business — Unity vs WordPress — Software Business

License: Unity Asset Store EULA

Unity Asset Store EULA describes under which conditions you can publish Unity Assets.

Point 3.5 prohibits piracy:
Unless you have been specifically permitted to do so in a separate agreement with Unity and except as permitted under the Unity-EULA, you agree that you will not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade or resell any Asset that you have licensed from the Unity Asset Store for any purpose.

At the same time, I repeatedly appealed to Unity Support in order for them to take measures on illegal asset distribution on pirate websites. No support with it.

Unity says that YOU must take care of legal using of your digital assets by yourself.

Unity about Pirates — Best IT Business and Software Business

License: WordPress GPL

GPL (GNU General Public License) describes under which conditions you can publish WordPress Plugins/Themes.

In short, any paid solution for WordPress inherits the GPL license, which means it can be freely or at another price (low or high) distributed by third parties. You can also get paid project, modify it, and share it as you wish, but also under GPL license.

In other words, we have legal piracy for WordPress stuff. Everything is legal. Such model of Software Business is defective for plugin authors, and this entails monetary losses.

The type of licensing for WordPress is not going to change.

GPL Clubs

GPL Clubs are communities for resale or free distribution of paid WordPress Plugins and Themes without support and, more often, without automatic updates.

You can read about how to protect your intellectual property in next article: “The Ultimate Guide to Legally Protect Your GPL WordPress Plugin Business Against Trolls”.

Conclusion

Cool idea of product is at the head of everything.
Both user communities are huge and, accordingly, the market is large, but:

  1. Unity has more correct license for Asset Store Publishers without legal piracy.
  2. WordPress with GPL and legal piracy also has the right to exist because not all people know about GPL Clubs yet (but times are changing). There are a lot of successful cases here like Yoast SEO plugin or Avada theme.

There are always clients who need premium support and time saving.

Such people are definitely looking to save money, but they are not looking to steal. For example, you can make cheaper annual support than half a year support like on Envato Market.

Anyway, you need to analyze which your idea is better in different fields: Unity Assets vs WordPress Plugins and Themes. Make right decision and Good Luck with Best IT Business Online!

All the rules about using the Unity Logo, you can read here.
Some explanations and my understanding will be provided below.

The Main Goal of the Guidelines for using Unity Trademarks is next:

Unity Technologies company does not want you to associate with it when it is not necessary or can harm its reputation.

I made some buttons with the Unity Logo for different purposes, using the well-known style of Google Play/App Store button. You can use them with the mention of this website: https://makaka.org .

It’s safest to use the logo called “Made With Unity”. I use it for ad banners for Assets on the Home Page:

Made With Unity Logo — Button

For tutorials or blog posts, you can use the “Unity” logo:

Unity Logo Tutorial — Button

My website uses Jannah Theme for WordPress which uses Font Awesome library to get Social Icons in the correct places: Header, Footer, Sidebar, Mobile Menu. I also use the Unity software icon here.

So, this “social” Unity button follows to my publisher page, and not for home page of Unity Asset Store, so I don’t pretend that I am an official person of the Unity Asset Store team and so on, I am just a publisher — 3rd party person. I believe this is not prohibited, and moreover, Font Awesome provides me the icons to use them such way. So with this logic in mind, I also use a long “Unity Asset Store” button in the Footer and “Download on the Asset Store” button for online documentation of my Unity Assets:

Unity Asset Store — Button
Unity Asset Store — Download Button

You can’t use any Unity logo on Asset Store pages or in the Docs included in the asset folder.

Unity Publisher Sales Statistics

Here you can find analyzed Sales Statistics of Unity Assets by Makaka Games and open some interesting behavior patterns. The presented Unity Asset Store Statistics does not show the number of Asset Store Sales since such information would be useless. Much more interesting and useful is how a certain action or event affected sales stats & results.

Graphs Rules:

  • The height of the graphs for each year are independent of each other.
  • Each line represents one product.
  • Line height shows the relative number of publisher sales of a single product.

Publisher Start: New Unity Asset

If you have a new Unity Asset, the market will respond to it.

Unity Asset Store - Publisher - Sales Stats - 2015

Vouchers, Featuring, 24-Hour Sale

If you give vouchers to your friends and friends redeem these vouchers, then the number of product downloads increases and your assets ranked higher in Asset Store categories, main page and search results. It attracts additional attention to your Unity Assets and as a result increases publisher sales.

Featuring and 24-Hour Sale on the Main Page causes more trust from users, and they more willingly buy your assets.

It is not necessary that your product be very popular having amazing revenue to get into promotion from the Unity. It is enough to create something unique and cool, and also publish it to Unity Forum (Assets & Asset Store) — this will increase the chances of being noticed by Asset Store Team.

Unity Asset Store - Publisher - Sales Stats - 2016 — Sales figures

2-Week Sale and Global World Events

Unity Asset Store sometimes conducts seasonal or monthly sale events. You must participate in each of them with maximum discounts because you will get more sales. When I set the maximum discounts, I get the maximum profit.

Global World Events or News in your niche like releases of ARCore or ARKit affect the market and Unity Asset Store Sales Figures of your Unity Assets. People need time to learn new technology and draw conclusions later.

Any seasonal sale like Mega Bundle Sale, Birthday Bonanza, Cyber Week Mega Sale increases publisher sales.

Unity Asset Store - Publisher - Sales Stats - 2017

Personal Sales and New Assets

You can make Personal Sale for each Unity Asset:

  • Personal sales can not last longer than a two-week period.
  • Sale periods should be separated by at least 2 months.
  • Details of your sale must be provided in your description text. The sale period and regular price must be mentioned.

Check Unity Submission Guidelines, point 4.2 for more info.

Personal sales work well If you fulfill all the conditions of the store as well as personal promo campaign on social networks.

If you are constantly releasing new assets, it also has a positive effect on your Asset Store Sales Data. Especially if these are products of the same niche and are interconnected.

Unity Asset Store - Publisher - Sales Stats - 2018 — Sales Statistics and Analytics

New Release Discount

When you Publish an Asset on the Unity Asset Store, you have the Only Chance to set an Initial Discount that called “Launch Discount”.

New Release Discounts allow all new asset packages to be discounted automatically at launch and can be applied to any new asset priced $15 or more:

  • Launch Discounts can be: 10%, 30% or 50%.
  • Sales Period can be: 1 or 2 weeks.

Next, the price of your discounted asset cannot be decreased for six weeks following the sale’s end.

When you Publish an Asset on Unity Asset Store, you have the Only Chance to set an Initial Discount that called "Launch Discount" or "New Release Discount"

Participating in the New Release Discount will – on average – bring in more revenue for an asset than not participating.

Over time, the benefits will diminish.

Official Global Analytics by Asset Store Team

Where your asset will appear:

Asset will get the next badges:

  • “New Release”
  • “50%”, “30%” or “10%”

So this is a useful marketing technique to improve your business deals.

Tools for Sales Statistics

You can also make your own Unity Asset Store Statistics and Analytics with open-source tool:

How can I include my assets in an Asset Store Sale?

The Asset Store team can send the invite to you for target sale. You must agree.
You can’t influence this directly, unfortunately. But you can support your asset for the best.

To be invited (for the asset) you must have:

  1. 4-5 star rating,
  2. 6-month being in the store without the price changing:
    • The last 2 months before the sale,
    • 2 months after the sale.

Sales count doesn’t affect for the invitation, but improves the chance of it.

Unity Asset Store Tools

Free Assets for Demo Purposes

There are several ways to use Free Unity Assets in Your Own Asset on Asset Store.

Free Unity Assets — Demo Assets for Publishers on Unity Asset Store

Assets by Unity

These Assets by Unity are allowed to be incorporated into submitted assets for demonstration purposes. To avoid needless file size, Unity requires that you only include the content that is directly being utilized.

Unity Asset Store — Download Button
Free Assets for Publishers on Unity Asset Store

Assets on GitHub with Unity Package Manager support

Free assets from GitHub with support of Package Manager can be used this way, as I use it in my assets like AR Shooter. So you can’t include them, but can write a manual on how to import them correctly.

Package Dependencies section

The Asset Store provides a “Package Dependencies” section on the Asset Pages. With this section, you can indicate the links for both Free And Paid assets which are used inside your project, but you cannot include them in your asset. So, optionally, you need to write a manual on how to import them as well.

The “connection” between Your Project and such 3rd-Party Files is provided by GUID in .meta files.

Poly Haven Asset Library

Use polyhaven.com with the opportunity to redistribute assets as you want without giving a credit or attribution due to CC0 license.

Poly Haven Unity Assets — Free Assets
Poly Haven Unity Assets — Free Assets

Publisher Window

Unity Publisher Window is a welcome screen where the user can learn all the important information about the product (unity asset or project) and your company by visiting important links.

The Welcome Screen is automatically opened when you import a new Unity Package or when you open a Unity Project for the first time.

Unity Asset Store — Download Button

The asset is ready to design your own welcome screen:

  • window title,
  • header logo,
  • links (titles, descriptions & icons),
  • copyright info.

Links in Window by Default:

Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. Do more than others expect from you.

There is one extremely simple idea: if I do not tell about myself, then no one will tell about me. Publisher Window is an asset for the Unity Editor, which emphasizes the spread and openness of the brand.

It is important to note that, first of all, it was born because I wanted to raise the quality of my products from all sides, and in particular – openness, serving, and decorations.

That is, I want to give customers the opportunity to get support and all information about the product and brand after they have downloaded the asset and closed the Unity Asset Store.

This stage is a bottleneck. There is a certain percentage of customers (3-10%), who faced with the first problems (independent of the product), rush to put a bad review in the store, without reading the documentation and without contacting me for the support that regularly I give.

It is at this stage that I want to increase the percentage of customers’ satisfaction with my products, making them truly happy with Publisher Window.

If you have any issues with the first launch, then just Reach Support with Invoice Number and Get Help.

If you read this tutorial from PDF, first check the latest docs online to get actual information.

The Best Support for Unity Assets

First, read the latest docs online.
If it didn’t help, get the support.

Speed Reaction for Customers — Unity Asset Store — Review— Sell Unity Assets
Review for AR Basketball GO (docs) on Unity Asset Store

How can Unity Publisher make the customers happy, provide the best support for Unity Assets, and maintain speed reaction for customer service?

The question is a kind of challenge for every Asset Store Publisher.
This story is about one customer who bought AR Basketball GO (docs) and won.

Have questions? Email me!

Because of the specifics of the business, my clients contact me for the most part in case of any problems. If there are no problems, then Unity Publisher doesn’t know practically anything about the buyer, except for impersonal data from Google Analytics and Asset Store Analytics.

After receiving an email request, I provide a response within 5 business days. Of course, 5 working days is not excellent for a company. But this is an adequate time for solving almost any technical issue, without prejudice to the development of new products. I don’t have employees, and I provide support personally (therefore 5 business days, not 15 minutes).

I can help you only if you email me and send some test data, which is indicated on the support page.
If you did not find your case in the documentation, then this is the only way. So stay in touch: Let’s solve your issues and make the world a little happier. People want to be happy by solving their problems with your Unity Asset. Make them happy much earlier with the help of your support.

I can also respond earlier than the problem will be solved, indicating to the client that I’m already dealing with the issue, and already know which direction to look for. It causes trust and also endears the client for further request to leave feedback in the Asset Store.

Awesome Feedback to Best Customer Service

If I respond in a timely manner, most customers remain neutral to the request for leaving a review in the Unity Asset Store. But if I react earlier (e.g., per day) and send a ready-made archive, the client will be more than satisfied and leave big feedback in the store.

So for Eugenio Gatto from the LA Group, I’ve developed the Vuforia version of my app template for Unity with the augmented reality called AR Basketball GO (docs).

Perfect for my needs, and GREAT assistance! ★★★★★

The product is simple but functional, perfect for my needs. Andrey was so fast helping me to make it work with Vuforia, he even made some modifications himself specifically to my needs.

Thank you, Andrey! Great job and great customer service.

Speed reaction doesn’t work

Of course, there are times when the declared speed reaction does not work.
Unfortunately, there is a majority of such cases.

Why? Some customers do not want help. Really!
They write their problems right on the Unity Asset Store and then don’t respond to me.

Support is working for you, just email me and the product will work.

What’s the matter?

There are plenty of factors, why purchased Unity Asset will fail at the first start, especially when it comes to mobile development with third-party frameworks:

  • Unity Version;
  • Version of third-party framework (e.g., Native Gallery);
  • iOS/Android version;
  • Failure to follow the installation procedure described in the tutorial in PDF or on the Website;
  • Other reasons.

All of this — software from different manufacturers, which can contain many bugs.
I write down all known cases in the documentation, but I can’t predict everything.

Technical Moments of the Support

The main communication channel between you and your customers is Email via Support Form on your website. I rarely receive support requests on YouTube & Facebook. So, set up email notifications from these websites to respond quickly on any media platform.

You need to indicate the Support page of your Website on the publisher’s page in the Asset Store (Profile tab in the Publisher Portal). Also, indicate them at the end of the description for each Unity Asset.

So, I create all the conditions for the client to get support before leaving a comment in the Asset Store.

To implement the Support From on my website, I use the next WordPress plugins:

Autoresponder (Auto-Reply)

You need to set up an autoresponder in the Email. It sends a response immediately to any first email from the customer in a new conversation or a series of mails.

People often forget to send an Invoice Number to confirm their purchase. You can remind them about it in an automated email answer. It saves your time and customer time.

Domain Email & Mailing Lists

If you have a domain like makaka.org, you need to apply Domain Email like info@makaka.org to increase loyalty and create Mailing Lists using Email marketing automation platform like MailChimp.

I use VK WorkMail to implement Domain Mail. It is completely free.
You can also use Gmail for Business, but it is a paid service.

Once you have configured the domain mail, you can use MailChimp with RSS-to-Email option. When publishing a new post on the website, then it’s automatically sent to email subscribers. So, every new post on the website is delivered in a predetermined view to all Email subscribers. I don’t recommend using the same functionality of Jetpack plugin for WordPress because it sends the spam.

How to collect the base of Email-subscribers?

Love and Patience for Every Unity Developer

Here a developer wanted to know which AR Engine is used in AR Basketball GO (docs) & what the difference between AR Camera Lite (docs) & AR Foundation by Unity. I’ve answered as many times as needed, with additional info and clarifications.


Russian Tutorials


Q & A

How do I publish a Unity Package?

To get Access to Unity Publisher Portal, you need to have your own website with examples of Projects Made with Unity. This requirement helps the game industry weed out inexperienced Unity Users. More Information you can find here.

Can you publish a game with Unity Assets?

Yes, You Can Publish a Game as a Complete Product on every App Store you want. You can’t redistribute assets on web stocks like Envato or Unity Asset Store with or without modifications.

Can you make money on the Unity Asset Store?

Yes, You Can. There are both big companies like Synty Studios and indie publishers like Makaka Games. Moreover, if your asset pretends to become a part of the Development Pipeline, then Unity can buy you (example: TextMesh Pro).

How do you sell music on Unity Asset Store?

You can sell Music, Sound FX, Voice, Songs – any audio. But Asset Store platform provides unlimited use of your Audio Content in Complete Products: Games, Videos, Apps, etc… For Example, On Envato Market, you need to buy a separate license for Every Video/Series for YouTube, and Unity Asset Store doesn’t contain this limitation.


Full Info about Using of Unity Asset Store you can find in the official document:
Asset Store Terms of Service and EULA.

Unity Assets

Support for Unity Assets

I am Andrey Sirota, Founder of Makaka Games and full-time Publisher on the Unity Asset Store. First, read the latest docs online. If it didn’t help, get the support.

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2 Comments

  1. Thanks for an amazing article.

    I’m planning on selling assets on the Unity Asset Store and I was wondering if I should create a new account for selling assets. I’ve already got a personal account which I’ve been purchasing assets for many years. Should I publish my assets from that account or should I create a new one just for sales?

    1. Hi, Drew, thx for your feedback.
      I use the same account for the Publisher Portal and for the Unity Asset Store (user-side).

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