We made our first $1000 with our games business! But will it be sustainable?

Two friends and I began working on a mobile game as a side project 4 years ago, started a business around it last year, and made our first $1000 this year! Nothing has been straightforward, but we're loving the journey since it stems from our passion in games.

I wanted to share a breakdown of what we're pursuing, and then I'd like to know - do you think this business could be sustainable? Is there something we're missing or should look into?

Here's our company's site: Spiralburst Studio

The Plan

Developing our own mobile games

Hexicon is our original word game for Android and iOS. We initially planned to self-publish, but it has been difficult starting from 0. We're instead working with a publisher who is running paid marketing tests on Hexicon to see if it performs well (low cost per install, good retention). If it does, they would launch Hexicon, pay for ads, and split revenue with us (and we will retain the rights).

In our almost year-long beta, we've made about $110 from 2000 players. The best 4-month period of 200-300 MAU produced about $80 from Android only and minimal optimizations to our monetization strategy. Hexicon is our highest potential earner but has the highest effort level between marketing, analytics, and design iteration. And other original games could be in our future too!

Developing digital versions of board games

Maracaibo is an awesome board game by designer Alexander Pfister, and it's the first board game we're converting into an app (planned release this Winter)! This is truly a passion-turned-business-opportunity, and it all started from a cold email to the designer, wondering if he'd let us digitize one of his games (truly the pivotal moment looking back).

The huge advantages of this type of work is that we get to start (a) with successful gameplay that we simply mimic - no changes needed, and (b) we already have a captive audience, the fans of the board game. Those that do not want to pay $60 for a board game may instead be willing to pay $10, so we can target them as well. In terms of income, we have made $1000 as part of a series of up-front payments for development. After release, we will split the revenue with the publisher. Have almost 700 mailing list signups as of today but hope to get in the thousands before release.

Board game recommendations and blogging

We're also exploring a board game recommendations tool as a future project. For now, we started Good Game Shelf as a blog to test the concept. Could turn into something automated, connected to a big database, but who knows.

I'd also like to build some blog resources on our company site - I would love to give back the little knowledge we've gained about game dev and business. Of course, it would also be great if this blog and Good Game Shelf would funnel some traffic back to our games!

If you've read all of this, thank you so much! Let me know what you think - anything we really should think about or too early to tell? : )