As promised last week this is the first in a series of posts which discuss some of the less talked about methods of earning an income online.  Specifically this series will discuss ways of using your existing skills, or acquiring new skills, which can be used to turn a profit.

Today I’m discussing Flash files, but don’t let that put you off.  I’m starting with Flash simply because it is a skill I have – I’ve been developing Flash sites, applications and games for close to 10 years!  In fact, the whole inspiration for this series of posts was the realisation that I had a collection of Flash files sitting on my hard drive doing nothing, which I could potentially be earning money from.  Much of what I discuss today however is just as relevant to other types of media – photos, sound samples, video clips, articles… the list goes on!

Flash and Flashden.net

I’ve been earning an income from Flash development for many years, but usually on a contract basis – a client pays me to develop a site, animation, game or application.  I do the work one, and get paid once, end of story.  What interested me about Flashden however was the ability to generate a residual, or passive, income from Flash.

If you’re unfamiliar with Flash don’t worry, very simply it’s just a platform for developing rich web content.  You know the animated banners you see on sites like Yahoo or Facebook?  Well they tend to be built in Flash.  If you’ve ever played a simple game in your browser the chances are that was built in Flash too!  As I already stated, the medium is not important, but the idea is – do the work one, get paid again and again!

Flashden.net is a site where anyone looking for Flash files and components can search for, find, and buy what they are looking for easily and at a very reasonable price.  Small files cost around $2 and even large, fully featured web applications and site themes are rarely priced over $30 making the site a very attractive place for web designers and developers to acquire shortcuts to developing their next project.  The files sold by Flashden are not created by them however, rather they are developed and uploaded by a community of developers who earn a commission on their sales.

If you’re a Flash developer, or designer, chances are you have many past projects, unfinished sites, snippets of code and animation which were never used which could be of use to other people.  All you need to do is prep the files, upload them with correct descriptions and titles, and watch the money come in month after month.

How much money can you earn through Flashden?

Since Flashden pay by commission, the amount you earn each month depends on the quantity, and quality of files you upload.  By default they pay 25% of the sale price in commission, although you can choose to be an “exclusive developer” meaning that the files you upload must not be sold anywhere else – you can still sell Flash files on other sites, but the ones you sell through Flashden must be unique to them.  Exclusive developers earn a minimum of 40% commission, but this can rise to 70% and the exact amount depends on your total sales – the more you sell, the higher your commission!

Now, all this talk of “sales” and “commissions” make this sound like a sales job, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Flashden take care of the sales, and the marketing, all you need to do is provide the content in the form of useful Flash files and components.  This is a common theme which you’ll see again and again throughout this series – you use your skills to create/develop a ‘product’ (whether that’s a Flash file, photograph, WP theme or anything else) and leave the rest to the experts!

Case study of selling through Flashden

As a real life example of how this works I decided to upload some of my own Flash files and see if I could make a profit.  As a web designer, and Flash developer I’ve collected a number of files over the years which I thought people would find useful.  I decided to upload 5 as a test and see what happened – here are the results…

The upload process is very simple.  Just got to Flashden.net, sign up for a free account, and after completing a short test to prove you understand the terms and conditions (basically to ensure you are not going to violate copyright by uploading work which isn’t your own!) you can start uploading.  Each file needs a little prep work.  You need to supply the actual Flash file, a preview file which allows potential customers to see what they are buying, a small thumbnail image, and some sort of help file.  Flashden are quite flexible about the help file – it can be a simple text file, PDF, even video if you want – just so long as the customer gets some instructions on how to use the file.  You upload all of this via a simple form where you fill out a title, description, choose a category and tick a few boxes.  Once done your files are added into a queue for approval and you are updated via a control panel as to your position in the queue.  Once reviewed you get feedback via email.

I uploaded 5 files as a test and of those, 3 were rejected.  The reasons given were that 2 of the files were too similar to files that Flashden were already selling, and the other was because I didn’t give enough details about some images included in the file to prove that I was not violating copyright.  The other 2 files were approved however and went on sale immediately.

The 2 files were a Sudoku game I created several years ago for my Kwikgames website, and a simplified version of a shooting game.  You can view them at my Flashden portfolio.  I made my first sale within 24 hours, and in the first 2 weeks I had made 12 sales, and a total commission of $35.50

OK, so I admit that won’t be paying the mortgage anytime soon, but it’s a start and is a profit from files that had been sitting on my hard drive earning exactly zero!  This is from a basic commission of 25%, and I can choose to become an exclusive developer at any time which would increase that to 40%.  I’ve decided not to do that yet as I may decide to also sell these elsewhere, but if I did decide to sell these exclusively that would work out to a minimum of $113.60 per month from these 2 files… all for 30 minutes work prepping and uploading the files!  Assuming that this is an average return, I could expect over $1000 per month if I have 20 files approved.  I don’t know many people who would say no to an extra $1000 coming in every month without having to do any additional work!

I will certainly be uploading more files over the coming weeks and will report back here with updated results in the future.  There is a forum on Flashden and from reading some of the posts there, it seems that sales tend to be higher once you have more files on the site.  This is due to building up a ‘feedback’ style reputation, and also by cross linking files (you can add links to you other files in your file descriptions).  With that in mind I’m quite confident that with some effort I can generate a regular 4 figure monthly income from Flashden which would be a very nice added income stream, at a time when most people are worried about the credit crunch.

Of course, Flashden isn’t the only site which works in this way – far from it!  FlashComponents.net is another site which allows you to sell Flash files in a similar way, but more exciting is the fact that many other sites allow you to generate similar passive incomes from many other skills – not just Flash!

Hopefully this first post has given you an insight into earning an extra income from your existing skills.  If you are a web designer and/or Flash developer then head over to Flashden and sign up for a free account.  If you’re not don’t despair, over the coming weeks I’ll be discussing ways of making money from other skills including photography, programming, web design, video, animation, writing and more!  There really are so many opportunities to increase your profits online, recession or no recession, so join me for the ride and let’s see how profitable 2009 can really be!