Jon Ross

game developer | digital nomad | indie games | esports | VR | 🇺🇸 🇯🇵 🇹🇭

[ecomchigga @ecomchigga]

sat next to a guy on a flight who smelled like old money

rolex. tailored suit. reading a physical newspaper like it was 1987.

figured he was some finance executive or inherited wealth.

we got talking. I mentioned I sell stuff online.

he put down his newspaper.

"what kind of stuff?"

digital products. courses. ebooks. that kind of thing.

he smiled weird.

"I made $4 million last year selling a PDF about aquariums."

I thought he was messing with me.

he wasn't.

this guy is 61 years old. spent 30 years as an accountant. hated every second of it. retired at 55 with decent savings but nothing crazy.

his hobby was aquariums. had been keeping fish tanks since he was 12.

"my wife told me to start a blog so I'd stop boring her with fish facts."

so he did. wrote about aquarium stuff 3 times a week. water chemistry. tank setups. fish compatibility.

for 2 years nobody read it.

"I had maybe 50 visitors a month. all probably bots."

but he kept going because he had nothing else to do.

year 3, one article ranked on google. then another. then another.

suddenly he was getting 100K visitors a month. all people searching for aquarium help.

"I realized these people would probably pay for a complete guide. so I wrote one."

147 pages. everything about setting up and maintaining an aquarium.

priced it at $47.

first month: $6K
first year: $340K
last year: $4.2 million

from a PDF about fish tanks.

I asked about his marketing strategy.

"I don't have one. google sends people to my blog. blog mentions the guide. people buy it. I go play golf."

no email sequence?

"I have a newsletter. I send fish tips once a week. sometimes I mention the guide at the bottom. that's it."

no upsells?

"I made a second guide about saltwater tanks specifically. $67. people who bought the first one usually buy the second. that's my whole business."

no team?

"my wife helps with customer service. we get maybe 10 emails a day. most are just people showing us their tanks."

this 61 year old retiree built a bigger business than most "entrepreneurs" I know.

no ads. no funnel hacks. no growth strategies. no personal brand.

just mass expertise in one weird niche and patience to let it compound.

before we landed he gave me advice I didn't ask for:

"everyone your age wants to get rich fast. that's why most of you stay broke. I wrote about fish for 2 years before making a dollar. now I make more than I did in 30 years of accounting. speed is overrated. patience pays."

the plane landed. he grabbed his newspaper and walked off.

probably went home to feed his fish.

[Daniel Pink @DanielPink]

Don't fall for the cynical genius illusion.

The belief that cynics are more intelligent than the rest of us. The better predictor of intelligence is openness to new perspectives, new ideas, new beliefs.  

Cynicism isn’t intelligence.

[PlayToEarn @PlayToEarn]

Take on your opponents in these PvP web3 games which are among the highest ranked on PlayToEarn🧙‍♂️🗡️

Here is 5⃣ projects to look into:

🔹@ThePitGame
🔹@solarena_io
🔹@playsomo
🔹@nftwars_x
🔹@TONKombat

📊Placed in order of P2E Score - leave a comment if you have played ✍️

[Naughty Dog @Naughty_Dog]

"No one has left that planet in over 600 years." 🌌

ICYMI, check out the full announcement trailer for our next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. https://t.co/RAM0YbAOU9

[𝔸𝕟𝕒𝕥𝕠𝕝𝕪 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕜𝕚𝕟 @dosnostalgic]

How game music was written in the 80s:

[くろれきし @endwar1338]

Glitch material in UE5. Created as a post-process.
I'm too busy working, but I'm trying to do what I want to do in UE, even if it's just a little.
DL: https://t.co/zAD6XNLS5j

UE5でグリッチ表現ができるポストプロセスをつくってみた。テクスチャは使ってない。
#UE5Study #postprocess

[MEs (ミーズ) @mesworlds]

𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐮𝐦 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲.

an essay on relational computation playgrounds ▪︎▫︎◻︎
https://t.co/dvbJ5BfNgQ

[Ghislain Girardot @GhislainGir]

#UE5 #UnrealEngine5 Spending way too much time on this waterfall tool. I've finally reached a look I'm happy with tho! Turns out Dithered opacity + motion blur was the solution after all. Had too many issues with translucency. I'll explain everythg in the upcoming brkdwn video =)

[Jon Ross @thatJonRoss]

It's honestly my GOTY, this is well-deserved.

[Kris Antoni - Toge Productions @kerissakti]

Ada Indonesianya cuy!

A Space for the Unbound is nominated for the Games For Impact award at TheGameAwards!

Please consider voting for our game 😊

[MEs (ミーズ) @mesworlds]

.@miqhan's Cloud Ovum is now available in MEs 🌫️🫧
a tranquil space for deep thinking, nestled in a diaphanous water sculpture

✦✧ come experience it here ✧✦ https://t.co/QtYcYNbKA2

[Alvaro Jover-Alvarez 🦆 @vorixo]

In this article I explain how to save memory by Lazy Loading your Ability System Component in your Gameplay Actors in #UE5

Network compliant! And pretty much plug and play!
Please, consider sharing! 🦆

Link below!👇

[Tom Looman @t_looman]

Just published a big update to my 'Why You Should be using GameplayTags' article including clearer examples and some C++ code to get you started.

A powerful feature you should absolutely include in your game framework!

https://t.co/oVJa4emkdS #UE5

[MEs (ミーズ) @mesworlds]

🎉exciting news🎉

▫︎✶▫︎ 𝑴𝑬𝒔 𝒎𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒊𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒆𝒓 𝒖𝒑𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 ▫︎✶▫︎
Discover a whole new way of interaction and experience in MEs with our latest multiplayer features.

Learn more 👉 https://t.co/H9OZrJ1O6f

[MEs (ミーズ) @mesworlds]

𝐌𝐄𝐬' 𝐃𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

⤷ 𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑫 - Your new personal knowledge ecosystem, where you can freely place, store and cultivate your ideas, research and inspiration.

⤷ 𝑾𝑶𝑹𝑳𝑫 - A space where you express, play and collaborate with the inner worlds of others and yourself.

[Randall Munroe @xkcd]

Moon https://t.co/zk7DJnaLcc

[Alex Rose @AlexRoseGames]

I want to know the story that led to this new unity prompt

[Jon Ross @thatJonRoss]

@Demilogic ropes

[David Li @thecpppm]

The newest @UnrealEngine integrations are in Visual Studio 2022! This time, we partnered with @CoalitionGears to bring Find All Blueprint References to VS. Learn more about the trove of new UE features in Visual Studio at https://t.co/SmwXK1plIY #cpp #gamedev

[Giuseppe Navarria @B4DC0FFEE]

Lol someone on reddit made a post about a made up feature introduced in WoW so that a news site using AI-driven scraping bots published an article about it and it worked

[Retro Tech Dreams @RetroTechDreams]

Windows 98 Control Panel