MY future with Corona SDK - Corona Certified Developer and jobs

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Introduction

So basically I have been working with Corona SDK for the last 3 or 4 years and I found it really easy and fun although it has its limitations.

As probably everyone I started with the idea that I would create the next Angry Birds/Flappy Bird/[Popular game of your choice] and then live off that money on a beach somewhere in Mexico or Thailand but as I am realistic that idea has become less and less probable due to the fierce competion and the luck factor involved with making it big on the app stores.

Right now my current bread and butter is working with C# and I really like it but I find it more fun creating games in Corona SDK than to create back-end software in C#.

Questions to Corona and the Corona community

* Do you work or have you worked as a full-time Corona developer for another company (i.e. not for your own indie-company)? (If yes please describe it a little bit)

* What happened to Corona Certified Developer?

* Do you think that the CCD program would make any difference?

* Is it possible to work full-time from home through sites such as UpWork when there are only 6 jobs with the ‘corona-sdk’ tag? (https://www.upwork.com/o/jobs/browse/skill/corona-sdk/?sort=relevance%2Bdesc) (I know that some Corona jobs are not tagged properly and that some people just tag “mobile development” but it gives you an idea of the job market)

* Could Corona attract more clients in some other way (i.e. not just using UpWork) so that freelance programmers, such as my self, would be able to work full-time (or at least close to)? (Spreading the word about Corona, showing off some high-quality apps at different work/mobile development expos etc. or should it be put on us to create a high-quality portfolio and then hopefully attract clients?)

Summary

I am not trying to discourage anyone to follow their dreams to become a mobile developer and create the next big hit on AppStore using Corona SDK but as for me I need to start thinking about the future as I’m not becoming any younger and the best approach might be to focus on something that might generate a more stable income.

Still having worked with Corona is a lot of fun and I will not leave it in the near future, I only like to know how, if it’s possible, to pay the bills by only working with Corona. 

Best regards,

Tomas

#2

Here’s my two cents worth - and I’m being brutally honest here:

  1. To make money doing something, you need be at the very least, good at what you do. Not great, but at least good.

  2. Pardon my french, but 99% of what I see people create in Corona is very, very crappy. Either the art is okay but the coding sucks, or the coding is okay but the art sucks, or both suck. Very often the apps being made are inferior copies of copies of copies. Due to the nature of coding, I think that the majority here can code a bit but lack severly in design skills. Then there is a large group of people using Corona that can code a little bit, but is not really very good at coding games (which is fairly specific).

  3. Related to my previous point: which group of Corona coders do you belong to? Try to be honest when answering this question.

  4. Being certified or not does not make any difference at all in my opinion.

  5. Clients don’t care wether something is made with Corona or something else. They just want something that works. Sometimes special needs or previous code means Corona is not an option. Many times Corona is a perfectly valid option. But when clients don’t know Corona, they won’t specify it when posting jobs.

  6. Yes, it is perfectly possible to make money using Corona. But it will be a lot easier to make money using the most known frameworks and languages out there.

  7. For me personally, the biggest money was made not creating my own apps, but making paid apps for clients, for all sorts of purposes. For example: I’ve created several mini-games for expositions at about 3000 dollar a piece, each in a week’s time. On the other hand, the game I spent a year and a half creating made me 50 dollars.

  8. Fun jobs (like making games with Corona) don’t coming flying into the palm of your hand. As with all work, doing prospection, networking, mailing etc… make all the difference. Have you done this? If not, you are one of millions of generic coders all posting on the same websites.

Voila. That’s how I see things.

#3

Once again I’ll be blunt. For reference, I’m the co-founder of a design studio, that has 20 employees after ten years, so I know a thing or two about starting up a business, looking for clients and trying to make some money.

Like I said, I’ll be blunt. To sum things up:

  1. See my above points. How good are you? How well do you rank against “the competition”. Be realistic when answering this.

  2. Go out there and work your ass off if you want to start making a living. Don’t expect to enter your details on a website and have work landing in the palm of your hands. Work days and nights to build a portfolio that is excellent and striking. Then work days and nights again to spread the news and get people to notice you.

  3. Plan and work! Make a list of what types of clients would be interested in someone like you. Then make a list of the possible clients that you can approach. Get out there. Make cold calls. Visit these clients and show your portfolio. Listen to their comments and improve your portfolio if needed.

If you list online, you are only placing yourself in a marketplace where there are millions of competitors.

#4

An additional point is that Corona does not support install tracking, so your client can’t run ads for their app and see if they work or not (unless they want to stick only to FB installs).

This takes two minutes to integrate on iOS and Android native apps, but is impossible with Corona. Therefore Corona will not be considered.

Also if clients want OS-specific features like iOS force touch or Android widgets, Corona does not. Therefore Corona will not be considered.

#5

@ corona273: true, but you’re cherrypicking features. There are features that Corona lacks and other SDK’s have, leading to Corona not being considered. But there are also features that Corona has and other SDK’s lack, leading to Corona being chosen for a job.

Cross-platform development not being the least of 'em!

For the record: I have only had to decline a job because of Corona features in very few cases. Mostly this was because 3D was needed.

#6

On our side, we see corona like many SDK, it all depends of what needs to be accomplished. There is no SDK that is perfect, it depends of the situation. For example we are soon going to release a white label framework for tourism application and Corona was the perfect candidate for this work. 

#7

Thanks a lot for your great replies, especially those from @thomas6.

As he states I might be overestimating my skills but and/or I don’t sell my self enough,

I need to make a great portfolio and start networking (which I have not done)  through expos, cold-calling etc. etc. and be willing to “work my ass oss”.

Once again, thanks for your great replies!

Best regards,

Tomas

#8

You’re welcome, and sorry for being blunt. If you have a link to a portfolio somewhere I’ll give you my honest feedback on your skillset as well, if you wish - although I might be blunt on again.

If you’re going out to find work, two bits of encouraging advice:

  1. Clients almost never bite when you make cold calls or mails, or go to present yourself. This is normal. The way this works is, a couple of months or weeks down the line when doing a brainstorm, a client might say: “Hey, making we could make an app. We had a guy in here a while ago that said it was only xxxx amount of money to do this and it looked cool. Let me check my mailbox, I think I still have his e-mail address”. So be patient.

  2. Everybody starts at the bottom. This is also normal. Our studio does jobs now that we could not do ten years ago because we didn’t have the skills. But we did develop the skills doing simpler work early on. Don’t aim too high, but do make a point of keeping on learning new things.

#9

In my opinion, on the mobile market, extreme specialization in a certain tool is a poor career move - especially for an extremely niche tool like Corona. There are several reasons:

  • Every tool will have its limitations, and there are simply some tasks that you won’t be able to solve if you pick a single one. If you’re an Objective-C specialist, what will you do if you need to build an Android app? If you only know Corona SDK, what will you do if you need to build a mobile website?
  • Tools and frameworks come and go. There are a few huge players you can bet safely on, like Oracle (Java) or Microsoft (.NET), but anything smaller than that might die any day. If you spend the next 3 years specializing in Corona, what will you do if Corona is dead in 4 years? You have worked your way into a career dead-end.
  • In my experience, clients  rarely care which tool you choose, as long as it gets the job done. Therefore, clients don’t care much about certifications, and often can’t tell which certifications prove that you have true skills and which just prove that you have bought a 3-week course from some shady online school. Clients care about references and portfolios. Huge corporate clients are different and may care more about certifications, but what are the odds of you as a one-man company being employed by a huge corporate client to build their next huge app? Your clients are much more likely to be small to medium businesses.

So I suppose my advice is, use Corona when Corona is the right tool for the job, but don’t build your career around it.

#10

As probably everyone I started with the idea that I would create the next Angry Birds/Flappy Bird/[Popular game of your choice] and then live off that money on a beach somewhere in Mexico or Thailand but as I am realistic that idea has become less and less probable due to the fierce competion and the luck factor involved with making it big on the app stores.

I’m not going to comment on the overall question as I believe everyone else here has said all that I could say, just better. However, I would like to touch on this point, this idea that you have to be all or nothing. That the only way to survive on the app store is to hit it big, right out of the park, with some form of runaway Angry Birds style success.

I feel that this idea is simply going to damage your chances of earning a good living. It’s good that you’ve come to the conclusion that the chance of you ( and I mean this generally, not specifically you, simply everyone ) are going to hit it big with some huge success is essentially zero. The issue I have is that you ( again not you, lots of people ) then jump to the conclusion that you can’t make any money.

I can only use my own personal experience here but at Glitch, we’ve aimed for a relatively niche genre ( adventure games ) and then just try to put out the best quality we can. We aren’t trying to hit the mass-market as there is simply too much competition. We are happy to sit lower down the charts and bring in a not-at-all-massive but nicely consistent income from our games.

We’ve kept overheads low and this has allowed us to support ourselves and keep making the games we enjoy making. We are going to slowly grow with more games, again all in the same genre, and all of these games will just bring in more money to the pot.

If you spend a year or so working on the next big hit and then it flops ( even if the game is oh-my-god amazing, it still has a huge chance of flopping unless you’ve had your marketing hat on the entire time ) what do you do then? 

So, in conclusion, my advice is to aim for a niche market and do it well. Success ( however you define that ) will come, it just takes time and perseverance.

#11

I gave up on being an indie app developer about 6 months ago. I now work full time for a large company as an app tester. My experience as an app developer was key to landing this job.

I was never able to land any large big budget clients. All of my clients were small businesses or individuals with small budgets for an app. I enjoyed working on these small projects but it was challenging to book enough of these projects to stay busy.

I was also able to get some work as a sub-contractor. Some larger firms land the clients and then contract the work out. In this arrangement, you can expect the larger firm to only pay the sub-contractor a fraction of what they’re paid for a project.

#12

fwiw:  if one were to judge by forum content alone (not having access to Corona’s internal client list), one might make a guess that Corona’s user-base is about 10% “professionals” (whether just committed indies or full-fledged businesses) and 90% hobbyist/tinkerer.

(caveat that the “professionals” might be underrepresented in the forum simply because they likely need less of such help)

the hobbyist class won’t likely be a good source of revenue (fe “will you work for free/rev-share?” == no money, high volume)

the professional class would likely only contract out more challenging work that they couldn’t handle themselves (for either time and/or experience reasons, but either way would be looking for ‘serious’ credentials == good money, low volume)

as for myself (if interested in personal anecdotes), though i’d call myself a Lua “professional” (having 15+ years experience, and enough “old clients” to occupy me with “pure Lua” contract work, to the extent i choose and my “boring day job” allows), yet i’m just another Corona “hobbyist”.  the Corona “industry” does not appear large enough that I’d ever consider it as a “career” for contract coding.

nor can I imagine there’d ever be anything I’d spend money on for coding as a contract client.  (for assets?  sure.  for coding?  no.)  i’d even hazard a guess that being a contract artist might be more lucrative in the Corona universe!  (given the assumed user-base)

$0.02

#13

Corona’s user-base is about 10% “professionals” (whether just committed indies or full-fledged businesses) and 90% hobbyist/tinkerer.

You have to wonder how Corona can sustain itself given that non-Enterprise is free and their ad portal is not fully rolled out. Are there really enough Corona users that can generate enough revenue to sustain Corona Labs?

Chartboost are unable/unwilling to maintain the Chartboost plugin. I’m sure they would if it was financially worth their while. I seriously wonder if Corona Labs will survive in the medium or long term…

#14

First of all I think it’s still fun to create my won games in Corona SDK and I will probably keep on doing so and if one happens to make it big so be it but I’m not quitting my day job to invest all my time and money into this game. If I one day sees that one of my games does have a big user base and starting to generate a descent income or having a descent potential then I will of course reevaluate my decision.

Also, as you have done, I’m thinking of focusing on a more specific genre and just create a good library for this genre that I can re-use in my game (not plain copies of my own games, just re-usable code) and create more (high-quality) games faster.

Best regards,

Tomas

#15

I have experienced this as well but as thomas6 said we need to have pacience, a very good portfolio, network etc.

I have mostly searching for client on UpWork and Freelancer but most of the contractors think that they can pay 500$ for a job that would take you 1-2 months together with a designer to do well but when there is a good contract you (we) need to have a very good portfolio to show them.

Best regards,

Tomas

#16

As you mention and mentioned before in this post becoming a “Corona Professional” is next to impossible so we should categorize ourselves as “Mobile Application Developer” instead of “Corona SDK Developer” to broaden our market a little bit.

Just out of curiosity could you tell me what kind of projects you have done in “pure Lua”? What kind of projects does your clients usually ask for?

Best regards,

Tomas

#17

To be honest I would really like see someone from the Corona team drop their 2 cents on what kind of plans they have for the future as we are investing a lot of time into their SDK and, as @hogletpie mentioned, all non-Enterprise versions are now free. I have an Enterprise subscription because I had Corona SDK Pro, which I paid for, and they upgraded my account for free when they stopped charging for Corona Pro but I haven’t used any Enterprise features so I will probably go back to a free Corona SDK Pro subscription when my Enterprise subscription ends.

Best regards,

Tomas

#18

I’ve been using Corona since 2011, and Corona was my first entry-point into mobile development, and Lua was the first programming language that I learned to a point of (I think) proficiency. I dabbled before that, going all the way back to BASIC programming on C64, but it’s fair to say that I was not much of a programmer before picking up Corona and Lua.

I’m happy to say that while I still have a dayjob, and don’t have any illusions of giving it up anytime soon, my experience as a Corona developer has been prosperous, both personally and (to a somewhat lesser extent) financially. My first year as a Corona developer I had a two small developer-for-hire projects that paid for my Corona Pro license (it wasn’t free back then), a spiffy new 17" MacBook Pro to develop on (that I’m still using today!) and probably left a couple thousand over after that. One client was a contact through my dayjob who was willing to take a chance on me as a newbie because of our relationship (plus I priced extra competitively), and the second job was through a client who found me on the web via the Corona developer directory. That started with a coffee meeting and took probably 4 months to cultivate into an actual signed contract.

Since then, I’ve grown my little side business as an app developer into a decent side income that has come in handy as my family has grown (though the late nights can take a toll as when I’m working a project I often will only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night between dayjob and family responsibilities). My client projects generally come through web traffic (people who find me because of my Corona modules, earlier projects similar to their own, etc.) and repeat business from former clients - I’m particularly proud of my high client retention. Like I said, none of this will allow me to quit the dayjob (especially when you factor in health insurance), but year-over-year I consistently earn more as a developer, and I’m currently supplementing my primary income by around 25%. For me, I consider that success. Sure, I hope to some day get a hit on my hands - or an app that earns slowly and steadily over many years (as one of my client projects has done for a client). But for now, my standard of living is enhanced financially on account of my app work, and that’s a “win” in my book.

I’d encourage you to look for opportunities to partner with potential clients. I had a series of meetings over many months with a small independent publisher because I saw a profile on their young CEO in the New York Times, and sent an email to their general “info@” email address congratulating her on the NYT profile and saying that we’ve worked on similar projects and that we’d make natural collaborators. That was about as cold a call as you can make, but it worked. Now that lead died on the vine, and didn’t result in a contract - but again, I consider it a success. I sent an unsolicited email out into the world and got a “bite” based on my website and portfolio.

As may be clear from this post, I’m taking an optimistic view of my experience as a developer, even if it hasn’t been a roaring success. I think that’s crucial - it will allow me to stick it through until hopefully it does become a roaring success, or at the very least, it allows me to feel like I’m not wasting my time. And my “non-app” work life has been improved by my development work as well. I worked in operations and IT for an art gallery for years, but just last month I took a job on the product development team for a tech startup. That definitely wouldn’t have been possible if not for my “moonlighting” as an app developer. I’m even using Corona and Lua as part of my workflow in that job - in an environment where they generally work in C# (something I hope to brush up on).

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this post is, but I hope you’re encouraged to keep open to defining success outside of the “big win” case where you quit your dayjob and buy a fancy new car or house with the money from your game. If I have to keep working a dayjob, but sending my kids to college in 15 years is made easier because of my supplemental app income, then that’s a MAJOR win (way better than a fancy car, IMHO).

Good luck to all - one thing that I know for sure is that we’ve got a supportive community around here. Stick with it, guys (& gals)! 

#19

Id also like to see the Corona Staff drop by and tell us what they have in the future for this SDK…

I mean i absolutely love Corona SDK and would love to stick with it but if they have plans for different thing in the future id like to know about them if its possible…

Maybe this topic can be brought up in the next or near future Corona GEEK??

Thanks and Good Luck to all!

#20

Okay dropping in. We don’t have a published road map. We found out a couple of years ago, that it takes significant resources to keep up with Apple and Google’s changes.  Every few months Apple makes a new rule that we have to adapt to to keep building. Google isn’t as frequent as Apple, but it interrupts any attempt to plan a road map, when you don’t know when you have to drop what you’re doing to to keep things modern.

Short term, finish OS-X and Desktop builds. We have HTML5 to get back to. tvOS is a framework we want to support. We are working on getting Corona Composer GUI with more functionality.  After that, it becomes a case of starting to whittle down the Feature Requests at a faster pace, knock out some of the level 3-4 bugs.

Longer term, I think we are waiting to see what the industry moves toward. Mobile and Desktop are now very mature platforms. A few years ago, Mobile was new and Fresh and a great place to be pushing toward the forefront. It’s hard to know what the next big thing in the industry is. I think TV is going to be big. We are seeing TV’s made by some vendors that are straight up Android TV. Apple TV will probably be big as more people cord cut. We already have pretty good support for TV device over all, but there is obviously more that we can do in that area.

As far as the job market goes, Lua is widely used, but most of the jobs are in the game market, and there are probably not enough of them for the number of developers out there. If you want to apply what you’ve learned, get better at Lua and Corona SDK but at the same time venture out into other areas. For instance, use this as an opportunity to build an app that needs to talk to a PHP server (or Node.js) to construct some online APIs. Build a website in HTML, JavaScript and CSS to support that app.

Programming experience is experience. It all adds up. But you also have to know multiple languages. You have to know multiple environments if you want to have a good chance to get a good programming job.

Rob