There are no guidelines, but a basic retail formula could be applied.
First, you need to figure out how much it will cost you to develop an asset. This is referred to as the investment.
INVESTMENT = TIME * RATE
Where RATE is your hourly rate. That amount can be tricky, because how much you make as a 3D artist doesn't always equal how much you make as an orbolt author
. If this is your first asset, then I'd recommend making this amount small, but if your assets are really well done then you can increase it. Setting the rate right, is tricky.
Next, you need to figure out how long the asset will be sold in the store. My experience with software says that most tools have a 3 year lifespan. So let's talk in terms of months. So that's an amortization of 36 months. You also want to make a profit. Most retail modals multiple the cost by 2 to gain a profit. Also, let's not forget that SideFX takes a 30% cut. So add an additional 30% to cover distributor fees.
We can now calculate our desired monthly return.
RETURN = (INVESTMENT / 32) * 2.3
That gives us our desired monthly return, or another way to say it is our total monthly sales.
Now you need to figure out how many units to sell in a month to equal that return. Basically, how many units will you sell in the next 3 years? Without having any data from SideFX on the store's performance, then this is really impossible to tell. Let's be conservative, and say about 100 in 3 years.
Now we can calculate the price.
PRICE = RETURN / (SALES / 32)
Where SALES is the total number sold over 3 years.
Now let's run an example, and see how good my formal is or if it's just junk science.
INVESTMENT = TIME * RATE
RETURN = (INVESTMENT / 32) * 2.3
PRICE = RETURN / (SALES / 32)
Let's assume my rate will be $25 per hour, and it takes 40 hours to make an asset and I expect to sell 100 units.
INVESTMENT = 40 * $25
RETURN = (INVESTMENT / 32) * 2.3
PRICE = RETURN / (SALES / 32)
—–
RETURN = ($1000 / 32) * 2.3
PRICE = RETURN / (SALES / 32)
—–
PRICE = $71.87 / (SALES / 32)
PRICE = $71.87 / 3.125
PRICE = $22.99
Well, there you go.
The problem here is that it requires several guesses, and it assumes you want to double your invest over 3 years.