A year and a half ago, I made a post discussing whether it is possible to make money on Roblox starting with nothing. Since then, I have been constantly asked by developers of how to make it big on Roblox and earn robux.
Although I would not consider myself successful by any means, I do believe that I am in the above average spectrum of developers in terms of my past works. I have been developing for the past half decade, and have met people from all aspects of development.
I have both hired developers and worked for other devs. I have both worked for and created myself small projects, big projects, successful games and games that never released. I have ran communities large and small, and helped my friends with running theirs, I have a few million robux earned, and directly contributed to nearly 15 million joins.
Please note, that this is a post that only details how to make robux through the developmental route. I do not have the qualifications to discuss the limiteds marketplace or how to be a professional roblox TikToker, This post is not a step to step tutorial, but merely a list of points of how the roblox economy works and how best to apply yourself to make the most out of it. If you want a step by step tutorial, please go to my prior post on how to earn robux with nothing. I do not claim to know everything, nor is this post extensive, please feel free to contribute through discussion!
Understand the Robux Economy
Although Iâm not an economist, the most important aspect of understanding how to earn robux is to understand how the robuck works. This first part is very economics heavy, so feel free to skip if you do not care much for the numbers game.
Robux is an in game currency that has a weird conversion rate in that it is much more expensive to buy than it is to devex and convert back to real currency. This is important as you will need to understand that earned robux is far less valuable than bought robux.
For developers, the typical conversion rate is the current devex rate, which as of writing this post is 100k Robux is $350, where every robuck is 0.35 cents. Make sure you memorise this value and keep up to date with any fluctuations in its value. Make sure you are also familiar with the minimum wage of your respective country so you could always compare your work on Roblox with it if you were working at the closest McDonalds.
People might believe that robux doesnât hit inflation as it is backed by the USD. So it kinda has a buffer in that regard. However, another fact that is also true is that the amount of Robux in the economy is constantly increasing as the amount of players who play this game increases yearly. This means that the Robuck is getting easier to earn as time goes on. This means that for the same services, you will be able to charge more for robux as time goes on, so counterintuitively, Robux is hitting inflation, just that it isnât noticed as much.
The average developer will have more robux tomorrow than he does today. This is because as you develop, your skills increase, and your money increases. Allowing you to be hired on to bigger projects or make bigger games that could offer higher returns. Therefore, each robuck you spend today is worth many times the robux you spend in the future as it makes up a higher portion of your net worth.
Because of the above, we can conclude these principles that I will be constantly bringing up later in the post.
- It is better to avoid devex whenever possible, and instead use robuck to purchase ads and services rather than USD
- Similarly, avoid buying Robux. Use your ads to generate more robux rather than buying them with the bad conversion rates.
- A robuck invested is better than a robuck in the bank or held in a limited, as it is a constantly inflating currency.
- It is easier to make more robux if you already have robux. The first 100K is always the hardest to make, then the next few hundreds of thousands and millions are significantly easier.
Robux Inflation
Robux is a volatile currency in that it is constantly inflating. If you ever kept track of the price of limiteds or the average pay for developers over the years, you would have noticed a net increase. This is due to the increase in the amount of robux that is building up in the dev communities.
A interesting question I was asked was
âShould we increase gamepass prices?â
The answer is âno.â Gamepass prices have hardly increased over the past couple of years. The reasoning being is that robux inflation is only a factor in the dev community where the average developer is becoming richer. It is not a thing in the playerbase. Your average player is not getting richer. Robux flows in only one direction, it flows from the players to the developers, never backwards. Therefore, you have robux pooling in the dev community, as new players buy more robux, it always flows to the developers.
The practical implications of this phenomenon is that as time goes on, Robux becomes less valuable in the developer circles, while it retains its price in the playerbase as it is backed by the US dollar. This means that your robux today worths more than your robux in a yearâs time. The amount you will be paying developers today will be far less than the amount you will be paying for the same service in a couple of years time. The amount you pay for ads to get the same amount of views, you will have to pay more in a couple of years time too.
This means, saving and pooling robux is not a good strategy to getting rich. Instead, you ought to invest it into games as soon as you can so that you can keep turning over more money. Similarly, you should avoid devex, as the robux you will have in a yearâs time is far less valuable, so you should be devexing that one instead, and use your current robux for investment. However, if you have millions of robux in your account and you need to pay your rent, then by all means, do devex.
Pick your vocation and your location
Being a developer on Roblox, two things are important.
- Your Vocation, or the main area of development you want to specialise in.
- Your Location, the genre, community, or niche that you primarily base yourself in.
Your location can always be changed as time goes on, but your vocation cannot. If you are going to be a developer, make sure you pick an area to specialise in that you are actually good at, and that you actually enjoy.
Do not specialise in scripting if you are hopeless in maths. Do not specialise in building if you cannot understand blender. Do not do UI if you donât like to draw, do not do sfx if you are tone deaf. This should be obvious, but you would be surprised how often people focus so much of their life on an aspect of development only to realise that their calling is for something else. We are not equal, we are all born with different gifts and interests. Do not just do scripting because you think it will earn well.
There is a quote âThe basement is much crowded, but there is plenty space upstairs.â
The beginner levels of every profession is always packed. But the upper echelons, the best of the best, will always have work and will always earn money. So at the end of the day, donât worry too much about the profession you pick, just make sure you are suited for it and you enjoy it.
I have friends who are some of the most talented artists I know, they make far more than the vast majority of scripters because they are some of the best of their craft. They got there because of two things, talent and interest. If you have both, you will also have the determination and hard work to get to the top.
Yes, generalists and full stack developers do exist, but they all started off with one skill that they branch out with. If you are a primary builder with some scripting on the side, a primary scripter will always have more time and energy to perfect their craft than you. So oftentimes, itâs better to just be the builder and then hire someone else to do the rest. Vice versa if you are the scripter or anything else.
Make sure your location complements your vocation. Be in a genre where your skills could be useful, and where you have an edge over your competition. Do not be a horror artist working on simulators. Do not be an animator in unscripted showcase communities. If youâre going to create rinse/ repeat tycoons, donât do it in post 2016 Roblox, instead go make an afk donation game. (jk XD)
Make sure your job has value in that particular genre or community. Some of the most money Iâve earned was in the early days being the only scripter in voyage showcase and roleplay communities. There were no competition and there was always jobs to do. I was working with some of the best builders in the different games and groups of that community despite just being an average dev at the time, because I was the only person who could provide value in coding.
Your network is your networth
On Roblox and in life, âIt is not about what you know, but who you know.â
You can be the best developer on the platform, but if nobody knows you, you will not get hired. But if you have big social circles and connections with the best developers, you will always find jobs to do.
I know so many great developers who are earning measly amounts because they are only able to work on low budget games with low returns. They do not have the social circles to get into the bigger games. Front page games with reputable dev teams do not hire off places like discord servers, they just call their friends and their friends of friends.
Every job you do, preserve your professional integrity. Do not scam your employers for short term cash, but aim to make friendships with everyone youâve worked with so they could refer you to others.
Always seek to make friends whenever you can, and be humble enough to befriend people much more successful than you are. Donât just expect to go in trying to rub a bit of their success, but instead go in with the mentality of how you could help add value to their endeavours.
Always be polite to everyone you meet, and avoid bad PR and arguments with community members and non devs. A lot of times, even if you are in the right, itâs not worth it to have the bad image.
Open as many avenues of communication and social media as you can, even if you donât use them. Discord, Twitter, Reddit, Insta, (Even tiktok for Godâs sake). Have public portfolios of what you do, and make it clear and concise. Not too flashy though else it is a red flag for insecurity.
Get yourself a good looking Roblox avatar with at least one tasteful limited item, Donât spam the limiteds to avoid looking insecure. Learn how colour coordination and character silhouette works, and create yourself a unique avatar that is memorable and stick to using it so if someone sees you in a game, they will remember you. Donât constantly switch avatars every day.
Save money, avoid debt
This should be relatively obvious, but avoid wasting money on bad investment opportunities or buying limiteds for no reason other than to âflexâ. If you only have 50k robux, donât waste over half of it on headless horseman that isnât even a limited you could resell.
Use money to make games, hire devs, or advertise existing games. Set a % yourself down to what you want to waste for yourself, the rest, reinvest back into robux making.
Avoid debts at all costs. Not only will it harm your image and relationships, it will also financially crush you if it is contracted. Only spend what you can afford.
Active Income vs Passive Income
There are two types of incomes.
(Disclaimer)
Only read this section if you are already an established developer with plenty of money and good networks. If you are a dev who is just starting out, please read the below section on âHow to Make Robux when Starting Outâ first, so you do not run the risk of losing all your robux.
Active income is when you actively work to earn money. Like doing dev commissions for others. Passive income is when you do nothing, but earn money passively through revenues such as selling gamepasses in games.
âActive income is money you make while working, passive income is money you make while sleeping.â
You can only work so many hours a day, but you can easily sleep through all 24 hours a day. You can only work on one thing at a time, but you can have multiple streams of passive income coming in at once. For this reason, passive income is much more valuable than active income.
You can have hundreds of thousands of robux through active income, but you can only be a millionaire on roblox through passive income.
I strongly suggest you either create your own games, or codevelop games with friends where you will have a % share of the profits the moment you are able to. Get the money through working actively, then use that money to set up streams of passive income.
Understand Ads and Marketing
With all of its quirks and faults, one thing that cannot be denied is that Roblox has some of the best Ads systems. With merely 1000 robux, you can get hundreds of people to see your game. Something which you would have to pay thousands of USD for on any other platform. Make sure you understand how this system works for your respective genre/ community, and make sure to run analytics on ads.
Do not pass up on this excellent opportunity before it gets dominated by massive markets!
I could write an entire book on the intricacies of ads, but I do not want to waste your time on this niche area. I am sure there are already a bunch of posts with empirical data that could explain it in much more detail. But please, research this area before you launch anything whether itâs a game, clothing group, or UGC.
Learn how contracts work
Read up on NDAs, learn how employment contracts work, and consult people who understand law before going into these things. This will save you from so many scams in the future. There are people much more qualified to give deeper advice on this, so I will keep this short.
One last bit of advice, international contracts almost never hold water. Sure, you can use them to have an informal agreement, but it will cost you thousands up to tens of thousands of USD to take someone to international court over a roblox claim. This does not mean you should never work for anyone who is in a different country to you, but you should be aware that the contract you make will not have any effect unless if the game you have made is earning thousands of USD by the time you decide to sue.
How to Make Robux when Starting Out
When developers start out, they are all bright eyed and have the Robloxian dream of making the best game on Roblox that will earn them millions. From my experience, this is usually a bad tactic for making money or experience.
When you work for yourself, you have nobody to hold you accountable. You risk your own finances, and you are competing against others who have far bigger budgets than you. When you work for established, reputable and successful dev teams, you will have a guaranteed income as well as plenty of opportunities for networking. You only have to focus on your own field of developmental expertise, you do not have to worry about things such as developmental leadership, team management and hiring, marketing, finances, public relations, etc. This is a much better route for a dev who has just started out.
I also do not recommend on working for short term commissions and jobs you find on talenthub or Hidden Developers. They are oftentimes for low budget games that will hardly ever see the light of day, provided they even ever get finished. You get no useful networks, and you hardly even get much credit since you leave the project after your commission is finished. Do not waste your time on these, find better dev teams with long term posts, even if you have to work for less.
However, I do not recommend working for other teams forever. After you have built enough experience, networks and money, I strongly believe it is a good endeavour to try making something of your own if you have the necessary competencies and have friends who will help you. Passive income is afterall much better than active income. I just do not recommend this for newer developers as I have often seen people waste all their robux for pretty much no return.
(quick disclaimer)
If you are making your own game for the fun of it rather than the financial aspect, please disregard my advice on this post. This post is purely for the most effective ways of robux getting, not the most fun way to go about it. I strongly encourage young developers to follow their passion, and I understand not everyone wants to be a millionaire on an online lego game. Passion is oftentimes more important than money, so if you enjoy what you are doing, please do continue it.
The best strategy for getting experience and robux quickly is through the following steps:
- Get âgoodâ at your respective field. If it is scripting, understand how to make a few systems, if itâs building, learn your way around the studio and blender tools etc.
- Build a solid portfolio. I will not be explaining the intricacies on that in this post, but I understand there are a lot of material out there to help in this regard.
- Put yourself out there, get hired in an already established team or find a âmentorâ to work under. I was extremely lucky to have had a lot of really good scripters and devs to jump start my career, without them, I would be crawling at a snails pace in my developmental journey. I will elaborate in the next section how to build connections.
- Build a good reputation. Be known as that guy who always delivers on time. Be that guy who is always friendly and patient. Be the guy who everyone wants on their team. Be the guy who has a solid brand image, a memorable username and avatar, etc.
- Make money through working for established development teams (not short term contract based commissions). Be a long term developer on a game that already has a following. You will get this job through your reputation, personal skills and your network (Look above, your network is your networth).
- Only after you have made plenty of money and obtained the necessary experience and made the connections with other developers, you might be ready to start making your own game and earning some passive income.
The above I believe is the best guide for making money when starting out. That is how I made my first 100k. After you earn your first 100k robux, the rest is smooth sailing. The next couple of hundreds thousands and millions are much easier to earn, the first 100k is the hardest.
Finding a Mentor
In the Roblox dev community, it is very hard to make a name for yourself on your own nowadays. It was much easier several years ago when the bar was not as high. Nowadays, it is almost impossible for a new no-name developer to make a front page game.
In order to accelerate their success, I strongly believe that new developers should affiliate themselves with existing developers who have already established themselves with successful games. This will act as a springboard for them to get into the âdevelopment circlesâ rather than wasting their life working for commissions for 100 rbx per hour.
A lot of successful developers are very busy and their inboxes are often spammed. Therefore, being able to network and contact these people is an art in of itself. I strongly dissuade any hopefuls of bugging others for their own gain, it is impolite and oftentimes irritating.
The below are some suggestions which I have seen people do, or even tried myself. These are the ones which I believe would offer the most success.
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The primary point is to go in with a mentality that is not what a successful dev could do for you, but instead what value you could provide for them. If you can offer them something that others cannot, then you have significantly raised your chances of garnering their interest. E.g. an example I have already used, I made a lot of money in the showcase community by doing optimisations during my early days. I worked with top tier builders and modellers despite being an average developer myself at the time. Yet I was still hired constantly and consistently as I was the only scripter in that community who had the necessary skills to do that.
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Being able to contact devs is also a hard thing. I do not recommend spamming their dms on discord or boot licking them while they are in game just trying to play something. There are two ways, warm approach and cold approach:
- Warm approach is you attend events such as RDC or gatherings where there will be plenty of developers. You have friends who are friends with developers, and you ask them to put you guys together. You put yourself at a position where you can work alongside capable devs by applying to good dev teams. All of these are very easy ways to build rapport provided you have basic social skills. (Most of us devs on Roblox are very introverted, so it isnât hard to be a better socialiser than us.)
- Cold approach is much harder. This is when you just walk up to devs in game and use charisma to befriend them. Iâve seen it done, often by someone dressed in a funny avatar and is super nice in game. But this is hard, and Iâm nowhere near social enough to give guidance on this. If youâre going to go by this path, be warned, it is hard.
- This is a very unlikely scenario, but is still a thing that is often overlooked. Your existing friends might be on a journey to becoming a successful developer! I had quite a few friends who started Roblox around the same time as me, and became successful devs in their own right in parallel with my dev journey. Donât forget that the people you already know might also be trying to become good devs. If that is the case, be sure to keep your old friends close and catch up with them from time to time.
The above are my main thoughts on befriending devs. I believe it is extremely important to have a good network especially if you are starting out, as having someone to provide guidance on your work as well as offer opportunities is invaluable. Please refer to my above section on âYour network is your networthâ for more generalised tips on networking as well as the importance thereof.
Making a Game that Makes Money
After you are sufficiently experienced, with a good network of devs, and a small pile of Robux, you are now ready to start making your game to earn some passive income. (Read above sections on Active Income vs Passive Income, and How to make Robux when Starting Out)
There are many guides out there regarding how to make a good game, as well as the common pitfalls to watch out for. Therefore, this will not be a conclusive guide repeating those points, you could always read the literature there.
This section will mostly detail the financial aspect of creating your own game, and how to best gain money out of it.
When creating your first few games, you must realise that you are competing with others much more established and with bigger budgets. For that reason, you will have a hard time out competing them by making a game better than them. You must make a simple game that you can finished and earn money from.
In order to succeed in any genre or community, you do not need to make a game that is far better than everything else already out there, you just need to make something of similar quality that players want to play. Roblox is a platform so vast and large that you only need a tiny percentage of the daily concurrent playerbase in your game to be earning millions of robux. For this reason, do not aim for perfection in a game, aim for completion.
Try to finish your game as soon as possible without spending too much of your budget on it. Aim for polish rather than more features. There is always time to make a super good game with extreme complexity after you have mastered the basics and established yourself as a successful dev.
When making a game, plan out the scope of the game first and have the core gameplay loop developed as much as possible, and as simplistic as possible (Please do research on any jargon I will be using in this section as they will be fundamental for game design). Be aware of your target audience and your budget. Games in niche communities can become successful, but only if they are able to draw in a broad range of players in that community. Do not attempt to limit your audience if you are in a niche community. Do not purposefully limit scalability. Make sure to research your audience and which community you are aiming at, it is often easier to make a game in a community or genre of games that you already enjoy playing since you would already be familiar with it. Avoid making a game for a genre that has no established community (eg, single player games on roblox, a social platform), it is always riskier to be the pioneer. You can always do this after you have already made a successful game.
Your budget is the lifeline of your project. Avoid over complicating your game with too many systems, focus on polishing up the core gameplay loop to avoid stress on the budgets. Make sure to get a quote on all the developers you will be hiring before you start the project, rather than find out you are lacking in funding after you have started. Make a mental note of your Unique Selling Point (USP), and what the main draw of your game is. This is where you will focus your budget on significantly to make sure it is good. For a simulator game, the draw might be the thumbnails and game icon to draw players in. For roleplay games, it might be the building. For complex RPGs, it may be the scripting. Be sure to allocate your budget accordingly.
A general rule for splitting the budget between development and ads is 50:50. This may change after you have become a more established developer with existing playerbases, however, when starting out, make sure to stick by it (Please read above section on Understand Ads and Marketing). Make sure you save plenty of funding on marketing as it will be the thing that gets you the players. You can have an amazing game but if you do not have the ads to get players in, nobody will see it. In regards to the development budget, make sure to allocate a big portion of that to âbufferâ, money that will be used in emergencies if anything were to come up.
Always hire developers who have completed past works. Do not hire developers who only have systems to show, but they have never seen a game to completion. No matter how good they are, if they do not have the perseverance to have seen a game finished, they will not be able to help you. Attempt to hire friends when possible, as they will be happy working with you for less and are generally more reliable. However, be prepared to lose friendships if you are to mix it with work and money.
During the development process, research how agile development, scrum and kanban works. Use miro, trello or hacknplan boards to help you plan development. Understand how to lead a development team. When handling other developers, you will never get what you expect, you get what you inspect -make sure you frequently check up progress and replace developers if needs arise. Host dev meetings regularly. Be kind to your developers, treat them well and pay them fairly, act with professional standards and conduct. I will not elaborate too much as there are many other articles detailing how to develop on the devforum.
Make sure you have a good monetisation plan. Premium payouts, gamepasses, devproducts etc. There are many good tutorials and guides on how to turn your free to play players into paid players. The simplest is to just create a gateway gamepass/ dev product. Something that is throwaway money that gets them something really cool for its value. This will make your players more likely to pay more after they have already paid into your game as it causes them to become âinvestedâ.
If you are developing a game for money, treat it as such. Listen to community feedback, but listen with discernment. You are the one who is putting your money into this project, so make sure you do not make stuff for no reason. Your time and the time of your developers is valuable, make sure everything you develop provides value for the game and community.
Start a discord server or twitter page to listen to feedback. Use this to grow a community for your game. Always have your game be owned by a group rather than your account, this allows you to pay developers easier to avoid double taxing (I may write a whole other guide on how to avoid tax eventually).
With the above tips, you should be well on your way to success in creating your game.
Thank you for reading through this massively long post. I hope I could have helped you as guide in navigating in this difficult journey of robux getting. Please leave any comments of things Iâve missed or things you disagree with below. I wish you the best of luck, and be sure to remember me when you become the next Roblox-made millionaire!
With that said and done, I will conclude the above with a quote from P.T. Barnum who was the man who inspired me to make this post.
âThe possession of a perfect knowledge of your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success.â
