Worked the whole year on an addon, and a blender website. I slept average 5 hours a day. After work (boring work), I worked at home 7 hours more a day.
Result: 7 a 10 pounds a day income form Blender activities. Costs: 3 pounds a day.
So that is 4 a 7 pounds a day, around 150 a month for nearly full time job.
Cannot continue this, need to think about the future of my two daughters.
Developing and maintaining add-ons is a tedious job. Most Blender users probably do not see it that way.
Really sorry to hear that man 
The truth is that this style of product development (either addons, games, custom projects, etc) have that high risk of not getting ROI and is quite the dark side no one wants to think about. It is not really known if a product that is made that way is going to be a hit or not right from the beginning because is more of a trial and error process. When not having that luxury of time to do trial-and-errors it means that financial needs must be covered with other ways.
Success is only a matter of the right timing, which means under certain circumstances something becomes really important and people need it, but until then nobody knows it is useful and the product goes unnoticed.
It really bothers me when very talented developers need to drop what they are doing and find job out of financial needs. I know 2-3 open source projects I was following that got āfrozenā that way and now pretty much placed on cryogenics chamber.
I really love your website, Iām using it quite often to find addons that I wouldnāt find otherwise.
Really sad to hear about situation, I hope youāll get better.
I am very new user to Blender. I can understand where you are coming from in my pass life Please do not quit!! Slow down until you feel comfortable doing a little here and a little there. Saying that your daughters is the most precious cargo you carry. Good Luck and be safe.
New User to Blender
Based on Blendermarket stats, you would be foolish if you think you can live off of Blender addon sales as your only income source (ie. no part-time or full-time job elsewhere). The market for paid Blender addons is growing, but itās not near the size of that for Cinema 4D or Max.
That said, the addon and website development can remain as a side gig.
Sorry to hear about your problems but blender addons is certainly not enough to make a living except for a few exceptions of course.
Some people are successful with tutorials channels but you need a whole lot of free time to feed such a channel and there is no guarantee it will succeed!
As an indie game dev i think i have pick the most risky route and i work like a slave and like you i have no absolute guarantee it will be a success and my worst enemy is time since i am no longer a young lad with all my life in front of me.
Like another poster already mention donāt quit completely but do what you can and remember that perseverance is the mother of all virtue!
Which add-on did you work on? I will edit this with a more well rounded response when I get a minute.
Edit:
I apologize in advance, because I have some constructive criticism, that may be a little on the harsh side. Iām genuinely sorry to see you give up on Blender related activities, but if youāre giving up, I feel like I should give you my thoughts & feelings on certain things before you go.
Okay, soā¦ I went looking for your add-on. Is it Eevee Express? It seems like a nice addon, but itās hard to understand what it does. I can only speak for myself, but the reason I purchase add-ons is because the video clearly illustrates what it does, or it has a super feature that I really need. For example, up until Blender 2.81, Pivot Transform satisfied a dire need for me to move a pivot easily, and even though 2.81 lets you move the origin now, Pivot Transform still makes it even more convenient, the price was right, and the video demonstrated its usefulness plainly and clearly. After watching the Eevee express video, about the only thing I could understand, is that it lets you add backdrops easily, and manipulate multiple lights easier? That doesnāt seem like a killer feature to me.
As I said, it seems like a nice add-on, but Iām just having a hard time understanding its usefulness. Bare in mind, I myself have posted some of my own add-ons, and have done a very poor job illustrating their features, but I am not trying to profit from any of my add-ons, or make a living. I guess the point Iām trying to make is, partly to blame for some of your less than expected add-on sales, is due to the unclear presentation of your add-on.
Secondly, it might help to gauge what users really want from Blender. Are there a lot more animators or modelers? Which areas need the most help? For me, Blender has loads of room for improvement in the quality of life department concerning modeling. I havenāt produced any killer features yet, but if you take a second to look around at the add-ons with the killer features, thereās MACHIN3, Hardops, and quad remesher. These addonās offer something truly amazing to Blender, all have to do with modeling and I imagine they get a lot of sales because of that. Generally speaking, the very first thing people do when they hop into Blender, is start creating/modifying objects, so automatically thatās going to be a huge target audience. I also, keep hearing that blenderās animation needs loads of optimization work, so, I donāt know if itās a good idea to jump into making add-ons for that unless it offers some kind of performance benefit? Spit balling ideas here, I could be completely wrong in my assumption here.
Another thing that I would like to point out, is the soft spoken nature of your narration. Even with the echo filter youāve applied, itās still lacking enthusiasm. Now, this isnāt 100% necessary to have a great, enthusiastic voice, as MACHIN3 opted to just use voice synthesizer, but for some reason, your voice actually makes an interesting video hard to watch because I become sleepy towards the end of it.
Regarding the website, if youāre shutting it down, then to me, that seems like youāre not in a position to maintain it. You should have designed a website that is more self sufficient, that you wouldnāt have to shut down. Now, blender users are going to be wary of future blender add-on sites for fear of them just being shut down again when the author decides he has no time or desire to maintain them. So, for the time being, the go-to sites for add-ons will be, blendermarket, gumroad, and blenderartists. Itās already over saturated, so maybe thatās the reason youāre shutting it down? I donāt know. Itās really disappointing that youāre announcing youāre giving up, and shutting down the website. Like, man. Do we even get a voice? How expensive is it to just leave it up and running?
With all of that said, I really respect how active you were on the forums, and truth be told, I donāt really know much else about you, other than the few videos of yours have stumbled upon, forum threads, and now finally your add-on.
I think, instead of giving up, you should continue to remain an active member, providing valuable feedback for others, or continue to create add-ons in your free timeā¦ but maybe with less at stake. For instance, find a reliable source of income, and then do Blender stuff for the passion.
Also, one last thing I think I should mention is, I think you may have spread yourself too thin. You mentioned in your OP that you work 5 boring hours, and then spend an additional 7 hours working on Blender related activities (I assume this includes your add-on, forum posting, reviewing addonsāboth in comments and youtube videosā¦ maintaining your website, etc). Perhaps, you need to reevaluate your time management, and spend less time on the less profitable things, and more time on the things that matter. Perhaps try your hand at an entirely new/different addon, or, try doing some paid 3D blender work, or offer some kind of paid consulting (no idea if thatās a thing in 2019 for Blender).
Again, I hope you take all of this as constructive criticism, and not a personal attack of any kind. Hopefully others will read this and find it useful.
Good luck!
Yup, just like true artists or all common ppl. Most get barely through their whole life and after passing on (to another dimension) others make a fortune.
BTW
IMHOā¦ Those who say they do it for the children, they donāt! Itās indirectly propagated lie. Just look around, all the talkers destroying future for all beings. What is really done is out of fear and delusional social sustainability, beleiveng to grant individual the āgood feeling and freedomā (ego feeding) - while truly forgetting how to be happy as a whole self. Only a doer, often humble & quiet one is able to make others and global family happy.
But what do I know. I donāt exist. 
Ohw, thanks for all the replies. I will come back to it later.
Such a relief to see all the engagement here. Had to release a few tears, not kidding here.
Really good feedback.
The trick with Addons/Plugins is to fill a hole in the workflow, do it really well and market it really well and even then itās no guarantee that the userbase is as enthusiastic about your plugin as you are.
Iāve spent the last 10 years as a C4D user and way back in the beginning there were loads of plugin developers making useful scripts or small workflow enhancers. Most if not all of these developers have moved on now, at best it was a sideline and just became too much hassle to keep up with the ever changing API.
The only plugins that make money are the likes of XParticles, TurbulenceFD and the various 3rd party Renderers. Thereās a chap called Nitroman who develops Python plugins but I donāt think this is a full time job for him. A former Maxon developer run CinemaPlugins and I think he has one main Plugin that accounts for most of his business called DEMEarth which is probably the best satellite topology generator on any platform. It has proven to be very popular for him and I believe he puts most of his weight behind that product.
As others have said it requires a bit of luck to be in the right place at the right time. My advice to @anon72338821 is to get up, dust yourself off and have another go. The road to success is littered with failures, keep going. @Neltulz has some very sound advice there. I too saw EV Express and had no idea what it did and Iām still not quite sure why this Addon is āmust haveā. Youāve really got to make you Addon stand out in a crowded market.
Take a look at GreyscaleGorilla who make simple plugins for C4D but look at the polished presentation, itās very easy for a customer to know exactly what theyāre getting and he is nothing but enthusiastic about his products. https://greyscalegorilla.com/downloads/hdri-studio-rig/
Good luck.
Iām now making add-ons as hobbyā¦ Nothing yet released. When I release them, I expect that I get income to buy coffee and catfood.
But Iām really experienced software engineer so I know how to avoid maintenance pitfalls, so Iām not worried about that. My design philosophy decouples add-ons from scenes, so scenes will work as long as Blender works and add-ons builds scene by configuring scene setups, or import stuff from clean blend files. Opening ready blend file on next version of Blender, seems to work very well if things are simple.
So Iām kind of leveraging much as possible maintenance effort to Blender foundation and Python software foundation. I trust Python software foundation and I know they donāt break stuff much (except that 2->3) but I expect that Blender foundation to break API or make minor changes to functionality (I know that things changes there) , so I basically isolate UI and structures from actual add on code I create, and I leverage much as possible functionality from Python -> .blend file.
Blender foundation seems to keep published nodes and official, integrated stuff much more stable than Python API. I mean that .blend files without scripts keep working but super complex add on scripts easily breaks. They seems to be focus on adding functionality when they know that behaviour doesnāt likely change in future.
So after I release stuff, I will polish them to state that I donāt have worry much about them, just check that they work when new Blender version arrives.
I also think it is good idea to avoid adding dependency to some C++ crap in simple things. Using C++ add more complexity and depedencies, and C++ ABI that operating systems offer isnāt usually stable as Python 3.x
Iām also aware that when I release something to ready for production use, it is better to keep things stable as possible.
Here a few addon i would instantly buy ;
1- A complete efficient baking suite for blender specially being able to bake displacement map from procedurals. The current solution for these are a pain and i donāt think the blender devs have any intention to fix that anytime soon.
2- A more efficient proportional editing system showing the vertex affected by color just like weight painting instead of that bugged circle that you donāt even see depending on the scale of your scene.
3- A geometry painting system similar to 3ds max here a quick video, i know there is one on the blender market but it is very basic missing lot of features and the author is not a coder. ;
4- A 3D connexion support addon would be very nice since itās not fully supported in blender since if you go under a mesh your axis are inverted making it a chore to work under a model in the viewport.
5- An incremental backup system where instead of having only one backup you can go back to if you crash you get 3 that are created with time interval so you can get various state of your scene instead of a single one.
Thatās just a few i had in mind since there are many more to cover some critical features blender is missing .
6- An addon manager/library, not sure how it would work but basically it would do what your website does or blender market, by choosing the addons directly from categories - for clarityās sake. Also creators would be able to add their own addons to this ever growing library.
Icing on the cake: all addons would be required to have an āupdateā function.
I find the process of finding addons and updating particularly time consuming in blender, as an artist I want to focus on art, not maintenance. This is also where addon creators could definitely help!
Ahw, just saw a site, selling my things for less than a dollar.
I think some donāt want to know what else iāve seen.
add-ons, assets or?
I saw a guy selling Skyrim assets on the unity asset store!
What if itās an addon + assets?
What iāve seen, those were some of the most popular addons.
I personally do not recommend that add-on developers are looking to see if their add-ons have been put on the bitcoin black markets. It is what it is.
1 & 2 without hesitation.
