I'm fairly new to the game, but I'm a solo developer. Currently I dont make enough to quit my day job, but it is a nice supplementary income, and it's nice to get paid a bit for something I truly enjoy.

There are also several solo/small shop developers that do make a living from selling plug-ins. Here are a few that I can think of off the top of my head.

Auburn Sounds: https://www.auburnsounds.com/ Valhalla DSP: https://valhalladsp.com/ Kilohearts: https://kilohearts.com/

+1 Valhalla makes some of my favorite reverbs!

what's your link?

Cut Through Recordings: https://cutthroughrecordings.com/home

Steve Duda, the developer of Serum is kind of the poster child for this. He contracts out for pieces of the synth (UI design, resampler, filters), but he's mostly a one-man shop and, as I understand it, Serum pays the bills.

It's hard to tell how much Duda is an outlier, though, and how many other people could succesfully follow his path.

I was in talks with a (new-style) 'label' that sells samples, sound packs, and VST plugins. Some of their plugins have been purchased 25k times.

One of the things I've also heard from labels is that not only there's money in the VST world (it's also very crowded, piracy is rampant as noted, etc.), a lot of plugins are ported over to iOS and are sold as "virtual pedals". The number of sales and revenue there was noted as being very interesting.

When I had an active band, our guitarist went from bringing his amp to rehearsal, to having a bunch of pedals, to having a digital pedal board, to having an iPhone with some sort of tiny adapter.

I made fun of him and we wouldn't have trusted it to be used live, but damn it worked impressively well

They do. Strezov sampling is one guy. Serum is one guy. Chris Heinz is one guy, etc. etc.

But you have to be willing to put in the time and make phenomenal products, because no one wants average instruments and effects, we can get those for free.

There are definitely big players making a lot of money from plugins they develop. Here are a few to check out:

($1200) https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bund...

($300) https://www.soundtoys.com/product/soundtoys-5/

($500) https://www.arturia.com/products/analog-classics/v-collectio...

However, piracy is also pretty big when it comes to plugins.

Sure, but,

>Do solo or small shop vst plugin developers make any money?

Quite a few small developers in this space. It's not like indie gaming, but there's also less competition. I think you need to be a musician/producer to be successful here though.

The implication seems to be "no".

Steve Duda wrote Serum, probably the most popular synth plugin in modern electronic music. everyone I know has a license. so "yes", with the caveat that it's difficult to actually create products of this level of quality

That implication would be wildly incorrect.

With the operative word being "developers" I disagree.

Yeah but facts don't really care about agreement: there are loads of renowned single-person VST shops, and many more "just a handful of folks" ones. Chris Heinz, Steve Duda, Strezov Sampling, Matt Tytel, heck even Plugin Guru, etc. etc. are all renowned folks in the VST/VSTi world, and that doesn't even scratch the surface.

Having a friend working at Arturia, I don't think they're "small shop" nor do they make "a lot of money" to be honest

AFAIK, Mike Schuffham (www.scuffhamamps.com) earns a living developing and selling S-Gear. It might be a semi-retirement or lifestyle type living - not sure - but he's been doing it over a decade now. He doesn't charge as much as he could and gives away free updates for far too long. Despite being a (mostly at least) solo effort, its widely regarded as being a top-tier amp sim. I personally think it sounds better than both Helix and Bias, which are both heavily bank-rolled outfits.

It doesn't have their breadth, but the tones it does have are nearly as good as it gets without serious air movement.