I’m not doing this for the tax man, but over in another forum someone claimed that only very few indy game developers earn enough to make a living at it and that made me wonder if he might be right. So if you would, please honestly indicate what you think your income has been (on average) over the past 12 months. If you want to do it anonymously, that’s cool. Most of us don’t discuss our incomes publicly and I understand that. Thanks for participating! 
i’m not speaking soley about unity and game dev itself here (3D graphics services for games, flashgame etc…), but in general i live mostley from this “indipendent game related” services i provide for about 5 yrs. now. Well last year (2008) was really bad, but now after jumping onto the iphone gamedev thing, my earnings are on the rise again.
PS: i did’nt vote, because this value fluctuates far to much, but this it does between the 2 middle options…
UPDATE: i voted now 
PS2:
what i missed to say about my work history - doing game related stuff was and is simply the most entertaining and satisfying work in my experience. Nothing better than designing characters, bring them to life and have people love (or hate) them…
This is worth the somewhat unsteady income and uncertainty in this business-segment for me…
Thanks SpaceFrog, you made a good point. I’m sure there are a lot of indy game developers who add to their incomes by doing contract / freelance work on the side. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all part and parcel of being an “Indy Developer”.
What? Indies can make money? lolwut?
hehe, on serious note, not many indie devs really have the time to deveplop their games to a point where they could really profit from it. We just tend to hear alot of success stories, but one should remember that behind every success story there is at least 10 less successive ones. If not more.
I only work on games in my free time currently (got a fun dayjob), but the earnings are already decent this way. I do contract work only, didn’t take the plunge into self-publishing yet.
Made about 40% of what my dayjob pays with the game jobs on weekends. And I don’t work anywhere near 40% of fulltime on games, so there is certainly potential to earn a living from it. IF someone is not as lazy as I am, that is.
I’ve been doing this as a hobby strictly for my own enjoyment for two years. But recently I’ve switched gears and have decided to try this out as a second income. The goal is to make at least $20,000 per year in addition to my day job. We’ll see how things stand by this time next year.
hehe yeah yeah lazyness is a deadly think with self employment.
Also its one thing to get enough work for 40% time filling but actually a whoel different story doing the same for 100% time filling.