No, not top sellers like Braid. Ordinary indies that don’t manage to hit the top of the charts or land an XBLA deal — the stuff that comes and goes on the web portals, made by a guy or gal in the evenings working on it, often churning out hidden object games or another match-3 game because they have to.

Well, Grey Alien Games, an indie developer themselves, has culled some answers from a rather noisy thread on Indiegamer.

Cliffski, of Positech Games, made $189,423 in 2008 from direct sales…

Princec of Puppygames posted his direct sales figures and they told a very different story. He has made $11993 from 1073 units sold in 2008.

Siread of New Star Games posted his Direct Sales stats of $43246 and 2545 units.

SteveZ of Blue Tea Games shared his direct sales figures for 2008 of $1299 and 72 units sold… This then prompted a surprise turnaround from SteveZ who posted his Big Fish Games royalty report from November 2008. It showed $20837 in royalties in just a single month!!

Separately, but prompted by that post, we see the CEO of Anawiki Games posting

My sales stats for 2008: $21,650.09 and 1152 units. I have released 6 games so far on PC, Mac and Linux (not all of them have Linux versions). Two of them have been released in 2008.

One takeaway here — it’s hard work, and for most, you can’t quit your day job. But there’s plenty of opportunity if you are determined and skillful.