for me it's a hobby, I enjoy creating a game much more than playing it, so it's a game to do it, except that the goal is not in a virtual world but in the real world, if it makes sense. lol
if you mean money for marketing it is 0, for the time it is a little more but not much. I am not and I do not want to be a blogger or a youtuber, not even a spammer (in the good sense) or a social manager, so I do just the minimum even if I know it is a mistake ..
but speaking of money I read somewhere that converting a person from visitor to player costs about 1 $ of marketing, but we are talking about marketing done well, for us independent / soloists I don't know if it is a viable path because we compete against millions of dollars..
in my ideal world as "artists" I think our job is just to create things, and the rest should be done by the "fans" ..
I don't know, honestly the marketing thing just makes me sad. lol