Elanis5 years of sales as a Steam Developer
#solodev #indiedev #indiegame #gamedev #steam #stats #events #sales
Microsvard@Elanis Oh, that's an interesting result. Thanks for sharing your experience. Could you please share more details about how you managed to get your first 1,000 sales? What did you do for this?
@Microsvard Hi! Thanks :) The first 1000 were "pretty simple" if I can say so, I released both my games with respectively 400 and 1.8k wishlists.
But the next 1000 were more about participating in big sales. Also regular sale every other month. And not discounting too much at once to keep value.
Also, I like to keep updating my games so people kept seeing activities on the game (now I'm at one update per year per game, with a few bugfixes, QoL and minor features). It probably helped a bit
@Elanis Wow, I must say, that's an excellent conversion rate.
1000/(400+1.8k wishlists) = 45%.
What channels did you use to acquire these 400 and 1.8k wishlists? What was effective, and what wasn't? I'm trying to figure out how this marketing works, and frankly, I don't really understand it yet. My engineering mind tells me there must be patterns...
1000/(400+1.8k wishlists) = 45%.
What channels did you use to acquire these 400 and 1.8k wishlists? What was effective, and what wasn't? I'm trying to figure out how this marketing works, and frankly, I don't really understand it yet. My engineering mind tells me there must be patterns...
@Microsvard Well, it looks great when you look at it like that. But it still took 1.5 years to reach that figure, and in that 1.5 years that's a total of 4k+ added wishlists (so it already divide by 2 that rate).
Also, my games released with the support from a few communities, so it probably helped to push the number up a bit :)
As for marketing ... well, I still don't understand it either ahah. When I try hard it doesn't always work well, when I don't, it sometimes get lots of views
@Elanis So, in your case, publishing in narrow communities, I'm guessing Reddit, was probably key. Because Steam itself doesn't seem to promote games from new developers without an external user base.
@Microsvard That was mainly two discord communities where I made my game (in gamejams)
Reddit, I tried, it's cool but communities are very strict on selfpromo, you have to be careful
Steam, its algorithm give visibility to games selling, so you have to start the engine and then it helps. Sales/Fest are really good for visibility too
I'd recommend reading GameDiscoverCo and How To Market a Game newsletters, they helped me understanding a bit more things even though I still have lots to learn!
@Elanis Thanks for the recommendations. I'll check out "GameDiscoverCo and How to Market a Game Newsletter." I've already started reading.
@Microsvard Happy to help :)