Share your sales/downloads stats!

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Steamgirl
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Share your sales/downloads stats!

#1 Post by Steamgirl »

As Tom Grochowiak from MoaCube (Cinders) once said, as indies we have the power to share information! And he shared his initial sales for Cinders!

So I thought I'd share stats for my pwyw game, My Cup of Coffee: The Trouble with Earl Grey, too! It's been out for about 3 months now.
Image
Or this if image doesn't work.

In terms of exposure, I posted about the game here on the lemmasoft forums (my #1 referral), on twitter, on facebook, and on reddit. Two people did a let's play video of this game. To my knowledge, no one wrote any articles or reviews.

I hope this will create more transparency and help give an idea of what people can expect and/or trends. Please consider sharing your stats too! :)

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#2 Post by saguaro »

I have a feeling this thread will crush dreams.
itchio.png
itchio.png (5.79 KiB) Viewed 6745 times
PWYW. I don't remember when I signed up for itch.io but this is my war chest to date. 2 purchases were for the Censor (bless ye, gentle players) and 1 was Locked-In. I advertised Locked-In quite a bit when it came out several years ago, but I didn't advertise the Censor much when it came out earlier this year. So that's a 20% download rate and a little over a 1% tip rate on itch.io.

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#3 Post by Fox Lee »

WAG-earnings.jpg
WAG-earnings.jpg (9.27 KiB) Viewed 6711 times
Where Ages Go, since April 1!

Hahah, I don't even wanna think about how low that tip rate is as a percentage <XD But frankly I'm amazed people give me anything at all - I'm still at the stage of indie development where seeing a one dollar tip every now and then makes me happy all day. OTOH, if I don't suck at maths that's around a 35% download rate, which feels like it's probably pretty good? Guess I'll have to see what other peoples' numbers are like ^_^;

Let's see... my referrers are almost all other itch.io pages:
  1. Cute Demon Crashers by a miiiiiile
  2. Event page for NaNoRenO2015 jam
  3. Itch's "Free" price point list
  4. My LSF launch thread
....And then a bunch of other NaNo entries, itch search results or tags, within one or two points of each other. So being part of the jam accounts for almost all my exposure, with the rest coming from itch.io's search/category handling. Good thing my game is free <XD
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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#4 Post by sendo »

stats.JPG
For my game Target: Valentino since April! :D

So that's about 18% download rate and a generous tip from 3 people (Thank you very much!)

My biggest hits so far are from the NaNoRenO page and people who search for free RPGs. Cute Demon Crashes also brought a huge surge of hits when it launched a few weeks ago. There's also a consistent traffic coming from games.renpy.org, renai.us/game, and various other Nano entries.

I originally posted the download link here in LSF for about a day before I made an itch.io page so there's probably a few DLs not accounted for. But I don't think it is a very huge number. I'm just glad people take the chance to play my little game ^w^
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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#5 Post by PyTom »

Although it's not itch or PWYW, I can share Moonlight Walks's stats.

In August 2015, there were 198 visits to the MW web page, and 42 installs for Windows/Mac/Linux.

Android seems to dwarf that - in August, there were 3,815 people who saw MW in Google Play, and 607 of them installed it.

I haven't released an iOS port yet.
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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#6 Post by Godline »

PyTom wrote:Although it's not itch or PWYW, I can share Moonlight Walks's stats.

In August 2015, there were 198 visits to the MW web page, and 42 installs for Windows/Mac/Linux.

Android seems to dwarf that - in August, there were 3,815 people who saw MW in Google Play, and 607 of them installed it.

I haven't released an iOS port yet.
MW was one of the first games I played on Android. :) It's still a classic.

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#7 Post by ibukichan »

Stats ; Sept 1.PNG
Stats ; Sept 1.PNG (7.42 KiB) Viewed 6617 times
For my NaNoRenO game, Project E.A.R.T.H.!~

That's about a 45% download rate, I think> I don't know the percentage for tips, but it makes me happy that I got any at all~.

My top referrals were the itch.io NaNoReno page and my Lemma post, and I got a couple from tumblr posts, and various other itch.io tags and stuff. :)

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#8 Post by Camille »

Blind Griffin data
Blind Griffin data
Data for The Blind Griffin, which is pay what you want (with a starting price of free). We also give itch.io back 15% of the earnings. I think this is pretty consistent with our views that you shouldn't do PWYW if you're trying to make a real profit. The game's been out for about 5 months and 4 people made up the dev team, after all. Our top three referral sources (according to Google Analytics) are Englishotomegames.net, itch.io (the game was featured on the front page and we get a lot of "games like this" kinds of referrals, too), and LSF. Occasionally the game gets reviewed or LPed, which spikes up views/downloads for a little while. We were recently mentioned in an RPS article, which has been a big source of traffic, but mentions on PC Gamer, Jay is Games, and other sites helped, too.
Specific download data
Specific download data
Aaaand here's the more specific breakdown of download data if anyone wants that.

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#9 Post by Auro-Cyanide »

I poked Lore to provide the data for The Blind Griffin since I didn't have access to it, mostly because I was curious, but also to make a point.

$1,484.16 seems like a fair bit of money, but putting it into perspective:

It means we got about 12c per copy of the game downloaded.

It means that split 4 ways, each team member would have got around $315.38 (minus fees). In reality our Musician, Noyemi K, declined payment so between 3 that would be around $420.51 each.

Now breaking that down into the time that went in I can only speak for myself, but I spend at least 178 hours on this game. That is around 72 hours for the backgrounds, 64 hours on the sprites, 12 hours on the GUI, 3 hours on the logo and 27 hours on the CGs.

That means for this project I earnt around $2.36 per hour.

I personally like PWYW as a tipping system, but I do not recommend it if you are looking to make an actual commercial release and plan on making an income. I know it sounds a bit depressing, but it is the general state of affairs. I'm okay with it (otherwise I wouldn't be doing it) and I'm very happy with any type of reward and I mostly just want people to play the game, but I'm not looking to support myself off of the games I make. I think it's important to consider your channels and market when planning your release based on what you want the outcome to be :)

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#10 Post by Ozitiho »

saguaro wrote:I have a feeling this thread will crush dreams.
Mine are. :(

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#11 Post by Omega_93 »

If anyone plans on making a commercial game with a PWYW model and actually make a profit, I'm not really sure what to say to them apart from... well, don't bother. "Tips" on a free game are another matter though, nothing wrong with that.

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#12 Post by Deji »

Ohhh I can do this! :D
Cute Demon Crashers stats
Cute Demon Crashers stats
This includes the earlier version we released after NaNo as well somewhere in April? So about 5 months.
Looking at Lore's stats, I didn't know you could just hide files, I just deleted all the older builds :')
Current build stats:
Screen Shot 2015-09-02 at 9.08.30 AM.PNG
Screen Shot 2015-09-02 at 9.08.30 AM.PNG (30.97 KiB) Viewed 6281 times
EDIT: Oh, right, our referrals according to itch.io (haven't bothered with google analytics) are:
  • Google
  • Englishotomegames.net
  • Our tumblr page
  • LSF
For Autumn's Journey, I moved it so many times I don't have all the stats available ):
I think on the file hosting system (Rapidshare I believe?) it had about 10k downloads between all platforms.
We uploaded it to indieDB on October 2014, so 10 months (now I'm thinking we should put it on itch.io as well :') )
AJ - linux version on IndieDB.com
AJ - linux version on IndieDB.com
Screen Shot 2015-09-02 at 9.13.25 AM.PNG (9.86 KiB) Viewed 6281 times
AJ - mac version on IndieDB.com
AJ - mac version on IndieDB.com
Screen Shot 2015-09-02 at 9.14.23 AM.PNG (9.82 KiB) Viewed 6281 times
AJ - windows version on IndieDB.com
AJ - windows version on IndieDB.com
Screen Shot 2015-09-02 at 9.14.56 AM.PNG (9.96 KiB) Viewed 6281 times
And the AJ digital artbook on Gumroad, which is pay what you want starting at $0.
AJ Digital Artbook on Gumroad
AJ Digital Artbook on Gumroad
We published that in August of last year, so it's been 12 months
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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#13 Post by saguaro »

Ozitiho wrote:
saguaro wrote:I have a feeling this thread will crush dreams.
Mine are. :(
I was sort-of joking, but discussion helps put things in perspective. I enabled PWYW out of curiosity, not expecting anyone to tip at all because my games are short and kinda weird and have saguaro art. The tips have been a pleasant surprise, but realistically I won't earn enough to buy assets for future games or anything like that.

Looking at the shared stats so far, the percentage of players who tip on my stuff doesn't seem terribly different from groups who make awesome, professional-looking games. I'm thinking if you need to make money you're going to have to tell the player what the game is worth and hope they agree with you.

I wonder how the numbers change if one enables mandatory tipping--selling a game for $1 or something like that--and how that affects downloads.

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#14 Post by KuroOneHalf »

General stats for Cuttlebone, released roughly 2 and a half months ago.
Image
Image

As for referrals, I've noticed the biggest contributors have been games.renpy.org (which took me by surprise), "Related Games" suggestions in other itch.io visual novel pages, and twitter. More recently, I find that I also get a lot of referrals from the tag-dating-sim and genre-rpg categories in itch.io.

ps: Any idea if there's a way to check referrals from all the months combined?
Deji wrote:Oh, right, our referrals according to itch.io (haven't bothered with google analytics) are:
* Google
Ooh, interesting, from google huh? :O
I haven't gotten a single referral from that. How does one even get referrals from google? Could it perhaps be by not direct linking the game in places where you talk about it, and then folks have no choice but to google the store page?

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Re: Share your sales/downloads stats!

#15 Post by Deji »

Kuroonehalf wrote: Ooh, interesting, from google huh? :O
I haven't gotten a single referral from that. How does one even get referrals from google? Could it perhaps be by not direct linking the game in places where you talk about it, and then folks have no choice but to google the store page?
I have no idea o_o;
I have linked Cute Demon Crashers' itch.io page everywhere, I think? But it seems people still google it, maybe from hearing about it in other places and googling it, I guess...
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