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Last night I said I would share my itch figures in case it might be useful to anyone. I think the plan is to have some sort of shared spreadsheet at some point, but for now I'll just thread some screenshots from my analytics. https://twitter.com/heavenspider/status/1348242064681566211
My first ever sale from itch was on 31 October 2019, so this pretty much covers a year plus of selling games on itch. I had been using itch to release small games since about 2018, but hadn't started charging any money or putting up PWYW options until late 2019.
The itch Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality was a major impact on my numbers, and you can see how that massive spike dominates the graph.
The bundle happened in early June, and I had two games in it. Far From Home was submitted before the bundle launched, and Ithaca in the Cards was submitted a little later and you can see a big difference in the view and download numbers for the two games.
The other big spike was Free RPG Day (26 July 2020). I had put up all my games for free for that weekend. I didn't actually expect much, but apparently there are people/bots that monitor itch for free stuff, so that boosted numbers. You can see it's a wider spread of games.
There was a noticeable increase in average views/downloads before and after the big bundle due to the exposure, but I'm not so sure of any impact from the Free RPG Day weekend sale. You can see it pretty much returns to the same average very quickly.
Also a lot of the small peaks in each month are usually around releases of new games. I released a new game each month last year, so I think the peaks aren't that distinct. The two bundle games still make up the bulk of the traffic last year as people continued to explore them.
When you look at breakdowns per game, it's pretty stark. The two games that were in the bundle far outstrip all the others in views and downloads. The Outer Whorls got a bit of traction last year since it won a Freeplay Award, and Everybody (etc etc) was played on a podcast.
In terms of dollars coming in, I've made the most from the bundle that collects all the games I made for my Game A Month 2020 project, which is currently on sale for the rest of January (though every sale so far has been at or more than the normal price which is nice).
However, if you look at number of sales, my "best seller" is Everybody (Turns Into Monsters and Now Have to Hit the Streets to Figure Out How to Turn Back into Normal Boys), which has been sold 12 times and got me $54.
So the lesson to learn here is that big sale bundles will help with views, but the way to the big bucks is to make jokey hacks of simple one-shot games that feature boy bands and hot monsters. Also shout out to @unexploredcast for playing the game :D
