Smiley sale analysis   2 June 2010

Overall, the sale went well. I sold just over 100 copies averaging at $1.32 a copy. If we exclude the 1 cent sales the average goes up to $1.87. I’m quite pleased with the average price, I expected the former to be less than $1. I was, however, hoping for a higher quantity of sales. We’ll get to that in a bit though.

Getting the word out was essential. Rock Paper Shotgun was great help, with around 20% of traffic coming from them. Similarly, sites like IndieGames.com, the2bears and CreativeApplications.Net were essential in driving traffic to this site. The problem was getting coverage on bigger sites. I sent mail to, but failed to gain coverage on sites like Joystiq, Kotaku, etc. If even one of them had run a story, I think the number of sales would have increased dramatically.

Posting a trailer on YouTube was a great idea. It received more than 3,000 views over the two week period. The number continues to climb, as of writing it’s at 3,700 views. It was time consuming to put together a quality video, but it was well worth it. Moving forward, I’ll definitely put together videos for upcoming games when possible.

Looking at both the “Copies Sold vs. Time” and the “Website Visits vs. Time” charts it’s clear that I failed to maintain momentum over the course of the two week sale period. I staggered emails to websites with the intention of receiving fresh coverage every couple of days. Again, that didn’t work out because some of the websites I contacted just didn’t get back to me, including a couple of indie websites. It’s understandable (covering every piece of indie news would overwhelm any site) but unfortunate for us indie developers. I’ll need to find a better balance between indie and mainstream sites to contact, with an emphasis on the former.

Further, I think the sale went on a little too long. Had I run it for just a week, it is possible that I might have gained sales, since the short period would encourage people to buy sooner rather than later. The problem with “later” is that it leads to procrastination and forgetting to purchase the game in the end. I know this because a “close friend” of mine has a similar problem.

With all that said, I’m really pleased with how the sale turned out. It was fun to get reacquainted with Smiley, make a trailer, get the word out, and most of all, get Smiley in the hands of many more gamers. I’d love to hear what you lot think of the game, so feel free to get in touch and/or comment below.