Let's say that, in total, 50 000 people see your game funding page and related materials (youtube, social media, etc).
How many of those people would you expect to contribute to the actual funding of the game, by giving $5-$10 on average?
Which factors would contribute to that viewership-->donation conversion?
I'm thinking it would be way lower than 10%, perhaps less than 3%?
That's ultimately a measure of how well targeted your marketing campaign was. If you market to the wrong audience, 0%. If you market to the right audience (which is near impossible), 100%.
It's also a measure of how good your pitch is. I would assume a page with "give me money for my game pls" and no pictures would get 0% too 
People who have run campaigns will have data on views/conversions...
A more useful discussion might be what kind of marketing you were going to use to deliver views in the first place, and how should you tweak it.
Most good online marketing these days is constantly re-targeted, based on tracking the people that were targeted, grouping them by conversion, then refining the targeting algorithm based on which groups were successful.
4 minutes ago, Hodgman said:That's ultimately a measure of how well targeted your marketing campaign was. If you market to the wrong audience, 0%. If you market to the right audience (which is near impossible), 100%.
It's also a measure of how good your pitch is. I would assume a page with "give me money for my game pls" and no pictures would get 0% too
People who have run campaigns will have data on views/conversions...
A more useful discussion might be what kind of marketing you were going to use to deliver views in the first place, and how should you tweak it.
Most good online marketing these days is constantly re-targeted, based on tracking the people that were targeted, grouping them by conversion, then refining the targeting algorithm based on which groups were successful.
I'm guessing that the following factors contribute greatly:
- gameplay video
- enticing storyline, theme, and world setting
- previous experience
But none of that may matter if it is not marketed; do you have any idea where I can find all about the marketing aspect of it?
I think the equation is more complex than good game = good conversion rate.
While all those points you indicated are important, I'm willing to bet that most potential buyers would not dedicate so much time researching about a potential future game. Likely, people are nowhere nearly as excited about your idea as you are and the time window to convince somebody that your game is actually something to be excited about is very limited.
Timing, perceived value, perceived buzz around the game, all of these counts towards conversion. I believe there is also a difference between exposing your game to 50000 people in one go (big banner in some websites) and building up exposure, or doing it in increments.
Anyhow, here is a nice article about it https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4117/building_buzz_for_indie_games.php?print=1 that has much more valuable information than I can possibly give
Do you think it is worth hiring some company to do this for you, if they would guarantee results?
Would that be exorbitantly expensive or reasonably priced?
2 hours ago, Armantium said:Do you think it is worth hiring some company to do this for you, if they would guarantee results?
Which results would be enough for you? 1%? 10%
No company can guarantee 100% conversion rate, even if the product is the "Most Awesome Game Ever With The Most Incredible Campaign Ever" ™. If they offer that to you, or something among those lines, get away.
2 hours ago, Armantium said:Would that be exorbitantly expensive or reasonably priced?
How much is expensive for you? Generally, it's nor cheap, but they can work with budget tiers (for budget X, they offer Y, for X3, Y3, etc).
4 hours ago, Armantium said:Do you think it is worth hiring some company to do this for you, if they would guarantee results?
Would that be exorbitantly expensive or reasonably priced?
Unless you've got a lot of free time to learn a new skillset (marketing is an entire degree / job...) then hiring someone that already knows what they're doing is probably going to get you better results. Also, it depends how much you value your own time... If you think your own time is free, then hiring someone will cost infinitely more than doing it youself... If you think your own time is worth $50/hr, then it's probably cheaper to hire an expert than to spend all of your own time learning their job from scratch.
From stats that I've seen, the cost to acquire a user range from 5c for a very well targeted campaign to $20 for a very broad campaign. e.g. a AAA studio might spend $100M to get 5M sales ($20 cost per acquisition), which results in $300M retail revenue for them. Or an indie studio might spend $200 on facebook ads and get 4000 downloads of their free game ($0.05 per acquisition)...
I haven't spent any money marketing my game yet, but I've talked to quite a few companies in person, such as lumiconsulting.com, surpriseattackgames.com, and stridepr.com. If you search around, you'll find there's a lot of experts willing to help you in exchange for payment.
It all depends on your budget though... I would expect to pay a marketing expert similar to any other contractor on my project, which is to say, well above minimum wage for their time. So, "expensive" depends on how much you're spending on the rest of your project.
5 hours ago, Hodgman said:I haven't spent any money marketing my game yet, but I've talked to quite a few companies in person, such as lumiconsulting.com, surpriseattackgames.com, and stridepr.com. If you search around, you'll find there's a lot of experts willing to help you in exchange for payment.
I know this greatly depends on project, but I'm curious: how was your experience with them? What ultimately made you decide that it wasn't a good move to hire them at the time?
1 hour ago, Thiago Monteiro said:I know this greatly depends on project, but I'm curious: how was your experience with them? What ultimately made you decide that it wasn't a good move to hire them at the time?
Oh all of those people are great. I'm definitely going to throw money at some of them when my project is closer to completion.
