How to convert views to wishlists
Solo indie dev here working on a small puzzle game on Steam.
The game is almost finished now. I recently updated the Steam page, refreshed the trailer/screenshots, updated the demo, and for the last 5 days I’ve basically gone full marketing mode trying to learn social media, posting shorts, uploading clips, etc.
The strange part is that I am getting views. A couple of shorts on youtube hit over a thousand each and one Instagram reel has over 15K views already (I still haven't been able to get something that works on tik tok).
But these are what the AI calls "passive viewers"... the wishlist count has NOT moved at all... in fact a lost 1 wishlist from Japan.
For those of you who have gone through this before, what actually helped convert these "passive views" into wishlists? is it that I just needing more volume and time?
I’m also unsure about creator outreach at this time.
Right now I have a polished demo and the game is probably 1-2 weeks away from content complete (mostly adding the last few levels and i need to create the full game's achievement images - which I already have a tool for and the draft designs ready).
The AI suggests I start reaching out to smaller puzzle/cozy creators now with the demo link, but I'm not sure if I should wait until the full game is complete and send Steam keys instead?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
And just to get ahead of the "you should've started marketing way earlier" comments - I know, and you're right. I did do my research over a year ago with Chris Z. + other marketing-related courses, but my dev time was very limited and I consciously deferred this to now because when I started this game almost a year ago, my goal in mind was simply to "learn how to publish a game on Steam" (not intending it to have commercial success)... but now that I have it in a polish state, I would like to at least reach 1K wishlists before releasing so I can start to build a larger audience for my next game by making a good impression with this first one.