I Have 10k Players But Make No Money
I'm looking from advice from fellow game devs here.
Our Marketing Approach and Results
We've released the game last month on Steam, Android, and iOS, and have gotten some players through advertising on Meta and Google, spending about $100 a day on both. I'm currently up to 11k acquisitions on Android, and have a 4.4 star rating there.
We've been having some decent success at advertising, acquiring a decent number of players fairly cheaply (in the $0.30 USD range), mostly from players in the U.S. where we are located. The issue is that very few players actually purchase the full game, and many players drop off in those first three fights, and even fewer have purchased the game on Android (about 270 total purchases over the month since launch).
About The Game and Model
Our game is a Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! inspired puzzle boxing game, released with a freemium model on mobile, where you can download the game and play the first three fights for free, and their time-trials, before hitting a paywall to continue progressing through the story. On Steam we have a free demo available, and charge money upfront for the full game.
We chose this model because as gamers and indie devs we really hate in-app ads, loot boxes and similar mechanics, but also because our game loop doesn't really work with this kind of monetization. So we decided to make the game free to download on mobile, but have a paywall to unlock the full game.
What We've Tried
On Steam we launched with around 3k wishlists, but only about 200 purchases, so around a 6.5% conversion rate of wishlist to purchases. Most of these came in the first week or two of the launch, and sales have all but trickled out there.
We aren't really sure how to go about marketing the game on Steam, and where to do so. We've setup a Keymailer, and have been giving out keys to streamers and influencers in the hopes that the game picks up from there.
And while we've had quite a few streamers play the game and seemingly enjoying it, that hasn't really translated to more organic streamers picking it up, nor many sales and wishlists. To be fair most of the streamers that have played our game are on the smaller side, but the hope is that maybe a bigger streamer might see it and think it looks cool and give it a try too.
I've read through some of Chris Zukowski's posts and videos trying to learn more about marketing games, but most of his expertise seems to be specifically for Steam and less about mobile game strategies. We'd like the game to be successful on all platforms, but if we saw success on a single platform we'd also be willing to focus on growing the game there too.
My Question to You
I'm making this post in hopes of gathering some insight and advice from other indie devs, what can we do to try and gather more players and get more people purchasing the game on mobile?
How do we go about marketing the game on Steam and growing the game there? Most of our experience is in app development, despite us all being longtime gamers.
Tldr; how do we market the game towards paying players, and how do we get players to actually pay?
