How much to spend on indie game marketing
2 min read
By Eduardo Orellana ·
There is no right percentage. Set a marketing budget from what a wishlist is worth to you: if a wishlist turns into about 0.1 to 0.15 sales at launch and each sale nets you a few dollars, a paid wishlist above a dollar or two rarely pays back. Money buys reach (ads), quality (a trailer editor, capsule art) and access (events, PR). With no budget, time buys the rest: festivals, creators, clips, devlogs and community.
Every marketing dollar has to buy a wishlist you can afford
Work out what a wishlist is worth: your expected first-week conversion (GameDiscoverCo's median for bigger launches is about 0.15, and 0.10 above $10) times what each sale nets you after Steam's share and taxes. For a $10 game netting about $6.30, that is roughly $0.60 to $0.95 of first-week revenue per wishlist, more over the game's life. Spending above that to buy wishlists only makes sense if the long tail is strong.
What money buys
- Quality: capsule art, a trailer editor, translation of the store page.
- Reach: ads, measured per wishlist.
- Access: event booths, showcase fees, PR firms.
Quality usually comes first: it improves every free channel too.
With no budget
Time replaces money: festivals (free), creator outreach (keys cost nothing), clips and devlogs (your footage), community posts, Steam's own announcements and Curator Connect. A disciplined few hours a week across two channels can carry a launch.
Where Flockbay fits
Flockbay brings the cost of the quality items down: capsules cut from a real frame, trailers and devlogs from real gameplay, a store page and website drafted from the game, and ads drafted on your own accounts where you set the budget. The publishing tools are free in beta until 1 December 2026; Flockbay takes nothing on ad spend.