Hello my dear fellow developers,

I just released my very first itch.io game Vincent: The Secret of Myers a few days ago, and I have a genuine question for you guys: what exactly counts as "doing well" on itch.io? How many views or downloads per day/week should a game have for it to be considered "doing well" here? I hate to admit this but watching the analytics of my game has been making me quite anxious, and I honestly just have no clue if I should feel happy about the views/downloads I have right now. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Hello dino999z - I have no answer for you, but the same question ;-) I am developing a semi open-worlded zombie-themed first-person shooter https://nyarlathotep198.itch.io/downtown-z and I have 107 downloads since I started to develop the game - the Problem is, I have no idea, if this is a successful game or not (I think it is more, than I expected but I have no idea, if it is "doing well")....greetings from germany

If you can beat more then 5 downloads then i would consider that a good job

Ok, tha it was a good job ;-) -Thank you

I saw something on Twitter recently about something like this. Think of the people playing your game in actual physical space. 10 people? You just had a nice party at your house. 30 people? That's a fairly busy cafe! It really helps to contextualize the numbers on the screen. 

Also, set your own goals. Don't compare to others. I have two tiny games on my account that have gotten ~20 plays each. I'm super proud of that, but I'm sure if someone was used to getting 1,000 plays they would be devastated to see 20. It's all relative. Just be proud of yourself for what numbers you are pulling and think about how to do better. 

The indie game world is very busy. There are a TON of games showing up, and that's a good thing, but it also means some gems will get lost in the clutter.

Your goal will be personal and defined by the parameters of your own individual project.

I've launched five paid asset packs on Itch plus a couple of tiny freebies, and have 100+ total downloads between all of my products, and well over a dozen payments [purchases] on the platform so far. My traffic on Itch.IO is far higher, it's in the thousands, across all my Itch pages, and these numbers, I hope, will only climb as a result of the Holiday sale I'm running which has some extremely deep discounts.

Success there right now would be a regular flow of buyers and accumulation of a few actual reviews/ratings as that's currently the main reason my views largely don't turn into purchases. People buy, and they like what they bought - I hope - but they generally don't take the time to rate.

My current 2019 Holiday sale

As far as my GAME successes go, none in the 'game' category yet but I'll be posting a game in about three months (Miniature Multiverse) and given how much this cost me to develop, ie thousands of hours' time and about $1300 in cash, so I have two real metrics here.

$1300 in sales raised is target #1, the game project at least didn't lose me money. That's the minimum break-even figure.

Target #2 is around $4500, at which point I'm making almost as much as an indie dev as I've been making on mTurk per hour, and as I approach or even pass that mark I can seriously look at indie dev as a career and ditch the mindless work that is currently propping it up.

There's a ton of content in this project that nobody's really been shown anything of yet. I think when people see what I've done with this they'll be blown away. But I'm biased. Maybe my work just sucks and that's why things aren't selling. :P

Your goals are likely different - tied to the cost of your project and what you've put into it.

Every case is unique.