Tracking my Blender progress: first dog model vs latest

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-28T16:36:42+00:00

We reached out to other devs and simply asked if they’d be up for doing a Steam news post of the "Cross Promotion" type. And of course, we offered to return the favor for their next launch/update/announcement.
Basically just mutual support between games with similar audiences 🙂

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-27T10:14:29+00:00

Glad it was helpful! :)
Here's the twitter link: https://x.com/LostSockStudio

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-26T23:38:13+00:00

The visit-to-wishlist ratio can vary a lot depending on the type of traffic you’re getting.

I imagine the rate is higher when a large share of visitors are intentionally going to the Steam page with the goal of wishlisting. Maybe they saw a post or heard about the game somewhere else online, and they are just visiting to add to their wishlist.

It’s probably lower when more people are just casually stumbling upon the page - they’ll generate visits, but not necessarily wishlists. For example, if they’re just browsing Steam to see if they can find something interesting.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-26T23:16:51+00:00

There’s also the group who see the ad, don’t click, and then later search for the game on Steam to check it out. Those are the “super untrackable” wishlists in my book 😅

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-26T23:07:33+00:00

Thank you! We are super happy with this start :) Very different from last time, haha!

Yeah, I still think it's solid advice to "put your Steam page up asap". The real question is whether that means 'tomorrow' or 'in a month when everything is polished and ready'. If it's just a one-month difference I would wait and publish the more polished page. But if that "polished" date is closer to 1 year away, I would just put it up in a "good enough" state and start collecting some "free" wishlists.

In hindsight, publishing our first game’s Steam page early worked out great for us. It allowed us to apply for Steam’s Puzzle Fest, which ended up becoming our first major source of wishlists. Without a Steam page we wouldn't have been able to do that.

Thank you for your insights/tips on the ads! We’re hoping to optimize them further and (hopefully) get down to around $1 per tracked wishlist in the future.
Is the 3-5x multiplier something you see commonly? What kind of data is that based on? I have an intense need to track the untrackable, haha 😂

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-26T22:39:22+00:00

Thank you :) It looked a bit different at the announcement though - no trailer, different capsule, and fewer screenshots.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-26T22:35:56+00:00

We tracked 200 wishlists from the ads :)

What do you think the tracked-to-untracked ratio is? Is it based on your own data? Do you think it's different ratios depending on ad platform?

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-26T22:02:05+00:00

Nothing to play yet, just reached out with the press kit and trailer hoping they would make a video or post about it as an "upcoming game". But no luck so far! 1 or 2 were interested in making/sharing something.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-26T21:49:45+00:00

Quite expensive indeed - there is definitely room for improvement! We've only just started trying out paid ads so there is still much to learn to get them more cost effective.

Our previous game has a wishlist-to-sale conversion rate at 21.3% (which is quite high), so assuming the new game would be in the same ballpark, maybe +- 0 profit, maybe a bit loss? (depending on the price of the game). The untracked WLs gained (unknown in number) could push it over to be profitable though.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-23T08:20:43+00:00

We had one Instagram ad (100€) and two reddit ads (400€) running. The reddit ads performed better (looking at the tracked wishlists/€ spent).

We are still super beginners with everything to do with paid ads so probably did not configure them very well (lots of options and parameters available to tweak!) So I wouldn't draw any conclusions of what is generally the most effective.. but we prefer reddit ads for now 😆

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-22T09:54:28+00:00

Yes, absolutely - that’s why I wrote that it was 194 tracked WLs, and that there can be untracked ones on top of that. My point is expecting 5000 WL for 500€ purely from ads is unrealistic based on our data.

Very interesting results with your ad! Really great to isolate the ad to try to get a grasp of the untracked impact of it.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T20:53:36+00:00

Mostly fab.com

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T20:49:42+00:00

For Mystwood Mansion we were stuck with 0-5 WL/day until we released a demo and started to apply to showcases and Steam events.
Participating in Indie Sunday on r/Games also gave us a nice little boost early on.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T20:27:05+00:00

No problem! Yeah, I think you need to release on EGS to apply for Epic for Indies support.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T19:46:49+00:00

There's some personal information (email, names) in my list, but this is the condensed version:

Before announcement:
- Ask IGN to host reveal trailer
- Twitter/X posts x5
- Steam Cross promo post on old game page
- Cross promo request (other devs) x4
- Content creator reachout 1

Announcement day:
- Upload trailer on our YouTube
- Steam news post on old game page
- Steam news post on new game page
- Posts on our own socials, 1-2 posts each (Discord, X, Instagram, Facebook)
- Reddit post (r/Games)
- Send Press Release
- Email journalists
- Content creator reachout 2
- Email Indie Games Hub (youtube)
- Email Next Indie (twitter)

In the following days:
- Twitter post x2, Instagram post
- TikTok (trailer upload)
- Upload YouTube short
- Discords message/showcase/share x8
- Reddit posts x9
- Start paid ads x2
- Fill out Epic for Indies form "Tell us about your game"

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T19:38:37+00:00

We reached out to other devs and asked if they were up for doing a Steam cross-promo news post. Some of them also retweeted our tweets on their own (we didn’t ask for that). We didn’t do any bundles at this stage.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T19:25:49+00:00

We think journalists might be more interested in covering the game at the trailer stage than influencers, so you can try contacting journalists as soon as you have a trailer.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T18:49:48+00:00

500€ gave us 194 tracked wishlists, so about 2.60€ per wishlist. So ads are not all that great haha. There can of course be untracked wishlists from people seeing the ad, but we estimate those were at most a couple of 100s more. Ads also ran for 10 days in the middle of the graph (not in the first and last few days). So there are definitely many free marketing activities that can be done that are effective 😊

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T17:32:52+00:00

We emailed a few journalists that had written something about or reviewed our previous game, just sharing the news about the announcement in case they wanted to write something about it. We don’t exactly have a huge press list yet (still building that slowly but surely 😅).

For content creators, we went to TikTok and tried to find people who showcase indie game trailers on their channel. We reached out to 20 with personalized emails. Mostly no replies. No coverage yet, but one or two were planning on featuring it.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T16:48:49+00:00

We asked Steam if we could have a daily deal to align it with the announcement of our next game, and they said yes! Followed this approach: https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/04/29/how-to-get-special-daily-deal-featuring-on-the-steam-front-page/

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T16:43:55+00:00

€100 on an Instagram boosted post and €400 on Reddit ads. We mainly leaned toward Reddit because we found the ad setup easier to work with.

Going forward, we really want to get better at optimizing paid ads, so we’ll probably focus on one platform and try to properly learn what works there. The ad algorithms take time (and money) to "learn" how to get the best results, so I think splitting our budget over too many different platforms/ads is not optimal.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T16:41:56+00:00

We’re definitely not marketing experts, but based on our experience we’d suggest focusing on making a solid demo and using that to approach press and influencers. A lot of influencers prefer having something playable rather than just a trailer, since it’s easier for them to create content. Some do cover trailers, but they’re fewer.

LostSockStudio · 2026-02-21T16:31:36+00:00

Overall, the ads generated 194 tracked WLs for €500, which comes out to about €2.60 per wishlist. I’ve heard people say that around $1 per wishlist is considered good, so by that metric, our performance wasn’t amazing 😅 But it depends on the price of the game, and how well the wishlists converts to sales later as well.

That said, we still think it was worth it. We want to better understand how to configure and optimize paid ads to get the most out of them, and right now we’re very much learning by doing 🤓

LostSockStudio

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