Steam wishlists are the most important marketing metric to track for an Indie Game as an indicator of future success. This is because once a user has wishlisted the game, they get an email notification for product launch or discounts.

At launch, the average conversion rate is about 10-20%, so if you have 5,000 wishlists stacked up, you should sell about 500-1,000 copies in Week One.

Furthermore, the number of Steam wishlists affects your game’s position in “Popular Upcoming” games on Steam, and it’s visibility during events like the Steam Next Festival, so there is a snowball effect, where the more wishlists you have, the more prominent your game is, which leads to more wishlists and so on.

As such, market and promote your game early and often since you want to get the ball rolling on collecting these. I would recommend a minimum of 6 months from your targeted release date, but 12-18 months will be much better.

Marketing Rule of 7

A classic Marketing Principle states that your customer must see your message at least 7 times before they will consider a purchase, so the same applies to video games.

Promote your game often to get the best chance of success!

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More Examples

It works for Kickstarters too! Getting the word out at launch and on the closing days of the campaign is essential.