I created itch.io, I posted it on hacker news back in march.<p>You can find the homepage here: <a href="http://itch.io" rel="nofollow">http://itch.io</a><p>Here's the traffic I've received (the initial spike is hacker news launch): <a href="http://leafo.net/shotsnb/2013-12-25_11-16-16.png" rel="nofollow">http://leafo.net/shotsnb/2013-12-25_11-16-16.png</a><p>A few milestones, I've paid out 12k so far to developers. I use pay what you want pricing, the average purchase is 1.79 above the minimum price of the game. 35% of all the money paid to developers on itch.io is "extra" money paid above the minimum price of the game.<p>Since launch I've primarily focused on adding features, hoping for organic growth to come along. (hence the huge flat line for months in the graph above) I've been starting to network more, mostly over twitter, which is really helping to bring the traffic up.<p>I'm very open about the process, feel free to ask me anything.<p>If you want to follow my development adventures you can follow me on twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/moonscript" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/moonscript</a>
Wow. I'm more amazed at the variety of libraries you've written for Lua than the end product itself (which is definitely an achievement on it's own) to be quite frank.<p>I mean, come on, a web framework for Lua AND and a scripting language that compiles to Lua AND Vim and ST2 syntax support for said scripting language? Seriously?<p>Great work. Oh and sorry for typing like a 3 year old in a candy store (with a laptop in hand?).
From a user's point a view — itch.io is everything I need, and then more.<p><pre><code> - Upload your game & customize your game page in a few clicks, without artifical walls: check
- Quickly generate download links for press/friends and monitor their download count: check
- Manage sales / price / updates from the web interface: check (instead of having to e-mail people a-la Humble widget)
- Check out analytics on page views / buys / etc. - check
</code></pre>
Since the default page look wasn't enough for me, I simply used the widget on my game's website, and it works perfectly well.<p>I'm a happy camper so far :) With the revamped 'buyer profile' update that's coming, it'll be even better. Plus, leafo is always listening to his userbase!
This is really nice, I'll almost definitely be using this in the future.
I just have one question, how does downloading work? Can the purchaser download whenever they want or is it like uplay where you only have a month to download?
Site looks clean but the 10% fee the site takes on every sale seems a bit high:<p>>First, itch.io will take 10% of the total, 10$. Then the payment provider will take $0.30 + 2.9% of the total price, $10. Leaving you with $8.41.