On a forum I visit someone asked for tips to help improve sales of one's indie game. Here was my suggestion (copied and pasted):
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My suggestion is just to constantly do stuff that's valuable to people and let them know about it so that they can get value out of it. Post tutorials, guides, helpful stuff like that. Give people feedback on their games in forums. Write for indie game blogs. Praise people: send complementary emails about things you like, and include your email signature to your site. Make lists of games you recommend. Make friends with journalists and other game developers and help them out any way you can. Just in general be a good person to people.
One example: I made a video of 100 of the best Game Maker games and put it on YouTube, with a mention in the side info that if they like it they could check out my game. That video so far has 60,000 views, and a small fraction of them visit my site, but it helps.
I estimate that I only need around 1000 or so sales per year to make a good living (currently only getting around 200-300 though...), and my theory is that I can get 1000 sales just by being helpful or nice to 1000 people who then become interested in the game.
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