Okay, here's some context:

I have now made over 30 sales of paid items and had over 160 other downloads of free content that I released... just over 200 downloads in all and thousands of views on my profile and pages.

Not one of the 200+ downloaders, paid or not, has rated anything. The most anyone has done is leave a brief comment, which incidentally has been a huge victory for that specific listing - it now comprises almost half my sales.

I know the statistical logic for ratings is that usually about 10% of people rate items they download or buy, and that the number is higher if they had a very strong positive or negative reaction to the item that was bought.

Here on itch.io that 10-20% range hasn't been the case at all and I am unsure why.

Is it just that the items are so cheap that they're impulse buy fodder and that maybe they then provoke a neutral (mildly satisfied) reaction, not a bad one, and thus people feel it is not worth bothering to rate for something they got cheaply and were modestly happy with but not elated by?

Or is this a case of statistically unusual and anomalous bad luck, or a more systemic issue with itch ratings not being prominent or encouraged on the itch platform? I have rated a few, like ten, other peoples' games in a positive manner (I like a lot of things, I am not super nitpicky, so my ratings tend toward 4-5 stars) and such, and according to itch's own data apparently almost nobody on itch.io has posted that many ratings. "Of people who have rated anything, 98% have rated fewer items than you". (Why?)

I have, on eBay, gotten hundreds of positive ratings, about 70% of buyers and sellers there rate me in a transaction. It is a cultural thing and it is kind of expected, and on Etsy... maybe 45% of buyers rate. Why is it so much less likely for anyone to rate items on itch.io?

Finally: are there any ethical strategies any of you use successfully to encourage reviews/ratings/comments?

I am not inclined to do things like pull in third parties (friends, family) to rate, or incentivize ratings with a bonus like a gift card, extra content, etc, as none of that is really ethical. I do have text on the pages encouraging reviews, ratings, comments, any sort of feedback and there is a little PDF readme actually in many of my asset packs which does the same.

Kind of wonder what else I can try that will actually get the ball rolling there... without impartial feedback on the asset pack pages, people are unable to fully assess quality of the content, and as a result I have had literally thousands of people passing through my pages and not buying anything, or buying (rarely) but not actually rating.

I am at a loss here. I have spent $60+ advertising this stuff in the last year, over 300,000 fine tuned banner ad impressions and 450 clicks just on one ad network alone, I have also been pretty actively and effectively pulling traffic in through Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram... my own websites... and the sales at current levels, don't manage to recoup that effort.

Any suggestions?

Note, I do have a few ideas I am brainstorming here... like making a free pack of 3d assets and/or seamless textures with another 3d object and seamless texture added free, for every rating posted on any (paid or free) asset pack. The more ratings accumulate on any asset pack, free or paid, the larger that additional freebie collection gets. I will commit two more hours of effort to adding that for every single bit of genuine feedback - rating, review, comment - posted on any of my itch.io product pages.

In other words, if people will review my work, it will result in some new stuff I am working on, being posted as freeware, rather than tacked onto existing paid packages. This seems sort of clever, in a way, as the incentive for public response is more free public releases, not tied directly to the person who posted the rating but made available simply for everybody. 

But is that a good route to pursue? Is it, to put simply, a good idea that is acceptable? Do any of you have a better one?

Maybe in lieu of wasting more time, money advertising, I can donate a dollar to some widely respected charitable cause, for each review or star rating posted for the rest of 2020 on any page of mine, up to maybe $20/month? 

Yeah, I am serious. I am willing to try a lot of things, would be prepared to incentivize responses, but obviously not in a way that is directly tied to or paying off, on any direct individual or personal level, the specific person who is doing the rating.

Y'know?

If any of these, or any other idea, seem to be viable or acceptable, or maybe not, let me know. I am just trying to find something that works.

Because itch's review system right now is less than ideal. It doesn't get used by anybody much, and that means most games and assets on itch, do not have posted public feedback of any kind. That is bad for players/buyers who cannot assess quality of things they see on itch, and it is bad also for developers of the more high quality and high value content, who likewise cannot convincingly demonstrate the value of their work with users' responses to it.

What do you all think about this?

Matthew L. Hornbostel, https://matthornb.itch.io