I'm wondering if I want to put my game on itch io for free or paid? Are donations for free games rare... Does anyone have any numbers on this type of thing? Thanks.

It depends a lot on the game. People donate to free games, that's certain. I do. How much is another story. And that's for games that have downloads. In my experience, browser games never get any donations, even if they have the button enabled.

So far 2 out of the 18 people who downloaded my game donated.

Small sample size, I know.

As for the soundtracks, I could only see my self buying a sound track if the author was ok with me using bits of it for my own projects (and if i really liked it of course).

I have no idea if they are popular with others on here, im still pretty new.

Anyway, hope that helps :)

Part of the reason people may not be donating to games as much is because the donation prompt populates before the game has even been downloaded. At that point, they would be donating to a game that they haven't even played!

So in order to donate, one has to download the game, play it, decide it was worth donating to, and then click the download button again just to re-populate the donation prompt. That's my understanding at least, if there's a more direct way to donate that would be good to know. 

Youtube has the same problem. It always makes me laugh when people tell me to "Like their video" and "Subscribe" . . . but I've only seen 10 seconds of content so far. How am I supposed to know if it's worth liking or subscribing to at that point?

Ideally there'd be a way to prompt a donation at the end of the game, but I have no clue how this would work. Maybe that's why so many mobile games go with in-game ads or microtransactions.

Also: Maybe part of the reason why some don't donate to demos is because they'd rather pay for a finished product? After all, doesn't a demo kind of imply that a "full version" is forthcoming? 

Just make it paid. People like me don't BOTHER to donate.

*Also, set the price based on quality. If you selled a game like my Soni the Hedgehog game for 12,500, you're just wasting ten-thousandaire's money. They will DEMAND full refunds once they start playing.

I think it's easier to pay a Dollar for a download instead of a free download. Because some people play the game but forget to donate

Welp, i get my first donate, after like a 4 months! Great!

Mayby that was just my awfull games, but from my experience, i can tell, yes.

I didnt get any

maybe coz its a browser game

It's a pity because itchio is really an awsome site and it seems that its business model (so its health) depends also on these donations.

If there is no donation, there no redistribution to itchio...

My game got about 150 downloads but no donations at all

I think this is just common to the whole game industry - not just indie games on itch: Most games do not bring back what has been invested - even when you calculate just the minimum wage for the hours of work put in.

At the same time, their publishers also do not get enough money from these games to cover their costs. Especially when the publisher paid the gamedev studio for completion of the game. But they still succeed because of the very few games that have a huge success. So it is like from 100 games

• over than 80 are a great or complete loss
• 10 are barely bringing in the money needed for their creation
• 7 are pretty good
• 3 are top sellers, also cross-financing the upkeep of the other 80 games from the worst category

But the Devs of the better 10 games will not have time to write here: They will be completly busy with bugfixes, customer support, preparing new features and content for the next update, paying taxes, giving interviews and many more.

I also donated to very few free games only and those 2 have been really successfull (also meaning: really good).

This is also, why I am keeping my fulltime job instead of going fulltime indie-dev: I keep my financial stability and can be a lot calmer and having a lot more fun than I would have, if my existence was depending on the success of my next game. :)