A sale on itch.io lets you offer any combination of your paid items for a discounted price for any period of time. Anyone can host a sale at any time! If you have multiple items in your sale, then they can be bought together as a bundle. You can optionally add a bundle price, a custom price for when everything is bought together.
Sales are restricted to projects from a single account on itch.io, if you need to host a bundle across many accounts check out our companion feature: Co-op bundles.
Hosting a sale is a great opportunity to increase sales of your content by giving buyers an attractive deal. It also also helps drive word of mouth by expanding your audience to customers who wouldn’t normally have bought your creations.
On your dashboard you'll find a tab for Sales & bundles where you can edit existing or create a new sale. For a new sale you'll minimally need to provide dates, a title, a rate, and the projects that are affected. On top of that you'll be able to use our sale customization tools. Each sale gets its own page on itch.io that you can share. Check out some sales currently going on.
While your projects are on sale, they'll get a badge next to their price tag when we link to the project. Additionally, if project is part of a bundle, the bundle will be advertised on your project page while it is active.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the basic fields you can provide for your sale:
There are even more options covered below.
All the projects in your sale are collected into a single page that’s ready to be shared.
All the projects you chose for the sale are used to create a special sale page. When you first create a sale it’s in draft mode. Use this as an opportunity to review everything before going back and publishing it.
Once published the page is ready to be shared. If the sale starts in the future there will be a countdown on the page announcing when it starts.
Once the sale becomes active, all projects affected by it will receive a special badge announcing the savings when displayed anywhere on itch.io. Project pages will also announce the discount.
If your sale has one project in it, that item can be bought for the discount directly on the sale page, or the project page.
If your sale has multiple items then they can be bought together on the sale page, or individually purchased on the project page.
All current sales are listed on the itch.io sales page, and items on sales also appear in the item browse pages with the ‘on sale’ filter, but making your sale stand out requires a little homework.
Don’t hesitate to use Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit to spread the good news. The /r/GameDeals subreddit is a good place to start, but make sure to check both their Submitter’s guide and their FAQ to stay within the rules.
We allow reasonable self-promotion, but do require you disclose your status. You can do this in the comments section of your post, or in the title.
Do stick around to answer questions about your game. If you simply post and run, you may not be allowed to post next time.
Remember, a sale can only be successful if people know about it!
Read more tips on indie game marketing
If your sale or bundle is part of a campaign to raise money for an event or cause, you can set an earnings goal. When enabled, this goal will be displayed on both the sale page and at the top of your project pages.
The earnings goal shows your target amount alongside the current earnings from the sale. This feature can provide additional motivation for buyers to contribute more, especially when they see how close you are to reaching your goal. It’s an effective way to encourage increased support for your campaign.
When the sale is over, the goal banner is removed from the project pages, but remains on the sale page.
It’s possible to restrict who has access to the discount provided by your sale using a Sale condition. They currently come in two forms: coupon codes and ownership requirements.
Coupon codes allow you to create a private sale that is only accessible to those who have the special URL. Here’s how it works:
If you can’t think of a name, then click the dice button to randomly generate one. When randomly generating we exclude characters that are commonly mistaken, like
1andI.
You can also set a maximum number of times the coupon code can be used. This is called the “Maximum redeems” setting. Here’s how it works:
This allows you to create limited-time or exclusive offers. For example, you could create a coupon code that only works for the first 100 customers, adding a sense of urgency to your sale.
If you're selling multiple products then you can create a sale that is only available to those who own one of your existing items. This is called an ownership requirement.
From the sale edit page, select Add condition and choose the project that must be owned for the sale to be active.
In order to make sure people discover your promotion, the buy button is integrated directly into their download page:
The link to a sale with an ownership requirement can freely be shared, however only those users who meet the ownership requirement will be able to purchase with the discount applied.
Sales with ownership requirements will not be listed on the public Sales and Bundles pages on itch.io.
As a sale host you're given access to a sale analytics page as soon as you create your sale. From here you can track all the individual purchases that came through the sale, and earnings over the duration of the sale.
You can find sale analytics by clicking the Analytics tab from the sale’s edit page.