I'm working furiously to finish the first polished vertical slice of my game. Once that's complete, my first priority is marketing. Creating a Steam Store page and setting up Discord, X, YouTube, and TikTok.
Hopefully that starts building a community. If it does, I'll need to spend time engaging with and growing that community, time I simply won't have while continuing development. So I'm starting to look at outsourcing the marketing side.
Up until now I've run the project on a shoestring budget, and my strategy has been to avoid giving up equity or revenue to a publisher. I'd like to stay independent if possible.
So what are my options for getting marketing help?
I'm not particularly keen on paying someone an hourly rate, which leaves some kind of revenue sharing arrangement. Are there other payment models that work well for indie developers?
My concern with revenue sharing is that it seems messy. What happens if the marketer simply isn't very good? I could define milestones or performance targets, but if they fail to meet them and the agreement ends, how do you fairly compensate them for the work they did contribute without locking yourself into a long term revenue share?
I'd love to hear from developers who have been through this. What worked, what didn't, and are there alternatives to the typical hourly rate or publisher model?