hello, I'm an internet rando offering unsolicited advice in the replyguy section.
so, I just wanted to say that, the audiences of people who are interested in coverage of games outside the mainstream are going to have different priorities than the mainstream. this means that, as frustrating as it can seem at first, the click-thru or the sale is not really a meaningful metric here. this is probably just frequency bias—the reason why coverage of mainstream games seems to translate to sales is because the audience for that coverage is in the hundred million. for diy games, the audience might break a hundred. and these hundred people are more a bit more judicious than the hardcore gamer, although I mean that in a good way lol. readership priorities for serious writing are stuff like:
// getting a sense of what kinds of games are out there or have been missed out on
// understanding other ideas, or ways of seeing, or thinking about games
// relating to, or with, other cast-off weirdos, for whatever reasons
// maybe, maybe to put another game on your to-play list, the one that already has 100 entries (that's me)
I think user thecatamites already did a great job outlining ways to approach writing, and why to approach it that way. so I'm just here emphasizing the "post through it" part. whatever happens down here (creator owned games) will not look like what happens up there (publisher party with publisher money).
the paradox of the "youtube bump," those videos that can impact the livelihood of an artist, is that, in the current climate, you're more likely to get there by doing what you're trying to avoid. a more general use-case for criticism is outsourcing the "failure" state of art. people are time poor or rejection adverse or both and want to find critics that they feel align with their tastes and do the work of curation for them. this is basically a neutral observation of the labors of a generalist critic vis-à-vis their audience. that trust comes more easily from parasocial behaviors, talking over artworks (to show that you're an expert), and acting like you're all chums.
anyway, I'd just say, follow your impulses, and do what you want to see in the world! the results that follow from doing what you feel is lacking, or doing what you like, is unpredictable. so my advice would be to make doing the thing the goal, the result of the thing is largely out of your control.