Recently I revisited the 2D Boy blog for the post about the 90% Piracy Rate of World Of Goo. This was prompted when the best selling album on Amazon was a Free album!. When you look at the figures posted by Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails about their respective releases the free download vs paid for download has similar ratios.
So is 10% a good conversion rate?
For those not familiar with the expected response rates of a direct marketing campaign, the standard expected response rate is in the order of 0.5% to 2%. A campaign that gets a 2% response is actually considered a HUGE sucess, most will be in the lower band.
When you look at click through rates on web advertising the response rate drops even further, that is if your adverts were not blocked via AdBlock or similar.
The 2D Boy post accepts that most people in the 90% would probably never buy the game anyway. Their other title which shipped with DRM had the same piracy rates which shows DRM does nothing to change the number of sales. EA learnt with their release of Spore that DRM can stop people buying the game in protest.
My own dabbles with selling software in the past have shown similar figures. I also soon realised that it does not matter what protection you add it will be cracked. All copy protection does is cost you money and time.
One thing pirates will do though is tell others about the game/software/music if they like it. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising because people trust their friends and this can create a real buzz about a product.
So is piracy a new form of advertising in the internet age?
