As someone who has written a similarly successful series of blog posts sharing game sales data, I can attest that does NOT help with game sales, at least not in any directly measurable way.
Good content MARKETING is about 80% of the job.
It's a misnomer to think that the stories you see in the headlines have arrived there organically. PG has a brilliant article on this topic. (1)
It does happen sometimes - you write great content and you're rewarded - but there are much more methodical / reliable way in honing your PR / growth hackery skills.
Simple tips:
1) There are PR guides written by some of the big blogs to explain how to get coverage without a PR agent (1)
2) Market to social communities like HN / Reddit where you can create relationships with people directly and - without being a "UPVOTE ME" scum-bag - get your content promoted because it's great and the community likes you.
3) There are multiple content-marketing services that you can use like Taboola.com or Outbrain.com (typically used for other industries but could work for you).
4) Hire a PR agent! The OP cleared $600k on his game and if your game is similarly good to his game and all that lacks is proper marketing then get serious about it. In my experience you can get a young / hungry PR person for $2 - 3k/mo to pay attention. More traditional $5 - 10k/mo. The best get $25k+ They get paid that much because there are typically clear returns.
I love HN because it's so cross discipline, just my two cents as a marketer.
(1) http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
(2) http://indiegames.com/2013/07/five_pr_tips_indies_really_nee...
2) My game has grossed more than the OP. We're doing just fine without a PR agent.
I'm not complaining about coverage, we've gotten about as much coverage and done as well or better (in a slightly longer timeframe). This feels a bit weird b/c my point is not to talk about my own game, but the context establishes my point.
My point is to provide data that contradicts the hypothesis "geez you wrote this article and people liked it! Bet it helped sales, huh?" I have seen many positive post-mortems by many high profile game devs, and every one I've seen share data on the "did your articles increase sales" has never shown correlated sales spikes of any significant size. My experience is exactly the same.
To further explain: positive written PRESS does not correlate to sales spikes all that much either, unless you attain simultaneous, saturation-level positive coverage across everything.
Ask the OP if his articles have moved the needle on sales. I bet you $100 they're tiny blips at best.
That's not to say these articles are not worth writing -- just that they DON'T lead to sales spikes.
To be clear, thanks for your 2 cents. Just trying to make it clear where I'm coming from.
An article like this is interesting to me, as a developer. I don't make games, although I have in the past, but I currently make software for a large company, occasionally feel less-than-enthused by it (Honestly, most of the time I'm fine/good/great and interested in my work, but sometimes I'm not), and seeing the numbers for people who don't work for a fortune 500 the way I do is interesting and valuable information. I'd gladly upvote it on this website, or Reddit if I ever read tech articles over there. If, in the future, I see this game on Steam, I'd click on the page, maybe read the reviews--that might lead to a sale.
The thing is, the article says nothing about the actual game. Nothing about this article (or other earnings related articles) is likely to make me go purchase the game, because there's nothing about the actual game in it, I've never heard of the game prior to this (it isn't something I already want), it isn't in a humble bundle with something I have heard of (it isn't associated with something I want), and I'm not presently reading or hearing positive reviews of the game from people I trust (I don't have a reason to start wanting it).
There's no reason this article (or those like it) would lead to a game sale from me. There's no reason for me to go immediately ignore all my better instincts and go purchase the game without reading the reviews--or even go and read the reviews. Actually, if anything, releasing successful sales figures makes me less intrinsically likely to go buy the game immediately after reading (as opposed to in the vague future), because it seems like the writer is doing well enough for him/her-self, and it isn't some genre or style or content that I think /really should definitely be rewarded/. (Even if it was--successful sales figures literally are the opposite of a call to action for me.)
I'd imagine the benefits of an article like this are much more long term. If, in the future, I'm searching through Steam for a new game, and I come across this game--I'm now much more likely to click through and read the reviews, and if they were largely positive and it was a genre I liked, consider buying. But it doesn't surprise me that you don't associate articles like this with a sales spike. They are literally the last thing that's likely to go get me to buy a game Right Now.
If your marketer is claiming that general good graces and articles are always good--publicity is pretty much always good. Indifference is likely to kill you, but I'll even go click through to the steam reviews on games I think are definitely bad, if only to read the reviews. I've even ended up purchasing a game I had thought was terrible because the reviews on Steam prompted me to read reviews elsewhere and I became convinced I was wrong. No matter how good (or bad) a game is, indifference is more likely to kill it with me than hatred. I think that's the main value of general marketers in the long term--they get the word out, if nothing else. (Good marketers would presumably lead me to want to buy, but I'm operating under the assumption that they're rare.)
yep.