I've been thinking about developing a game, and while I've done nothing about it yet, I am interested in what happens after the development process is complete, assuming that the game in question is one you want to get money off of. Also assuming that the development process was not funded (so you were working on the project in your own time, and have no funds to advertise formally). I find it hard to believe that word-of-mouth is that effective a method of advertisement, yet there are many popular software (and even non-computer-related-stuff i.e. silly bands were apparently really popular a few months back and were never advertised) that became popular by word of mouth alone. Is it really that effective, or is there some other (money-less) way for an independent developer to make their name?

advertising and hype should be done while developing. You should also make sure that when your product is done, or nearly done, your doing another set of advertising campaigns. You want as much exposure and hype as possible, and this is where indie vs commercial comes to play in the most heated battle. Commercial make a announcement at a convention or press conference literally up to years in advance of release of the game. During the middle completion they set out another set of advertisements, this time telling people what their game is about and showing them how it looks and such. The final stages before a actual pre purchase agreement with a online distributor or retailer has another set of advertisements, usually for a month or two straight. This one consists of gameplay videos, hyping it up to as much as it can get. Then the release of the game comes. This set of advertisements are directly related to what people generally "should expect and want" in the game. It last for a few months generally one to three months then dies down. Then when a expansion is coming the process starts all over again.

You tend to need to build hype for your game. This forum forbids it, but you can get a few "black hat" tools to help you advertise. If not, then Google and Youtube are your friends for creating hype. I'd say also try to look at Facebook for such things as well. You can play dirty and spam the forums for like EA games and such about your game if it is directly related in genre to one of their products, but you have to be careful about that since you might come off as a dork.

As a person who has dealt in advertising, marketing, and product management before stepping into the indie game industry, I can clearly offer you my only valuable portion of advice that most people on here fail to grasp. Good advertising = awesome sales. I don't think I am the best, I need to be in order to make my products sell and make sure I make money and don't starve in the street. You should do the same, but try to stay away from the idiots with the big mouths. The MLM or mult level marketing scammers that tend to mail things to your email or home address with some off the wall scams. You don't want to look like them, instead you want to make sure you're marketing your game 100% truthful and creating hype 100% with your game, and not fairy tales some developers tend to do, cough cough Black Ops.

Thank for the explanation! My only problem is that I usually go ahead and start programming before I know for sure what I want the final program to look like, so it's difficult to know what exactly I would advertise. Kinda like that forum game where people take turns writing one word, and try to make a story, but everyone spins it in a different direction than the previous poster intended. How specific is the initial advertising campaign, one done by an indie?
I've also been told many times, to advertise before the final product was complete... not because of what you said, but because when people expect you to do something, you're many times more likely to actually finish whatever it is (not necessarily software development, could be something like novel writing).

Well you can advertise multiple ways to suit your needs and what audience you want to reach into, and what type of return of investment (sales quota) you want. If you want to make a game like COD, I'd say you want to rely mostly on youtube and machinima for the advertising. You would then want to showcase kill streaks, game play mechanics, and how fluid the game play really is. You then would want to highlight the story progression mode, or something like a multi player progression mode depending on whether your game has multi player or single player.

You would technically blast the high quality advertisements basing it on psychological addicting attributes such as twitch kills, epic gore and blood, or awesome fluid game play mechanics like ninja kicks and back flips. You could then tie into something like that for a sexual psychological attachments like girl 3d models in your game in skimpy clothes or in epic morality kicking giant robotic butt. It is ultimately up to you to design a fluid and function solid advertising campaign around your product. It will be very involving and emotional. The hype should be built solely off the games, and to over hype will only hurt your credibility in the future.

You will need to research, and then spend time creating your baby and letting it grow. Ironically, most on here would say " we don't need that, we rather have word of mouth." There are 2 types of word of mouth, 1 being a paid version of word of mouth, and the other being you and your friends telling random strangers about the game. The first is going to a company that deals with viral videos or some sort of "going viral" process and having them evaluate and create a plan to make your game "viral". The latter is ultimately less effective but clearly easier. I would easily shell out $1000 or more for a company to give me some insight on making a viral video game. Ultimately, it will come down to you either totally putting nothing into your advertising campaign and going off sheer luck, or doing what Justin Beiber did and going viral, even if the world hates him he STILL is wealthy and rich.

Failure is simply denying the truth and refusing to adapt for success. Failure is synthetic, invented by man to justify his laziness and lack of moral conduct. What truely lies within failure is neither primative or genetic. What failure is at the heart, is man's inability to rise and meet the challenge. Success is natural, only happening when man stops trying to imitate a synthetic or imaginable object. Once man starts acting outside his emotional standpoints, he will stop trying to imitate synthetic or imaginable objects called forth by the replication of his emptiness inside his mind. Man's mind is forever idle and therefore shall call forth through the primitives of such subconscious thoughts and behaviors that Success is unnatural and that failure is natural. Success is simply doing something at man's full natural abilities and power, failure is the inability to act on what man wants, dreams, wishes, invisions, or thinks himself to do. ~ RED (concluded when I was 5 years old looking at the world with wide eyes)

Longest. Sig. Ever.