Here is my project http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1627392371/electron-microscopy-art-calendar-2014
The stats are as follows.
Goal £2200
Pledged £2256
Backers 66
Amount pledged from Kickstarter and related sites (i.e. Kicktraq) £529
Amount pledged from external links and social networking sites £1727
Take home message is that unless you get lucky or are creating a project that a lot of people will want, plan for MOST of your funding coming from the networks and contact you make rather than Kickstarter.
I had a few dead period where days went past with no backers. I just had to keep networking and then I would get a sudden boost (most often on Fridays) before another dead period. During those times I was working very hard at connecting with people and networking but with very little reward. I got a few breaks from organisations and groups that I had been involved with for a year or more that I reached out to and that helped a great deal.
Of the pledges from outside of Kickstarter the breakdown is as follows:
49.87% of my pledges came from e-mails I sent out. The best response was from personalised e-mails, do not send generic e-mails out to lots of people, it doesn't work! Some of these pledges came from a mailing list in my field of work that I have been involved with for about 4 years. I asked the owner of the list for their permission before posting and was granted it.
10.2% of pledges came from Google+. I didn't know about the Kicksnarker community prior to the end of my project, from a post by Michael Tumey on this forum, but it seems like that is a good community to get involved with. I am involved a lot in STEM fields and science circles so I have 4000+ followers of Google+. The number of pledges was smaller than from other areas but the amounts pledged were larger.
8.87% of pledges came from Twitter. I had more backers from here than from Google+ but for the smaller rewards. I worked hard to increase the number of followers I had during the course of my project and, again through contacts I had previously (I do science outreach and have worked with some of the science outreach organisations who retweeted my announcements) gained a fair number of backers. The retweeting usually happened on the Fridays, which is also when I gained the most backers.
On both Twitter and Google+ I ran caption competitions that gained me a few backers. It s worth doing something fun that is not directly promoting your project but is associated with it so that interested individuals then follow it up.
3% of pledges came from Linked In and my own website and 3.85% from Facebook. That makes almost 77% backing from social networking.
The Kickstarter backers came on board at the start in from the recently launched side and towards the end, from popular projects (after I gained a backer from one of my larger rewards and several twitter backers within the same hour). The nearby and photography categories (which I swapped to from digital art) also provided a few backers.
By the end of my project I had 653 video plays (since ending it has gone up to 710) and 66 backers. 50.02% of video plays were completed.
I hope that I provided people with some useful stats and maybe tips to help those who did not do a pre-launch campaign. I would strongly advise against starting the project without doing a pre-launch, from what i have read and experienced it is very hard work if you don't, but even if you do it is going to take up a lot of time and energy to run a project! I would guestimate I spent on average 8 hours a day on the project.
Final piece of advice is to not run a project in the peak of holiday season (August in the UK) and have it end the week after a bank holiday! Timing wise, the only thing I did do right was have it end after a pay day, a few backers had been waiting for that before pledging.
