KickstarterForum.org

Tactics of a Successful Kickstarter Campaign (probably more than you wanted to know!)

Instead of posting my preparation, planning, operation, changes and results in a dozen different posts scattered around the forum, I thought I'd do a breakdown of my entire campaign process and circumstance that led to my successful results. This is by no means a "bolier plate" step-by-step process, simply the variables I had to work with, and how I went about getting the most of my limited resources and goals.

My Background:
I've run various small businesses since 1987, I am a graphic designer by profession with my own shop. I have the hobby of playing, running, designing and doing cartography for tabletop roleplaying games since 1977 (as a 15 year old). In 2007 I created an online service to print and ship full color game maps worldwide, and began joining various RPG game forums to promote it. I participated in several RPG cartography contests and won, and began a side career as a fantasy cartographer for RPG publishers - I eventually got map commissions from one of the largest publishers. Because I had game development interests, I've created a published RPG Japanese horror setting as an imprint under a successful publisher, so have worked the publishing industry as game developer, designer, illustrator, cartographer, page layout, writing, editing over the past 3 years. With my business management experience, all this was leading to my own hopes of becoming an RPG industry publisher of my own. I was at the threshold of taking that next step.

Events that led to the Campaign:
Unlike most project creators, I didn't start out with a plan to create a product I wanted funded. I was simply participating in G+ social networking as a newbie avid participant. I began posting my dozens and dozens of created maps on Map-Making for Games G+ community, and several Tabletop Game G+ communities.

I started posting on those communities 2 months prior to starting my project, I created my own G+ community 1 month prior to starting. Everytime I posted a map, an inciteful response, or tutorial and got +'s to my posts, I made a friend request and created a Friend Circle called Tutorial Fans 1 and put them in both. Once I was "friended back", I waited until I had about 100 or some number of friend/fans, then invited them to my G+ community. I constantly posted my various maps, tutorials and other cartographic coolness to keep my community interesting. After every mass invite, I created a new friend circle Tutorial Fans 2, etc. so I wouldn't repeat invites to the same group of friends. I didn't want to SPAM them.

After one particular map someone asked how would I go about creating a path through the forest in the software I use. Instead of responding, I took a half hour to create a simple 9 step tutorial on how I would go about creating a path through the forest map and posted it. Immediately many experienced mappers realized that the techniques I used could easily be applied to dozens of other software applications with stunning results. After creating and posting about a dozen of these over the course of a month, many G+ members asked me to gather these tutorials up and create book and fund it with Kickstarter. So my project was created based on requests by a social network of something I was already giving away for free - that's how this began.

My Plan:
Create a series of map tutorials guide books covering a variety of methods and styles, from basic to complex graphic techniques to create gorgeous maps and artistic works. Unlike many of my peers, I don't have just one style or method to create maps, I'm interested in all styles and use different ones for different commissions/projects based on my aesthetic concerns for a particular subject. I wanted to offer a Basic and Advanced tutorials guide using photo-realistic techniques as the majority of would-be game mappers have the most frequent need. The more artistically skilled could use a guide for hand-drawn map techniques - my professional specialty. Since I often use 3D models and rendered graphics for elements of my mapping, I thought that too deserved it's own guide. So this is a series of guide books targeting roleplaying and board game players, gamemasters and publishers as potential backers.

I want to eventually be able to release these books into the commerical book distribution market to get them in bookstore shelves, in addition to Amazon and other online sources.

My Campaign:
Because I wanted to try and fund 4 different books, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to fund them all, instead of coming up with a big price tag for all 4, I made the first book the goal and the rest subsequent stretch goals.

Because of my publishing industry experience, I know what the costs are for various freelancers for writing, illustration, cartography, editing and page layout are, so based the cost of each guide book based on word count/page count, I came up with a budget requirement to fund each guide. Also knowing that Kickstarter charges 5% of the total pledges gained, plus Amazon Payments charges 3-5% for credit card transaction fees, I added 10% over the amount I needed for each book to tabulate it's goal/stretch goal pricing. I also know shipping prices, so I was able to apply appropriate shipping charges when it came time to setting up the backer levels.

A Fly in the Ointment:
Another successful fantasy cartographer I know, intended to run his own Kickstarter about the same time as I was. He contacted me, asking if he could attach his project to the end of mine, instead of having two competing map tutorial book campaigns running simultaneously. I told him, I'd charge editing, page layout fees and a publisher commission as part of his book creation cost, with the rest of the funds going to him. He agreed, and I made his book the 5th stretch goal.

Adding More Backer Levels:
After I first setup the Kickstarter page, before submitting it for approval. I noticed that the lower backer tiers were few, and could use additional products that could provide higher, yet still not expensive, backer levels to offer more options. In creating maps, I have map objects which are premade, stand-alone objects to represent trees, rocks, buildings, treasure chests, things to populate a game map with interesting content. Because I create all my own objects, and intended to use many in the tutorial guides, I offered a package containing 100 map object digital files ready to insert into maps as extra content and higher pledge levels.

Throughout most of the campaign (until the very end) these higher pledge tiers were more popular than the tiers without them. In my past crowd-funding experience, the lowest tier was the most popular. In my campaign that became true in the last days, but for most of it, my second backer tier at $25 was the most popular.

Changes to the Campaign:
At exactly the half-way point in the campaign, I reassessed the progress. While I already hit goal, the progress in funding all the stretch goals seemed unlikely. I had 2 products as stretch goals that seemed possible obstacles in funding everything, so I removed one - a set of digital geomorphic map tile sets (too complicated to explain...) and a set of Old West Hand-Drawn Map Objects, I converted from a stretch goal and offered them as additional backer tiers so pledgers could get them now, without having to achieve a stretch goal for them.

Doing so, received praise from my critics, and I got a big single day boost in pledges for doing so.

7 hours before the end of funding as pledge levels were nearing $20,000, one of my backers messaged me with "Hey, I remember you had a tile set of Endless Terrain Battlemaps at $20K, that was removed half-way into the campaign, since we're almost at $20K, I wanted to know if we could still get them." So I posted a 2nd to last Update before close of funding, announcing that instead of making a backer level (the backer levels were getting complicated and confusing), I'd make it an add-on, if anyone wanted to raise their pledge by $10, when I send my backer survey, I will ask if they pledge the extra $10 to cover that, and I'd make sure they got their sets.

Interestingly, after funding closed, I got contacted by half a dozen people that said they missed that last Update and wanted the map tiles sets, so I told them to message me on Kickstarter, and I provided them with my Paypal email account and told them to do a $10 money transfer to get the set. After a few more requests, I posted it as the first after funding Update to message me, and I've gotten almost 50 such requests. so I've technically made about $500 over my close of funding pledges, because of this add-on.

Final Stats:
Pledged: $23,289, Funded: 621%, Backers: 456
Goal: $3750 (funded on Day 8)
1st Stretch: $7500 (funded on Day 19)
2nd Stretch: $10,500 (funded on Day 25)
3rd Stretch: $14,000 (funded on Day 28)
4th Stretch: $16,500 (funded on Day 29)
Pledged via Kickstarter: $14,220, Pledged via External Referrers: $9,069 , Average Pledge Amount: $51.07
Video: 3 min 14 sec (no music), Video Views: 1223, Viewed to Completion: 40.88, Facebook Shares: 154

Things I learned:

1. You have to build fanbase with social networking through Facebook and Google+, and in industry related forums. Though in my case G+ was the most active and influencial in getting recruits and pledges. You need to do this months ahead of time. Though I did it in 2 months, it's better at 4+ months before your campaign starts.

2. You have to have a sound and executable plan from the start, but it must be flexible to accomodate changes as the campaign progresses.

3. Adding backer levels later (in my case at half-way point, and right before the end) added tremendous boosts in pledges largely from existing pledgers upgrading to higher amounts - it's easier to sell to an existing customer than acquiring a new one.

4. Find bloggers to write posts, interviews and any kind of promotion you can acquire - I got pledge boosts after each one was achieved.

5. Know your industry and know your market - I had that in spades, so it was relatively straight-forward for me.

This was a great experience and taught me a lot!

Michael