Hi Brandon,
I just completed my first week of our KS campaign and here's what I've learned that can hopefully help you out.
1. After the first 4 days we were at about 10% of our $30K goal which I was happy about.....and then crickets. After my friends and family who I had reached out to pledged, the only other organic pledges I got was from backerclub.co which is a no risk way to promote yourself to people who back lots of KS project. I do not work for them at all nor do I have an affiliation with them, but they produced around $600 worth of backers for me. You pay a fee up front and if you don't get at least $300 in backer support and reach your goal, they give you your money back. you don't pay unless you reach your goal which I really liked. All other people who will approach you will offer to promote you for a fee that they certainly don't give back to you if their service doesn't work. BackerCo sends an email blast over the weekends, I highly recommend you submit your project to them and get on that blast.
2. I only started reaching out to bloggers once my campaign started which I now regret. Send people your preview page before you launch.
3. Send our more emails about your campaign to friends and family than you think you should....some of the closest people to you will support right away, others will not and or forget to when they said they would. About 20% of the people I reached out to pledged.
4. Spend as much time promoting the hell out of your project before you launch, then spend even more time during the first few days...those are the most important...I found out the hard way. I was counting on an article in a local paper (they interviewed us) to come out 3 days after I launched and they pushed it a week after which hurt. Do the work now...everyone told me this and I didn't listen...people with successful campaigns told me this and I didn't listen. I'm telling you as someone who is now struggling....learn from my mistakes. And it's not because my product isn't good (which is why some projects never go anywhere)...we have lots of feedback from friends and family and people on the internet saying our concept is super cool....apparently not cool enough to pledge. (great feedback from backers about my project which make me happy).
5 and most importantly - A person who was very successful on KS who I reached out to said this to me and I wish I would have listened. He said don't launch because your page is done....take extra time to promote or send out samples to news outlets or blogs and wait to launch. I didn't listen and I wish I had. Good luck.
I hope this helps and didn't scare you. I still have high hopes for my project and I'm still pounding the pavement, but if I can help someone who is about the launch not make these mistakes it will at least make me feel good.
And I'd be remise if I didn't plug my page...lol. Take a look.
http://bit.ly/AthletesCollective