KickstarterForum.org

I started my Kickstarter project about 5 days ago. It is exciting, but I wished I would of planned ahead a bit more. I think the most important this is to let everyone in your channels know what is coming before you launch a project. This would have helped tremendously.

I did many things correctly, but not getting the word out prior to launch has me playing catch-up.

Unfortunately, I had to cancel my Kickstarter project, it was running really well for the first 10 days where I reached 43% of the funding goal. But I couldn't continue running the project mainly because the manufactures who were producing the product no longer had the supplies until the end of the year which meant I couldn't deliver what I promised. And I felt it was more ethical to cancel it rather than delay deliveries. But either way I learned that Backers really do expect a lot from project creators on Kickstarters, it's quite interesting actually the community within Kickstarter. Either way, I am excited for the future with what's to come with Arrow Project and just keep creating! By the way, I love this forum, very informative!

This may be a no-brainer but what I have learned about this campaign is finding and engaging the crowd. LOL How in the world did I not realize that crowdfunding was all about connecting with the crowd I have no idea. It wasn't until my campaign was moving at a snails pace that I begin to research, question, and seek out knowledge that I wished I had done prior to my launch. But I am optimistic and believe everything happens for a reason. We are 10 days till the end of the campaign and I am looking forward to finishing strong!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/60 ... creativity

I spent about 6 months networking, researching, creating artwork for - general preparation - to run a Kickstarter (and another 6 months researching what was needed to run one). I spent about 20 hours a week or so over the last 3 months leading up to the campaign (yes, it was a success, just barely) networking. I had read that simply getting "likes" and "friends" didn't really mean much. Even so, that was recommended in addition to (and even more important) making real friends.

So, if I wanted a greater likelihood that people wouldn't just "like" what I was doing (Arcane Synthesis fiction anthology based on my Cosmoverse Campaign Setting), but back it, I ought to get to know people better, show an interest in what they were doing (and I sincerely liked getting to know people better and knew I wasn't the only one doing something neat), but it was extremely time-consuming. So, I spent 6 months full time (and I do mean full time) working toward my campaign. I think a full year (not counting the extra 6 months I spent researching how to do it all), would have been better and given me enough time to build a bigger fan base.

You really need a decent fan base to do a Kickstarter. I think way too many people are doing a Kickstarter without enough serious legwork. I did a ton of legwork and yet still barely squeaked by. Kickstarter is not easy. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. I say this not to discourage, but to encourage you to either do it right (do the legwork needed and expand your fan base early on), or skip it. All you have to do is look at all the failed campaigns (and I'm just talking Kickstarter - there's plenty of failed campaigns on other sites), to see that people aren't taking it seriously enough.

Now, anthologies don't tend to do well on Kickstarter in the best of times (and I had some big names attached and a gorgeous campaign page), but some projects do better generally (such as apps, tangible inventions and board games, some of which have done insanely well, but many do well). There are analytics on what has higher odds (if at least done somewhat right) on Kickstarter. Don't know about the other sites.

Don't rush into a Kickstarter!
Don't take crowdfunding lightly. More don't succeed than those that do, last time I checked.
If you don't have rich relatives who like you enough to back in a big way, or don't have walls of friends, you'd better be doing something else insanely well to even have a small shot at success. Invent a teleportation machine that can be made cheaply... ok, you might not need a lot of friends and support up front, but for the rest of us, it's going to be a long haul.

One mistake I'm seeing that keeps me from backing (and I've backed quite a few - and you should too)... is Creators tossing up a pie chart for where the money's going and not even setting aside a slice to pay for backer rewards (such rewards eat a big chunk of the pie in many cases), or way undercharge for shipping (that's probably a huge number of Creators - I undercharged and that after doing my homework on it. Most Creators I know say they undercharged - it's one of the hardest things to tackle, if you have Int'l backers, since you'll never know how many you'll get).

I've been wanting to post here for some time (My campaign funded in January), but now I've got the full time job of actually making what I promised in the Kickstarter, so time is extremely tight.

One thing I learned (and as I said above, I did my homework, but for every new tip I learned, I discovered that there were at least 10 more to learn), is that while you want the Rewards to be good, you can always beef them up later if the campaign looks like it needs it. As it is, I gave away more than I needed to and it's sucking my time away.

See, I believe in being generous, so my Arcane Synthesis Kickstarter had very generous Rewards for the amounts I was asking for. I gave away a lot of stuff, even at low tiers. I wanted to. I worked out all the math. I was willing to do it - to give away goodies without losing my shirt, and spent dozens of hours pouring over the tiers to make them exactly the way I wanted. Overall, I think I had a pretty awesome campaign set up. I think my video could have been a tad better - little things here and there could have been better (hindsight), but yeah, overall, I think I did it "right".

I studied like mad the dynamics of campaign design and reward distribution, but I wanted mine generous. And I wanted lots of small dollar backers too (that's much more important than you might think!), so I set up 3 uber low tiers ($1, $2 and $5).

The $5 reward was truly unique - nobody was doing the type of reward I was offering. It was an unusual, cool idea! But ultimately, I just didn't have a big enough fan base to support having that reward in there and it cost me the same amount even if I only got 1 backer (be very wary of that sort of thing - I was convinced that tier alone would net me many backers and some of those would then be enticed to move up to higher tiers). The cost? Mostly time. That's a big cost though and my most precious commodity - and hardest to find treasure.

I ended up with only 1 at that tier (and 76 backers total). So, that told me that I shouldn't have had that tier as now I'm paying for it dearly (It's going to cost me dozens of hours to fulfill for that one person. I'd rather just hand 'em $5 or heck $10 and I'd still be saving money). I had some other prizes like that. I could have dumped that and a couple other rewards and still been very generous and now not quite as slammed as I am. (But note that you are likely taking on a full time job to fulfill your promises as a Creator, so bear that in mind when you run most Kickstarter Campaigns - not just during the campaign, but after).

Now, the tiers above that $5 tier also got that reward as part of theirs, but since I'd been generous anyway, I could have just left it out. The best/easiest rewards to give away are intangible (pdfs, wallpapers, ebooks, etc.), but it's hard to keep it to just intangible and I see way too many campaigns not only not being generous, but charging outlandish amounts just for a thanks (no offense, but A thank you card by an unknown author/inventor, filmmaker, whatever, isn't worth much. Way too many campaigns are asking for serious money and aren't giving much of anything in return). You want to give more to your Backers who are having faith in you, than what you will later sell the product for (sounds obvious, but I'm seeing people charging $30 to Backers what they plan to sell on the market for $20. That sort of thing is cutting off your own leg. It's foolishness - you want to truly reward your backers and not over value intangibles like "Credit on the website" and "My eternal gratitude"!

Anyway, what I could have done, if a large number of people starting backing, was then toss in that $5 tier, if needed. I could have sweetened the pot later by adding more rewards to a particular reward tier or add some small goodies in, rather than promise up front, assuming I'd need a particular tier.

I knew I could add surprise tiers and goodies later (and if fact I did - I offered 2 more stories than I originally promised). Again, you need to be careful there too. While I think adding one of those stories helped me, the other didn't and once again I ended up committing myself to more hours than I needed too. It's always hard to judge what's going to bring you backers, but you should be very, very careful.

Lastly for now, You don't want to just use Google+ and Twitter (or Facebook for that matter) to blanket spam everyone. You also want to be active on those sites, investing in the lives of others - getting to know them better, backing other people's projects and giving free advertisement for projects you think are worthy. I gave a lot of Creators free advertising when I could be advertising my own campaign (and yeah, I did that too). But I was a good guy and helped out others (something we all should be doing). I didn't do that to get the Creators to back me, nor did I ask them to, but some of them did see my generosity and backed me and that was very cool!

We need to be standing together as best we can to help each other out. But please, before you go asking people for help or money, take the time to do your homework. I'm seeing way too many Creators making very obviously bad choices for their campaigns - presenting themselves unprofessionally, making poor choices on Reward values, etc.

You should have several people see and give feedback on your Kickstarter page and video long before you ever run your campaign. Take it slow - don't be in a hurry as it just leads to failure, unless you are uber lucky. Take the time to get the feedback you need on everything, to spread the word (I recommend a solid year for that alone, but I know most "can't wait" that long), and time to dot your i's and cross your t's.

I have found that building a campaign is probably one of the hardest and most rewarding things in my life. I cna only hope that I can promote enough and get noticed where we are successful and my American dream can take off!

My campaign is only one third of the way through, but so far, it's much more difficult than I had anticipated! I didn't realize that social media plays such a large role in the making or breaking of your campaign. Onward!

I learned that you need to get prior committments from family and friends prior to launching your project. It takes along time educating people on how Kickstarter works. It can take several letters, emails and phone calls explaining to them how to send the money, etc. Before you know it, your 30 days are up. Also, start your blog and building an audience for yourself at least six months in advance. I'm realizing this the hard way. I have about 22 more days to raise the $10,000 and it's hard.

I've done 12 different campaign videos for various bands and all of them have been funded. The biggest including the Polyphonic Spree which ended up raising about 250k.

The thing that I've noticed is that so long as you are sincere, humble, and the video is pretty decent quality, you have a good chance of being noticed. Even though you might not have the biggest following, usually someone along the line notices.

However, I've noticed that bands seem to get funded a LOT quicker than many products or media. Not sure why that is.