KickstarterForum.org

How do I transform the Squatch Kick site into the equivalent of a network on the fly for individual project creators?

I think, short of having tons of traffic to your site, and featuring kickstarter projects that are really great, yet without much reach due to lack of network, there isn't a way to specifically helping everyone. Unless there was a way for a person to look through one project which may be known and a connection with other projects (like a projects you may also like, or blah blah who backed this project also backed this project) type link. That's more of getting projects know as opposed to creating a network.

And what about them makes them great to read? How does an article about somebody else's project help you or some other project creator, though?

Gives insight into what appeals in a project. Plus I enjoy reading about other people's creations even if it doesn't necessarily help directly.

There are lots of people with crowd funding projects, and my focus for the Squatch kick site has been on Kickstarter projects. Yet, how should the site showcase various projects? How many is a realistic number to showcase, and do I preserve the projects that have had an image link on the Squatch Kick site, for example? Or would that even matter, over the long run?

Should I spotlight only projects that I like and am attracted to? What about projects that have no "squatch?" Do I ignore those projects? Should it be only a showcase of the best sites? Or the best pieces of any site? Even still, what about the projects that have little to nothing going for them? Sure, I could do a Squatch Attack on them, but how would that get initiated? By me? By project creators that contact me?

You're a project creator - What do you need? What did you need, when you first created your project? How does the Squatch Kick site make it easier for new project creators to find whatever info that I put up on the site?

As far as the info that does make it on the site, what is the best way to compile it, to make it easier for project creators? How do I make it easier for project creators to find the info that they need?

Your site design is looking good. Everything is quite easy to access. As for which sites to showcase, that's completely up to you. In the end it's your site, if you did specialise in a particular area or your interests it may be more fulfilling for yourself and you would have a focal point. Covering the whole of kickstarter is a big task!

Great stuff

The past week has been a bit of a hectic one. There's never enough time to write all that I want to write, it seems. But, I am attempting to break that logjam. What better to break a logjam with than a log, eh?

Squatch Kick! - LEGENDS OF LOG giant size annual

After all, what they need are ways to get a crowd, and to get one quickly. They need force multipliers, for their crowd growing efforts.

Definitely agree with this statement. Longterm vision with PitchFuse.com is to do that, but it's a difficult problem to solve at scale. You can do it for individual campaigns, but helping 1,000 people improve their chance of success is more difficult. I think it will probably take another year before we begin to get there in a meaningful way. Some tools like thundeclap/headtalker can also help get someone going quickly.

Should I spotlight only projects that I like and am attracted to? What about projects that have no "squatch?" Do I ignore those projects? Should it be only a showcase of the best sites? Or the best pieces of any site? Even still, what about the projects that have little to nothing going for them? Sure, I could do a Squatch Attack on them, but how would that get initiated? By me? By project creators that contact me?

It depends on what your motivation is with the blog. If you want to help creators or projects that you like get more of a spotlight, then I would showcase the ones you are attracted to. I don't think doing a hatchet job on projects that need to be improved is helpful, aside from getting you pageviews. Yes, it could make them more likely to improve, but it just kinds of turns my stomach. Then again, there are groups dedicated to this like:

http://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters
http://yourkickstartersucks.tumblr.com/
http://kickfailure.tumblr.com/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/cconnelly/the-1 ... l-time-s3x
Kicksnarker google+ group: http://kicksnarker.blogspot.com/p/offic ... r-faq.html

I'd say it also depends on how you want creators and backers to interact with your website and where you want to be in that process.

Let me know if you have any questions or want to get involved in a bigger way on one of my sites also. I admire your passion for the topic!

sbriggman wrote:Definitely agree with this statement. Longterm vision with PitchFuse.com is to do that, but it's a difficult problem to solve at scale. You can do it for individual campaigns, but helping 1,000 people improve their chance of success is more difficult. I think it will probably take another year before we begin to get there in a meaningful way. Some tools like thundeclap/headtalker can also help get someone going quickly.

Indeed, at scale the problem becomes magnified exponentially. But, then, that's why it's called a challenge, isn't it, Sal?

I visited the Pitch Fuse site again, yesterday. I very much dislike being unable to right click a project to open it.

sbriggman wrote:It depends on what your motivation is with the blog. If you want to help creators or projects that you like get more of a spotlight, then I would showcase the ones you are attracted to. I don't think doing a hatchet job on projects that need to be improved is helpful, aside from getting you pageviews. Yes, it could make them more likely to improve, but it just kinds of turns my stomach.

Well, is that what I do here, in this forum, Sal? A hatchet job?

Showcasing only the ones that I am attracted to, or trying to help only those project that I am attracted to, wouldn't that be akin to cherry-picking?

I do like to showcase projects that I like, or which I think are doing various things right, where their respective Kickstarter project pages are concerned. Yet, it seems to me that the greater challenge lies in helping those who feel lost, hopeless, and their projects can't seem to gain any traction.

That said, from what I have seen, thus far, Kickstarter project creators as a bunch seem predisposed to undersell their own projects. All too often, many of them start projects, but then don't do updates, don't engage with their backers, and don't seem to value communication as a tool to net their projects greater advantage with potential backers.

A lot (and I do mean a LOT) of Kickstarter project creators commit basic errors. Of course, you know this better than I do, as you've been involved with crowd funding on a far greater level and for a far greater duration of time than myself. How much of the advice that emanates from this very forum is basically a repeat of the same things, over and over and over, again? Yet, it's not as though project creators have an innermost desire for their projects to fail.

The sheer number of page views that the Squatch Kick site gets, I'm not particularly concerned about. That aspect is basically a non-issue to me - although more page views is an indicator of increased site traffic, which translates into the site becoming better positioned to assist more project creators. Theoretically, at least, anyway - assuming that project creators are amongst the increase of site traffic that leads to increased page views.

A hatchet job could mean more than one thing. On the one hand, a sloppy, half-assed attempt to try and glean what's wrong with a site could be properly deemed a hatchet job. Likewise, I can see how one might view ripping into project deficiencies merely for the sake of doing so, or simply to mock a project openly for pure amusement's sake, could qualify as a hatchet job on a project.

But, neither of those areas is where my interest lies. If that were my desire, then I would probably gravitate toward something other than a blog to manifest such an undertaking. Facebook, for example, would be a far more efficient mechanism to facilitate that type of approach.

sbriggman wrote:Then again, there are groups dedicated to this like:

http://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters
http://yourkickstartersucks.tumblr.com/
http://kickfailure.tumblr.com/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/cconnelly/the-1 ... l-time-s3x
Kicksnarker google+ group: http://kicksnarker.blogspot.com/p/offic ... r-faq.html

I've encountered some of those, before, but not in a long while. I haven't even looked for sites of that nature, since I began using this forum. I first encountered a couple of those sites a while back, though I don't recall how, exactly.

sbriggman wrote:I'd say it also depends on how you want creators and backers to interact with your website and where you want to be in that process.

Let me know if you have any questions or want to get involved in a bigger way on one of my sites also. I admire your passion for the topic!

I've seen you post about guest blogging, before, and while I'm not disinterested in getting involved in a bigger way on one of your sites, it would all boil down to the particulars of such. What would I do? What would I post about?

That may sound odd, seeing as how I tend to chime in pretty freely about crowd funding projects here in this forum. But, feel free to toss out a few suggestions, and I'll consider them. Fair enough?

Squatch Kick will continue, either way. But, I'm not opposed to having a better vehicle to utilize as a mechanism to help project creators.

Ohhh I see what you're saying. Yea I was referring into pointing out deficiencies to mock/amuse. I got confused when you said "the projects that have little to nothing going for them" and "Squatch Attack" in the same sentence. Just looked back in the threads and now I see the meaning of 'Squatch Attack'.

Showcasing only the ones that I am attracted to, or trying to help only those project that I am attracted to, wouldn't that be akin to cherry-picking?

Yes, it is cherry picking, but at the same time Kickstarter and Indiegogo already are showcasing the trending projects and recently launched ones. I think they're trying to get more people involved with pointing out cool deserving projects with the curated pages section.

I agree with you that a lot of project creators commit the same basic errors. One way I've thought of improving this would be to have a pitch "score" that you get when you create a project on PitchFuse. Basically, if you included how the funds will be used, but didn't include a founder bio, you would only get a B or something like that.

Yea, we have to fix the "right click" functionality. This is the beta, so I'll try to get that changed for the next version.

However, we wouldn't be able to give a score on someone's existing project on Kickstarter or Indiegogo unless they submitted the URL and we could possible scrape the project site, but we would only be able to detect quantifiable things like whether or not a video was there, how many rewards they have, whether or not they have comments (how many), etc. Could possibly work with Kicktraq to put something like this together to give someone a score of their pitch, but it wouldn't include qualitative measures, which matters a lot.

Yea, a lot of the advice that emanates from the forum is repeated. We also get a good amount of traffic from google from people searching for answers to the same questions over and over again.

I think you're doing a great job with Squatch Kick. Hmm... if you were interested in getting involved via a guest post, I think it would be best for you to stick with the type of article that you enjoy writing most.

In the battle to get your project funded, can you ever really have too many tips to draw insight from?

Crowd Funding Tip # 9 - Crowdfunding is not a fire and forget missile