KickstarterForum.org

Congrats! I may not be as excited as y'all but I'm definitely excited for you!!

Congratulations! I just signed on to the forum so I'm a little late. That must be quite a feeling, I'm sure you're pretty stoked. Are there any lessons to share right away about what helped and what you'd perhaps do differently?

We are launching our first Kickstarter campaign tomorrow 4.14.

Congrats again!

Matt

Matt Kline, Erector Director
Come Clean Company
www.cleanissoap.com
@cleanissoap

cleanissoap wrote:Congratulations! I just signed on to the forum so I'm a little late. That must be quite a feeling, I'm sure you're pretty stoked. Are there any lessons to share right away about what helped and what you'd perhaps do differently?

We are launching our first Kickstarter campaign tomorrow 4.14.

Congrats again!

Matt

Matt Kline, Erector Director
Come Clean Company
http://www.cleanissoap.com
@cleanissoap

Thank you Matt!

I learned a LOT.

I just watched your video and it's one of the most entertaining videos I've watched. So kudos for your creativity and having fun with that. With a product like yours, it's really good to have fun with it.

I think the biggest lesson that I learned is that just because I was passionate and knowledgeable about my project, there's a big difference between my passion/knowledge and getting other people willing to put their money where my passion is.

Because I'm not able to make kittens explode, I needed to work a lot harder to get people to my campaign. Keep talking about it on Facebook, twitter and every other social media outlet that you're a part of until you're tired of talking about it and then talk about it some more.

What I'd do differently? As soon as I reached the goal, I think I would have started working on the follow-up stuff when the campaign comes to a close. I'm using BackerKit and because I have a lot of teas that I'm offering and a lot of different 'multiple' choice incentives, it's a lot of work to get the surveys to say what I need them to say so that we're not totally stressed out when it comes to fulfillment.

So, when you know that you're hard work will get you funded, then you need to start thinking about how you'll be able to fulfill the rewards. That's my biggest challenge at this point!

I hope that's been helpful!

~Anne

UUComicsandProject wrote:Congrats! I may not be as excited as y'all but I'm definitely excited for you!!

Thanks! I see you're in Seattle - I'll have to take a closer look at your campaign in a bit!

~Anne

LizEnright wrote:Congratulations on meeting your goal! I only wish I'd heard about your campaign sooner. Your teas sound delicious!

-Liz

Thanks. Our teas will be available - you can get a little bit of a sneak preview of them by trying some teas created by the founder of 52Teas - http://www.52teas.com/ - this is the company we're buying and will be operating starting June 1st. I'll be making some changes to things, but, you can get some really tasty teas from him and that'll give you an idea of what we'll be about.

I'm going to show my daughter your campaign because she's into the Nintendo characters. I think she'd get a kick out of your comics.

~Anne

Thanks. Our teas will be available - you can get a little bit of a sneak preview of them by trying some teas created by the founder of 52Teas - http://www.52teas.com/ - this is the company we're buying and will be operating starting June 1st. I'll be making some changes to things, but, you can get some really tasty teas from him and that'll give you an idea of what we'll be about.

I'm going to show my daughter your campaign because she's into the Nintendo characters. I think she'd get a kick out of your comics.

~Anne[/quote]


I'll be checking out your site! Thanks for the link and for showing your daughter our page

-Liz

I was wondering if you were able to share your marketing strategies on how you reached your goal? Congrats BTW

giftsandcoupons wrote:I was wondering if you were able to share your marketing strategies on how you reached your goal? Congrats BTW

Thank you.

I have to be honest and say that I don't really think I'm all that effective at marketing. I'm an artist and I love tea and that's my strength. Tea is a huge passion of mine and as a result, I spend more time online where tea drinkers go like Steepster than I do on Facebook, and when I do go to facebook, it's to check out what's going on on various tea drinking groups in Facebook. I am a tea reviewer. Basically, my life is pretty much TEA. I live tea.

So, when I launched the first kickstarter campaign - it wasn't successful, because as I said previously, there is a big difference between having the passion for something and convincing someone else to put their money where my passion is. My first kickstarter goal was 10K and I raised just over half of that.

I re-evaluated my budget and decided that I could cut back on some things and other things I could restructure and replan so that I didn't need to buy everything up front. In other words, think smarter about which tea flavors I was going to blend and when ... and with this new plan, I asked for half of what I asked for with my first project and I exceeded that goal and reached 8338.

But that 8K came with a lot more work than I put into the 10K project because I realized a little too late that I needed to work twice as hard as I was to get to the goal.

Most (I'd say about 85%) of our original investors returned to invest in us again so that's why I was able to reach the goal in 9 days.

I think that if I were more of a marketing person, that we would have gotten even higher - I would have reached the 10K with the first project and then some. That's definitely one of my shortcomings.

I think that most of my backers are there because they love tea and because I've established myself as someone who also loves tea and knows a thing or two about it. So they believe in my ability and I think that's what got me to where I am more than my ability to plan an effective market strategy.

My daughter - who will be running the business - is going to work on that aspect of our business. I'm just the mad tea artist.

I wish I could offer you some great words of wisdom - but I really am just a person with a passion.

Thanks for your words, seems like with more focus and planning investors will be more inclined to invest.

If you get a website up and a few products listed, hit me up and I'll list you on our Gifts site for free!

giftsandcoupons wrote:Thanks for your words, seems like with more focus and planning investors will be more inclined to invest.

If you get a website up and a few products listed, hit me up and I'll list you on our Gifts site for free!

Thank you, I will let you know. Right now 52Teas is still operated by the founder, Frank Horbelt. We will be taking over June 1st ... and we're working on so much in the meantime! But I will be sure to let you know and we'd love to be featured on your gifts site!

Sincerely,
Anne