KickstarterForum.org

September 30th 2013 I'll be launching a Kickstarter for my Short film project The Monstar Movie. The film is a throwback to 80's Fantasy and Sci-Fi cinema with a queer twist. It follows Jake, a gay teen, who's been transformed into a monster on Halloween night . The film takes many twists and turns as the newly transformed Jake ravages everyone in his path and ultimately finds himself in a LAs largest underground party. Stylistically it's along the same lines as "Thriller" and "The Labyrinth" Thematically, it touches on issues of homophobia within the gay community.

As the launch date approaches I wanted to make sure I do as much as I can to ensure this projects is success. With that said I wanted to go over my plans here in an effort to exchange info and get feedback from other creatives who have participated in Kickstarter.

Fundraising Goal: $3,325 My film has completed production and This is to cover the cost of post production.
contributions will fund:
Film Editors
Foley Artists
Visual effects editor(s)
Sound engineer
Composer
Promotion
Festival submission fees

In terms of advertisement I'm thinking of using Google adsense and Facebook advertising to draw people to my kickstarter campaign. I did a minimal amount of promo work so I'm trying to think of ways to compensate for the lack of pre-campaign momentum. Is this a good idea?

I should also note that I stretched my funding time from the suggested 30 day time span to 50 days just to add enough time to catch the interest of the various blogs and news papers. I'm also aware of the risk of losing steam midway so I'm planning to post updates regularly in an effort to engage potential donors.

Because the film itself is very outside the box, I've been promoting in a number of creative ways. I've hit the streets in elaborate costumes inspired by the film and so far found success in getting people curious about the film. My next promo stunt involves walking down the streets of LA and handing out free mylar "MonSTAR" balloons with flyers about the campaign.

And naturally a press release will be sent out to the various blogs and local papers. Anything else I should do? Any ideas?

I wouldn't use Google Adsense, not for a Kickstarter anyway. Although it seems fairly common for first Kickstarter project creators not to do much pre-marketing, your project could be doomed for not doing so. Marketing is everything in getting noticed in the sea of Kickstarters competing for pledges. If you take the time to read the older posts, espcially in this board of the forums, you'll find that the successful projects spent a lot of time and in many cases no money spent rather social networks developed - that's where your pledge makers will come from.

I started my project as a Google+ community a month prior to Kickstarter start - and that's really not enough time. I ran a very successful Kickstarter, but it was for a wanted product by my targeted audience. You'd be smart to spend 3 to 4 months developing a blog, building a Facebook and G+ community around the topic of your project. Once you develop an audience, only then should you ever consider running a Kickstarter. I wouldn't recommend not spending time developing your social network before running any Kickstarter. Not to say your doomed to failure, but not doing so will make getting the word out on your project a steep uphill climb.

Looking down the barrel of this kickstarter I've for sure come to realize just how steep an uphill climb this project will be. But any amount of extra work doesn't seem to scare me (not yet at least) I am however, wondering if there are strategies one could use to support and promote a kicstarter without having a large audience to start.

This is an indie film that started as a class project and eventually morphed into an ambitious short feature. With filming complete all that is left is post production...and that's where Kickstarter comes in. However, I worry about the production timeline. Should everything stop for the next 3 or 4 months until I have a captive audience? What would I have to offer during the 3/4 month period. Or should I wait until next halloween being that this is a film that takes place during halloween?

You want to develop an audience and as large a one as possible, but startup Kickstarter funded creators seldom have huge audiences. My G+ community right now has 557 members, though during much of the Kickstarter it was about 450 members. About 20% of my backers came from my G+ community, while another 20% came from various industry blogs and forums I had thread announcements of my KS project. The rest came from Kickstarter itself, people who found me under Games/Tabletop/Popular, my KS profile, and KS Tag (map).

Although my KS project was successfully funded, I was only looking for increments of around $3500 each for 5 different books as the goal and stretch goals of my project with a top level of $16,500 as last stretch goal. Over a 30 day funding period I received $23,289 in pledges (almost half of that gained in the last 3 days).

I frequently engaged my own G+ community (more than once per day), plus several other popular RPG fan G+ communities, also I updated my various announcement threads on the other gaming forums on a weekly basis as the majority of my direct marketing. Although there was time and effort to do this, I didn't spend any actual marketing money such as using a PR firm, banner ads nor Google Adsense. I used only no cost social networking for my entire marketing efforts.

Still as I said, I spent a couple months developing this. Even though my project was extremely niche, it was completely alone in that niche and proved to be an interesting product idea for a ready audience - a series of tutorials guides teaching gamers how to create their own photo-realistic gaming maps. I was able to keep my audience excited about the project. This is what you have to do to hope for a successfully funded project.

I gotta admit guys, waiting three or four months and building a larger audience sounds pretty good. I also have to admit that i don't use G+....like at all. Has it grown in the years since it's creation?

I've used Facebook for 3 years, and Google+ for 3 months, and I far prefer Google+, am able to develop a fanbase faster and more efficiently than via Facebook. I find there are many, many communities, enough to find multiple niches to follow your concepts. Once someone becomes your friend, all communities he is a member shows up as "Discover Communities" or suggested communities that you might be able to find other fans, and yes, I easily expanded my fanbase search pursuing these other communities.

I tend to post free material (map illustrations) to gain "+'s" from G+ members, that I recruit as friends, and eventually invite to my G+ page. In the first 30 days, I was able to recruit almost 400 members to my G+ site. And consider that the total number of backers to my project was 456, so not a substantial number, it was more than enough to fund my project. You don't need to create thousands of fans, just a few hundred should fund your project.

I do other kinds of social networking, including participation in numerous forums for my industry, Facebook and G+, and find G+ superior to all others.

Thank you so much Michael for your insightful responses! I'm exploring G+ and the more time spent there the more I like it. I also agree that Facebook isn't the optimal choice in gaining a following. Facebook has a wide reach but the it's harder to actually engage being that FB tends to be more about self involvement as opposed to genuine communication.