KickstarterForum.org

A lot of sources suggest getting feedback from people who aren't afraid to hurt your feelings, so you hear what the really damaging things are. I found that wasn't sufficient. I needed careless feedback to reveal where I had actually gone wrong in the eyes of the target market. I'm not sure if this is common sense, so I wanted to call it out.

I tried pitching a site where users could collaborate on RPG rulebooks, and contributions would be voted on for quality, then when someone donated to a book, the donation would be split among the high rated content. Voting systems are very exploitable, so I put in a lot of work designing systems which would mitigate the exploits.

Post launch, I was getting all kinds of traffic from Project Wonderful ads on sites where there are already large communities of people who already collaborate on RPG rulebooks for free. None of that traffic turned into pledges. All my backers were from Kickstarter searches. So, I made some threads on these different forums to find out what was turning people off. During my pre-launch feedback I had heard a lot about my tiers being too confusing, my video being too boring, my goal being too high, etc. Those items rarely came up, and if they did it was only from people who were giving all the feedback they could and had read the full pitch dutifully.

What kept coming up from everyone who was not trying to read it all was consistent negative feedback about the site using a voting system to determine value. Each time a new participant entered the conversation, they would post a quick one-liner brush-off by describing a common exploit of a voting system and saying the site was invalidated because of it. Those issues were often already addressed in the thread, and already had users agreeing with the solutions. People were consistently reading as far as a specific keyword they associated negatively, then stopping. Everything after that word was moot.

My feedback interviews had not been asking 'where does the idea break' but 'what do you think'? Out of altruism, good manners, or just not wanting to look stupid, people in my interviews had been reading everything from start to finish. That act of becoming fully aware of what I was trying to do invalidated the feedback. It was honest but no longer organic. It wasn't 'real life'.

I feel like the best probing question to give to people initially is 'Stop the video as soon as you are no longer interested in the product. What made you stop the video?' Then you can find the panic buttons that needs to be smoothed out before launch.

That idea sounds intriguing. It's important to know where your audience becomes disinterested. It can often be triggered by something you feel is relatively minor or that feel you have accounted for, but the mere mention of which becomes a dealbreaker for many.

I feel like the best probing question to give to people initially is 'Stop the video as soon as you are no longer interested in the product. What made you stop the video?' Then you can find the panic buttons that needs to be smoothed out before launch.

Love this idea! Some very interesting thoughts in this post. As an entrepreneur, creator, inventor, designer, etc, I think part of maturing in your field is figuring out what type of feedback to pay attention to and what type of feedback to ignore.

As you hinted, not all feedback is created equal, and what may be helpful for one campaign may not be for another, because maybe for that other campaign the project wonderful ads do convert. I think part of campaigning is figuring out what works best for yours and what numbers to pay attention to.

Those issues were often already addressed in the thread, and already had users agreeing with the solutions.

So in my experience, there are usually three main types of users in a community - the engaged, semi-engaged, and the spammers.

Spammers just want to promote their own work/stuff and have everyone check it out. Rarely a good strategy and it comes off as very selfish.

Semi-engaged want to contribute to the community and also get something out of it. Usually, they will interact, provide feedback, etc, but won't take 30 minutes to leave an in-depth review, read through all the previous threads, etc.

Engaged users are the backbone of the community. The best way to earn their attention is to be an engaged user yourself. These are the ones likely to give you a long comprehensive response. They are the ones super passionate about the space or see the value in contributing over a span of time.

I had noticed another flaw in my feedback-gathering related to the spammer/semi-engaged/engaged archetypes. But, I'm not sure what to suggest as a solution.

When I was talking to people and trying to get all forms of feedback, I had been erroneously treating most of their feedback as 'engaged' tier. Like, my idea was for a collaborative website, so I talked to a bunch of creative types. I got a lot of feedback saying they would use a site set up as I was proposing. So, I slotted them into 'hardcore' (what I was calling 'engaged' in my mind). After having the failed conversion from actual 'hardcore' communities, I was able to compare and see that the people I had gotten feedback from pre-launch were more like what I was calling 'casual' (semi-engaged).

I've determined that the idea appeals more to semi-engaged style participants than engaged*. But I'm not sure how to identify a semi-engaged person. I'm not sure how to promote to them since they don't really aggregate anywhere.

* 'Engaged' tier people already have habits formed to complete a project, and don't need the kind of ad-hoc team-building for rapid prototyping that I was proposing. They also don't trust their ideas to others, and don't typically collaborate to begin with. Semi-engaged tier people do like floating ideas and experimenting. I'm stuck at that point. I need to define those people as a targetable demographic in order to be able to plan a relaunch.

I think this is a really important thread and raises a lot of good questions.

So, my experience with launching products is that getting feedback (written or spoken) is always nice, but what actually determines whether or not a website or product will take off is user behavior.

People don't always know what they want until they see it. This is why I am averse to focus groups and surveys when deciding the best way to market a product or whether or not people would use it.

If you have not already, I would highly recommend reading the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries - http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Startup- ... 0307887898

This idea makes me think of how when Tim Ferriss was deciding on the name of his book, The 4 Hour Work Week, rather than asking people which name they liked best from a variety of titles, he ran a bunch of google ads that just went to landing pages and measured click through rate and other stats. The "4 Hour Work Week" title performed best, so he went with that.

After having the failed conversion from actual 'hardcore' communities, I was able to compare and see that the people I had gotten feedback from pre-launch were more like what I was calling 'casual' (semi-engaged).

I've determined that the idea appeals more to semi-engaged style participants than engaged*. But I'm not sure how to identify a semi-engaged person. I'm not sure how to promote to them since they don't really aggregate anywhere.

Cool. Awesome to see that you are conducting market tests. So, in my experience, it's near impossibly to target one very specific group of people initially (unless you are paying for specific ads). Creating a funnel that delivers you the type of users you want takes time.

I would start off engaging the creative types on the whole and then over time, you'll learn the best ways to target the type of creative person that is ideal for your website. In addition, you'll being to tailor your website's copywriting for that person so that they convert into users at a higher rate.

It takes time to target your ideal users effectively, but I do think there is value in engaging the larger community. For example, in a previous recruitment software startup I did, people in the community would point customers our way because we made a good impression and they knew who we were, even though they didn't use our software themselves.

Now, my preferred method of getting in touch with target users online is inbound marketing. See: http://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing

In-person, networking and following up is best.

Good link. Inbound marketing is a new area for me to look at.

The Google Ads idea is great. It looks like an unusual application of A/B Testing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing

Run two differently styled ads for a month or so, then replace the weaker-performing ad with another test style. Keep repeating that cycle and your ads grow progressively more effective over time and iterations.

If you find Ad A is stronger than Ad B, replace Ad B with Ad C. If you find Ad C performs better than Ad A, replace it with Ad D. If Ad D performs worse, replace it with Ad E. Always have a champion and a contender. Replace with the new champion.

i have just launched my first kickstarter project and i am looking for any help on how to promote this project any ideas from people who have already launched projects or had projects fully funded would be a great help thank you very much

@david - I would recommend asking this question on the AMA - we-ve-raised-over-275-so-far-ask-us-anything-ama-t1888.html

Hi. I have launched my kickstarter campaign about 5 days ago. The campaign has been shared 67 times so far and the video has been played almost 70 times, but has not gained many pledges from kickstarter backers. So far it is mostly from direct contacts such as friends and co-workers.
I start to wonder if it is about the idea or the presentation of the campaign. I think it is a good time for me to ask "where the idea breaks?" or "where the interest falls apart?". Thank you for the great post.

@emen - Would recommend adding your campaign link to your forum signature so that it's easy to check out when you post.