KickstarterForum.org

NETWORKING. The first day of my campaign almost half of my backers were people I knew

We are still fighting the good fight as we still have 25 days left on our campaign (tinyurl.com/voltset) but we learned that preparation is key!

Responding to back questions and really knowing your audience is important! We have shifted our strategy from focusing on large media outlets and instead we are cross -promoting with other projects in our similar field and trying to learn from their successes and mistakes.

As we just surpassed our funding goal this week, I hope we can keep the momentum going and hit our stretch goals!

Good luck to everyone and hope this helps!

-Ran, Voltset Team

I just started my Kickstarter campaign and have to say that preparation is very important. When you launch the project you lose control of what is going to happen (to some degree) but you have total control over how you prepare in the beginning. First, plan everything out on paper. Plan your work and then work your plan. Cover all bases and don't let your presentation suffer because of being impatient.

And yes, covering as much social media as you can is key. Put in the effort to setup your website (with a blog) if you have not already and don't forget a facebook dedicated to your project. Also, a YouTube channel to show your Kickstarter video and update videos. Make sure all these avenues display links to the others. The fantastic thing is these resources are all free. Laziness is the only thing keeping some from exploring these options.

Campaigns do not fund themselves. Its all about getting good word of mouth behind your project and effectively communicating your projects, its goals, and your rewards in both a professional, fun, and engaging matter.

Getting yourself on blogs is very important. We posted our project to our own blog, from there our project got syndicated by one of the largest blogs in Japan and by projects end that action from one independent editor of a Japanese blog got us 200% funded with 25% of our backers coming from Japan.

With the above we also learned another lesson. International shipping is freaking expensive! We barely broke even after so many unexpected Japanese orders. Thank god ours wasn't a for-profit project. Ours was an indie music Kickstarter so we were just happy to have so many people listening to what we had to play whether we made money or not.

This might sound negative, but I learned who my friends are. There were a lot of people I had always just assumed would toss a few dollars our way but what struck me was how certain people from my past have been super supportive, super enthusiastic, and super generous while others (people I would have at one time considered very close friends) haven't given us a second thought (even after receiving personalized messages from us).

Obviously creators should contact everyone they've ever met in some regard (email, Facebook, etc.) because you never know where support will come from, but it's always good to manage expectations.

I am learning that it is harder than I thought!

Thanks everybody. It's helpful
Everyone repeats me that I must imperatively have a community before launch.
And it is very difficult to create it when it does not exist! I discovered this every day!
It's so an important part of the job!

have you guys got some success with good SEO marketing? I wonder how kickstarter profiles works organic on search engine.

I think it is wise you have your own webpage before making a profile on kick.

NoxzoRa wrote:have you guys got some success with good SEO marketing? I wonder how kickstarter profiles works organic on search engine.

I think it is wise you have your own webpage before making a profile on kick.

Despite my website being out there for almost 2 years with GOOD SEO marketing (awesome tags, great keywords, and proper SEO practice), Kickstarter earned the top spot on a Google search. Over my website too. So your organic search results will be great. Same thing happened to me on Facebook. Google is not really looking at the traffic, but more of the source. Same thing goes for Facebook. Once I created my facebook page it was instantly number one on google for a search for my product, despite having no likes, shares, activity.