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SoDaptor wrote:Good points on spending your money advertising where you're likely to see a better conversion, even if it's a smaller platform.

Are there any alternatives that kicktraq that people have had success with?

AkaNezumi wrote: It's easy to think these places will help/save your campaign but they don't do much of anything and in the end you won't break even.

I’d like to take this moment to point out the absurd disparity in “direct traffic” vs all other sources. I’ve always argued this number is inflated for a variety of reasons (which are difficult to test for), but to have it be so disproportionate on a campaign where I know Jamie is really pushing his existing fan base highlights this even more.

I only wish KS had a true referral tracking system. It’d help project owners know where their traffic is actually coming from and which sources are truly the most effective.

...

As far as I’m aware, IGG’s system is better simply because it’s persistent.

On KS, if a backer comes in through Kicktraq or BGG or whatever, then changes their pledge later, they get put in the direct bucket and pulled out of the Kicktraq bucket (at least last time I tested it).

The same goes for favorites. If a person comes in through Kicktraq, clicks the favorite button, then comes back later, it gets counted as a favorites reminder.

I don’t think it’s difficult programatically to persist the referral during the pledge, I just don’t think KS has a reason to do this. Tracking separate referral codes would be a little more difficult, but I think it’d be a robust tool in the hands of the project owner. Think if you could meter all of your marketing outlets separately and even A/B test on the same site. You could run 3 different ads on a site to see which ones convert the best. Currently you can’t do that on KS or even on IGG as IGG referral codes are user-based.

Does advertising on your platform make projects more successful? Why should a project owner advertise on Kicktraq?

This is a common question we get, and I'll give you a surprising answer. Projects are only as successful as the appeal they have to backers. No advertising platform, be it Google, Facebook, Kicktraq, or whatever will ever MAKE a project fund. All they can do is provide additional channels to inform people of your project. We like to call these "eyeballs" for short. All any advertiser can do is provide eyeballs - so if you have an extremely limited budget, invest in things like video production or a little graphic design, or even just more of your time researching to help create an immediately engaging page and video. Getting eyeballs on your project without an engaging page or video is like bringing diners to a restaurant without any food to serve.

Project owners should only use advertising as a supplemental tool in addition to those initial efforts, not as a crutch or something that you think will save your project when things start going south. If things start going south, you should figure out why people aren't engaging, not throwing money around to get more people to look at an un-engaging project.

That being said, four things are unique to advertising with Kicktraq vs. other advertising channels. First, we provide a very specific set of eyeballs for projects, and a lot of them. We have tens of thousands of people who use Kicktraq every day, and we share how many people use the site every day on our advertiser page so project owners can see how many people potentially will see their ad. Also, people who are using Kicktraq are already comfortable with crowdfunding and engaged in the community in some way, so the advertising is hyper-specific to folks who you don't have to sell on the idea of backing a project. Those potential backers are already researching, and are probably excited about another project. That's why they are on Kicktraq in the first place.

Second, compared to generic advertising platforms, we recognize that a project may need to change during or after their campaign in order to fund. Failing or restarting a project isn't a bad thing. It's an educational means that many projects have used to be successful, and we don't want project owners to be worried about losing their advertising investment if they fail initially or choose to cancel and re-launch. The project owner community supports us and we want to support them, so we have a re-launch guarantee where if a project advertiser isn't successful or needs to cancel, we will re-run their ad when they re-launch, completely free. We don't just give them the time they had remaining, we re-run their entire advertising slot for free. It's one less thing for project owners to worry about, so they can focus on learning from their campaign and ultimately being successful. Facebook and Google aren't going to do that for you.

Third, we only advertise active crowdfunding campaigns so our advertisers never have to compete with weird, non-related ads. We value and respect the folks who use our tools, so project owners never have to compete with outlandish animated "click the monkey" viagra ads and potential backers know they don't have to suffer through those types of ads, so they stay more engaged with the sponsorships they do see on our platform.

Lastly, we recognize that the majority of the project owners aren't looking for hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone millions in funding. Most project owners have small budgets, especially before their project has even secured funding. For that reason, even though we could charge quite a bit more for our ad space, our general rotation ads average out to $10/day for the 14-day rotation. While those prices may vary over time, our price point is set with the little guys in mind because we really, really want the lady who is building a sustainable farm cheese cave 1,000 miles from us to succeed just as much as we want to see a book in the hands of every child.

Kicktraq wrote:

AkaNezumi wrote: It's easy to think these places will help/save your campaign but they don't do much of anything and in the end you won't break even.

Never... ever... buy advertising to "save" your campaign. If you're doing this, you're already in trouble. Think about cancelling your project and look at a relaunch in lieu of throwing money at a sinking ship OR just calm down and ride it out. Things may not be as bad as you imagine.

There are lots of issues with crowdfunding advertising that aren't easily solved given the tools provided by the platforms themselves. I covered some of the issues with referral vs domain tracking when chatting with Jamie Stegmaier on his blog. Unfortunately the referral tracking isn't the best on Kickstarter for a variety of reasons.

Here's an excerpt:

I’d like to take this moment to point out the absurd disparity in “direct traffic” vs all other sources. I’ve always argued this number is inflated for a variety of reasons (which are difficult to test for), but to have it be so disproportionate on a campaign where I know Jamie is really pushing his existing fan base highlights this even more.

I only wish KS had a true referral tracking system. It’d help project owners know where their traffic is actually coming from and which sources are truly the most effective.

...

As far as I’m aware, IGG’s system is better simply because it’s persistent.

On KS, if a backer comes in through Kicktraq or BGG or whatever, then changes their pledge later, they get put in the direct bucket and pulled out of the Kicktraq bucket (at least last time I tested it).

The same goes for favorites. If a person comes in through Kicktraq, clicks the favorite button, then comes back later, it gets counted as a favorites reminder.

I don’t think it’s difficult programatically to persist the referral during the pledge, I just don’t think KS has a reason to do this. Tracking separate referral codes would be a little more difficult, but I think it’d be a robust tool in the hands of the project owner. Think if you could meter all of your marketing outlets separately and even A/B test on the same site. You could run 3 different ads on a site to see which ones convert the best. Currently you can’t do that on KS or even on IGG as IGG referral codes are user-based.

Here's a link to the full article/comments: http://stonemaiergames.com/statistics-f ... r-project/

Lastly, here's an excerpt from an interview I recently gave covering ads on KT that may help clarify and help you determine if ads are right for you. I will always always always encourage people to find niche sites to promote their projects. You will have infinitely higher performance on a remote control car forum if your product is a revolutionary new remote control car controller than you ever will on any generic advertising platform **with one caveat**, your project has to actually be engaging. No amount of advertising will ever help a boring project.

Here's the excerpt:

Does advertising on your platform make projects more successful? Why should a project owner advertise on Kicktraq?

This is a common question we get, and I'll give you a surprising answer. Projects are only as successful as the appeal they have to backers. No advertising platform, be it Google, Facebook, Kicktraq, or whatever will ever MAKE a project fund. All they can do is provide additional channels to inform people of your project. We like to call these "eyeballs" for short. All any advertiser can do is provide eyeballs - so if you have an extremely limited budget, invest in things like video production or a little graphic design, or even just more of your time researching to help create an immediately engaging page and video. Getting eyeballs on your project without an engaging page or video is like bringing diners to a restaurant without any food to serve.

Project owners should only use advertising as a supplemental tool in addition to those initial efforts, not as a crutch or something that you think will save your project when things start going south. If things start going south, you should figure out why people aren't engaging, not throwing money around to get more people to look at an un-engaging project.

That being said, four things are unique to advertising with Kicktraq vs. other advertising channels. First, we provide a very specific set of eyeballs for projects, and a lot of them. We have tens of thousands of people who use Kicktraq every day, and we share how many people use the site every day on our advertiser page so project owners can see how many people potentially will see their ad. Also, people who are using Kicktraq are already comfortable with crowdfunding and engaged in the community in some way, so the advertising is hyper-specific to folks who you don't have to sell on the idea of backing a project. Those potential backers are already researching, and are probably excited about another project. That's why they are on Kicktraq in the first place.

Second, compared to generic advertising platforms, we recognize that a project may need to change during or after their campaign in order to fund. Failing or restarting a project isn't a bad thing. It's an educational means that many projects have used to be successful, and we don't want project owners to be worried about losing their advertising investment if they fail initially or choose to cancel and re-launch. The project owner community supports us and we want to support them, so we have a re-launch guarantee where if a project advertiser isn't successful or needs to cancel, we will re-run their ad when they re-launch, completely free. We don't just give them the time they had remaining, we re-run their entire advertising slot for free. It's one less thing for project owners to worry about, so they can focus on learning from their campaign and ultimately being successful. Facebook and Google aren't going to do that for you.

Third, we only advertise active crowdfunding campaigns so our advertisers never have to compete with weird, non-related ads. We value and respect the folks who use our tools, so project owners never have to compete with outlandish animated "click the monkey" viagra ads and potential backers know they don't have to suffer through those types of ads, so they stay more engaged with the sponsorships they do see on our platform.

Lastly, we recognize that the majority of the project owners aren't looking for hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone millions in funding. Most project owners have small budgets, especially before their project has even secured funding. For that reason, even though we could charge quite a bit more for our ad space, our general rotation ads average out to $10/day for the 14-day rotation. While those prices may vary over time, our price point is set with the little guys in mind because we really, really want the lady who is building a sustainable farm cheese cave 1,000 miles from us to succeed just as much as we want to see a book in the hands of every child.

source: Part 1 | Part 2

AkaNezumi wrote:I was merely answering the question that was asked. Have you used Kicktraq ads?

AkaNezumi wrote:Since I have used Kicktraq ads I gave my result and my opinion based on my results. When I said don't buy ads to save your campaign that was my own tip to others. Regardless I still stand by my opinion of Kicktraq.

AkaNezumi wrote:As a whole the site has not gather much of any results and it is best to advertise on a site that carters to your campaigns topic not on a site that carters to the 'world'.