KickstarterForum.org

Hey all. I have a potentially confusing question, simply because I'm finding it hard to find the words to describe it.

I'm at the stage of calculating exactly how much I'll need to raise for my Kickstarter. It's a web series, and I know how much I'll need to raise for the cast and crew, etc, but I'm struggling with the merchandise.

I'm using websites that provide online quotes to get the costs, which is fine, but how do I know how many I'll need at this point?

I obviously have no idea how many people will choose particular pledge tiers, so how can I calculate my total funding goal, rewards included? I'm sure there's a clever way that people work it out, but I'm stumped.

Thanks for any help!

Hmm, I think I've cracked it. I calculated which of my Pledge Rewards is the least profitable, and then worked out how many pledges for that item alone it would take to pay for the cost of my campaign. That way I'm covered for the worst case scenario. That seems like the best way to go about it, unless anyone can think of anything I've overlooked.

I like your approach - it's cautious which seems like a plus!
In our planning, we've been using stats in part - there are a lot of fantastic blogs out there from people who have successfully funded and who talk about their approach. One such blog that I found helpful was this:
http://craigmod.com/journal/kickstartup/

He goes into a lot of detail, including the stats for various reward tiers from the top campaigns. It's a bit dated so you'd have to crunch the numbers if you wanted a current set, but based off of his numbers, we set up our reward tiers and made some guestimates as to what percentages we would have at each tier.

Of course it also probably depends on the specific rewards. Anything tangible with a production cost and time you'll need to factor that in to ensure timely delivery. On a related note it's good to make sure you don't have any reward tiers that will leave you owing more than you'd like. I imagine it would be sad to promise a large reward for pledges of $2500 only to then exceed beyond your wildest expectations, get a lot of $2500 pledges, but have your net from those pledges be small. We had one tier planned that we realized we'd be spending too much of the pledge on the reward, so modified it.