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We've been campaigning hard all day - spending our first day touching our closest networks mainly, with a little bit of reach out to bloggers and such. Tomorrow we aim the for the press, as we hoped some decent numbers on the first day would help.

Unbeknownst to my team-mates, I've been watching us on SideKick (which as most of you know provides stats on your likelihood of success), and getting a little dismayed as our numbers dropped from %6.6 down to %0.

We've been hoping for at least 34 backers due to the crazy stats associated with that magic number, and this evening, totally by coincidence two things happened.

We reached 34 backers. And our Sidekick rating jumped to 93%. I say total coincidence because it was still loading numbers that were out of date (which is kind of cool).

I'm certainly not going to prognosticate based on the first-day predictions of an algorithm, but it feels good and it's been such a totally fun day (except for the rampant moments of panic and repeated self-questioning of whether we were focusing on the right elements of strategy).

Three key things I've learned today:

1) Stay grounded in your purpose. Truckloads of work without too much attachment to outcome combined with remembering why you're engaging in all this madness in the first place helps a lot.

2) Stay focused. It's easy to have five million things that you want to do to move the campaign forward. Whatever your strategy is, remember it, prioritize, and let go of all the things you can't do. If it's not working, examine and maybe revise your strategy, but don't panic and start to flail around. Doesn't work when you're swimming, and doesn't work when you're running a Kickstarter campaign.

3) When you want to speed up, slow down. By that I mean stay personal. Mid-day we weren't getting much traction, and I started to send more form-letter type emails to connections. Very little interest. This evening (after a bit of a break) I'm back to actually connecting to the people I'm writing and talking to. I don't like telemarketers, do you? I decided not to be one.

For those who've already begun, what were your first day learnings? What was the experience like?

Back to the campaign. Questions, advice, insights, encouragement and of course shares and pledges always welcome.

What is the SideKick rating? I couldn't find it with google.

Thank you

Sidekick is a cool algorithm that measures your likelihood of success. Not only can it help you figure how you're doing (though don't panic if it rates you really low, especially when you start), you can download all the details of how it works, and read the paper that it's all based on.

Details here:
http://sidekick.epfl.ch/index/page/5/so ... /order/asc

Thank you. I bookmarked it.

If you're into that sort of thing you can even bookmark your specific project for a quick check on how you're faring.

Hey there!

We've been using Kicktraq as a marquee tool, that's sort of the same as sidekick I presume... Trouble is, we're kinda stuck right now. Our first few days were great, more and more backers every day, but I feel we've stagnated a bit and won't reach our goal if we can' t spice it up somehow. I've registered at several forums and promoted my project to the press with personal messages, but there is little response (yet). Any tips?

Thanks!

Be warned that Sidekick's algorithm is very Twitter-centric and so if you have a huge presence on non-Twitter media it may be biased against you (or biased for you if you're JUST on Twitter and not much of anything else, conversely).

KickTraq is a little less volatile but as far as I can tell it's just projecting out from the curve of your last couple days, so it really doesn't take the bathtub model that many KS's follow (intense beginning and ending days and listless middle weeks) into account completely. OTOH, I would certainly recommend making sure that at least some of your updates are going up on KickTraq. It's a very well-trafficked site with a lot of features.

There's also KickSpy, which is so far the only predictor I've seen that does attempt to emulate the bathtub by comparing your campaign against past campaigns determined to be similar.

All the predictors are wildly inaccurate at the beginning of the campaign and get more accurate as they go on, and if you are of a nervous temperament I definitely recommend resisting the urge to check too often and taking their numbers with a sack of salt. That said, they can certainly be helpful not only to your campaign in progress but especially to your pre-campaign research to determine your initial ask, where to set your expectations, etc.

floortjuh_fleurtjuh wrote:Hey there!

We've been using Kicktraq as a marquee tool, that's sort of the same as sidekick I presume... Trouble is, we're kinda stuck right now. Our first few days were great, more and more backers every day, but I feel we've stagnated a bit and won't reach our goal if we can' t spice it up somehow. I've registered at several forums and promoted my project to the press with personal messages, but there is little response (yet). Any tips?

Thanks!

This is to some extent normal -- here's a paper to check out if you're interested in the science behind it. https://www.funginstitute.berkeley.edu/ ... _Ideas.pdf

If I knew what percentage you were at I'd know more about whether you should be worried or not, but according to the Kickstarter 30% tipping point rule, if you can hit 30% you will then be at 90% likelihood of funding. Crazy I know, but it's a thing. (http://kickstarterguide.com/2012/06/20/ ... ing-point/)

So toil for that 30%...work your social media, recruit those of your friends and colleagues who are willing...perhaps take out some inexpensive web ads at appropriate sites (such as a Project Wonderful search could turn up). And know that there will be tons of days especially mid-campaign where it feels like you're ballyhooing your lungs out and getting no response. Be patient. This whole thing is only urgent to you -- everyone else is going to take their sweet time. ^^ Some of your efforts will bear fruit, just later than you'd like, and other places you never will get a response at all. I found that occasionally I had to send a polite reminder along the lines of "just following up to ask if you got my email last week" or whatever. People are just super busy. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the tips! Good to hear that it is sort of 'normal', gives a reassuring feeling