2nd Kickstarter 166% funded - so why am I annoyed?
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 5:59 pm
Learned so much from my first Kickstarter and now my second one is running - creating another artist book as a product and support income for my brand new art/science gallery. (just opened 2 weeks ago so I'm stil in the scary exciting phase!)
100% funded in 24 hours. Now 166% funded with 22 days to go.
No one warned me that the second time around I should have set a larger goal! Thinking about it, it makes sense now. It's a bigger project, funding the gallery and not one project as an artist. But because I learned a lot from too-expensive rewards in the first campaign, my budget had a lower break even point this time so I started with a lower goal. (not break even, I do want to earn something!) From the start this has been a 3 phased project - book, second book, getting gallery. It was a 3-4 year plan. In the last part I was going to pursue public funding like arts grants.
But things happened far more quickly than I ever imagined. I found a gallery premises two years before expecting to. And therein was my 2nd Kickstarter flaw. I had already started the idea for the book and drafted much of the campaign plan. At the last minute I tweaked it and changed the motivation from personal (artist) to gallery. My main mistake is I could have really built some momentum behind it for the GALLERY. But I designed it and focused on it as an artist and couldn't shift my mindset enough. Live and learn!
On the positive side... for the first book I had 93 backers. The actual rewards cost was a huge (budgeted) chunk of the fundraising. At this point with the second book I have 22 backers. I have more top level backers and so reached the goal quickly with a quite small number of rewards to have to produce. So overall my profit will work out very good.
Luckily I know about stretch rewards - so I'm now aiming for £2500 to fund the gallery for the entire first year, covering rent and utilities and the book. This should have been what I put as the initial goal. I know I have enough collectors and fans to have reached it IF there was an urgency to reach it. Having set a lower goal the urgency is now gone. People are relaxing and waiting, perhaps they'll even miss the end date.
Lesson: expect the unexpected if you have a very long term plan!
Here's the campaign. Any and all advice or feedback very welcome! I'm going to be tweaking it until the end.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ti ... -for-a-new
100% funded in 24 hours. Now 166% funded with 22 days to go.
No one warned me that the second time around I should have set a larger goal! Thinking about it, it makes sense now. It's a bigger project, funding the gallery and not one project as an artist. But because I learned a lot from too-expensive rewards in the first campaign, my budget had a lower break even point this time so I started with a lower goal. (not break even, I do want to earn something!) From the start this has been a 3 phased project - book, second book, getting gallery. It was a 3-4 year plan. In the last part I was going to pursue public funding like arts grants.
But things happened far more quickly than I ever imagined. I found a gallery premises two years before expecting to. And therein was my 2nd Kickstarter flaw. I had already started the idea for the book and drafted much of the campaign plan. At the last minute I tweaked it and changed the motivation from personal (artist) to gallery. My main mistake is I could have really built some momentum behind it for the GALLERY. But I designed it and focused on it as an artist and couldn't shift my mindset enough. Live and learn!
On the positive side... for the first book I had 93 backers. The actual rewards cost was a huge (budgeted) chunk of the fundraising. At this point with the second book I have 22 backers. I have more top level backers and so reached the goal quickly with a quite small number of rewards to have to produce. So overall my profit will work out very good.
Luckily I know about stretch rewards - so I'm now aiming for £2500 to fund the gallery for the entire first year, covering rent and utilities and the book.
This should have been what I put as the initial goal. I know I have enough collectors and fans to have reached it IF there was an urgency to reach it. Having set a lower goal the urgency is now gone. People are relaxing and waiting, perhaps they'll even miss the end date. Lesson: expect the unexpected if you have a very long term plan!
Here's the campaign. Any and all advice or feedback very welcome! I'm going to be tweaking it until the end.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ti ... -for-a-new