KickstarterForum.org

First; shameless plug, this is my current campaign, If you like it - help a brotha out:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/646461404/cable-carousel-an-elegant-cable-organizer?utm_source=AdvicePost&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=Kickstarter%20Campaign

For giggles, this was my first failure - what took 45 days in this campaign, my current one did in <2 hours:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/646461404/cable-carousel-metal-cable-organizer

First off, for anyone reading this when it's already too late (you're 10 days in and have no hope of getting funded). Let me just say no successful person was instantly successful. Failure is the ugly step-brother of success, and if you want to get in bed with success. You need to get comfortable shaking hands with failure.

Instant success is for the movies and maybe a lucky few.
So learn, move on, and re-launch your campaign. (unless your idea sucks )

That said - my first campaign I thought I was doing everything right. I made a decent video, took good pictures, set good rewards, had a decent product. But I made several mistakes.

1. Determine your funding GOALS and REQUIREMENTS. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. The minimum funding amount you request should be your requirement. NOT your goal. I set my goal way too high - I set my goal based on what other similar previous products successfully raised, but in reality the amount was not necessary to start production.
When I campaign launched and had a pretty slow start - I instantly dug a grave for it.

2. Start building your social media presence 2-4 weeks ago. You'll later read how my Facebook ads (the ones that landed on my campaign page to try and get pledges) didn't do crap for me. BUT the Facebook ads I used to promote my Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/minimaelco did a got me a lot of "likes and followers". Unfortunately, I started building my FB page the day my first campaign went live. So by the time I built a tiny following on Facebook my campaign was basically a sunken ship. On my re-launch - my Facebook page - combined with my previous backers pushed me to 200% fully funded within an hour. (Needless to say, I was stoked)

3. Completely setup Google Analytics before you start your campaign. Use it to track the effectiveness (conversion rate) of ALL your ad campaigns. Here is how I did that.

-Follow this guide -> http://www.kickstarterbible.com/verses/2015/5/9/kickstarter-and-google-analytics
-Make some custom URLs for your ads, you will use these to track how effective your different ads are. Use this.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
-Set your campaign source to "Facebook" or "Google Ads" "Reddit" or whatever you use to advertise
-Set campaign medium to "CPC" "CPM" "Ad" or whatever you use...This isn't really important for anything so don't stress if you don't understand what to put here
-Campaign Term I've just left blank..
-Campaign Content, this is where I put it a descriptive word for the type of ad i'll use this link for.. For instance lets say i put 2 Ads on FB - "Ad1" and "Ad2" I would then generate 2 URLs with this builder. One for each.
-Set Campaign Name to "Kickstarter"
-Make ads, and drive traffic to the URLs you made.

If conversions are made on THOSE URLs you'll see the conversions in the e-commerce section of your Google Analytics dash board.

4. Once you start your campaign, brace yourself for the onslaught of people claiming to do any sort of PR for money - I won't pretend to be a 6 figure success on Kickstarter, I know my campaign is pretty small. But I'm pretty damn sure the super successful campaigns are not blowing their money on trolls trying to make a buck. Arbitrarily throwing sums of money at your campaign will not result in success. Hell I even tried throwing money via multiple very targeted Facebook ads - I got tons of clicks, but ZERO conversions. Be careful.

5. Facebook ads bring me to my last piece of advice. When it comes to targeted ad campaigns. This is all the advice I can offer.

-Consult someone legitimate who knows what they're doing (because clearly i don't - but if you do. Contact me)
-Track your damn conversion rate - if something isn't working. Stop throwing money at it. try a different audience, ad content, or medium.


That's all I got for now - I have a Reddit ad campaign starting on 2/12/16 so hopefully that has more success, but I'll report back either way. I've learned a lot more than this but these are the big take aways that I hope will help a lot of you. I'll write a much more detailed (and better edited) post after the craziness settles with my campaign.

Wish me luck.

Hi Mint,

Thank you SO much for sharing your experience.
I launched my first Kickstarter yesterday and as you probably know, it's a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Your comments on Instant success being the stuff of movies is so true. It's so important to keep telling yourself that.
I always remember a line from a Michael Jordan basketball video I used to watch in the 90s. "Michael Jordan got cut from is high school team"!!!

My project has now slipped off the newest page and no Staff Pick yet so it's time to implement phase 2 of my promotion strategy. Your input on Facebook adds, third party PR businesses (they DO come on strong the minute you launch - one claimed i'd get 2 million views!!!) will come in handy. Thanks for offering this insightful info.

Good luck with the remainder of your project. Great product BTW, I might just get one myself.

Steve
FLAT PACK FRAME

Hey Mint, Thanks for sharing your success with the Kickstarter Forum! You have definitely brought up some interesting points and I am sure someone can benefit from this information. Crowdfunding is not as straightforward as it may originally seem and for alot of people, it takes failure the first time around for them to be successful.

I really appreciate you sharing your experience with the community (you've just earned yourself a new backer)


Best Regards,

Jake
Team Backertree!
http://www.backertree.com

Thank you so much for the detailed steps to setting up analytics. The links and the info you provided are absolute GOLD. Congrats on such a successful campaign

Great tips about tracking your campaign with google analytics, we will be using kickbooster though as its much easier and more effective.

Hi Mint. Thanks for your candid advice. I will put it to good use.

Cheers for sharing your experience.

Great report, and I am in a similar situation. First campaign asked for too much, and the marketing wasn't there so it was inevitably cancelled. I relaunched yesterday and am now at 80% funded, albeit the ask is significantly lower, but still seeing better results.

I had a question for you OP - Did you see an increase amount of pledges once you passed the 100% funding mark?

TGNate wrote:Great report, and I am in a similar situation. First campaign asked for too much, and the marketing wasn't there so it was inevitably cancelled. I relaunched yesterday and am now at 80% funded, albeit the ask is significantly lower, but still seeing better results.

I had a question for you OP - Did you see an increase amount of pledges once you passed the 100% funding mark?

I definately saw more after I hit 100% - that said it didn't take me long to hit 100%.

I think the biggest contributing factor was my already established presence on FB - i posted an update to my old backers letting them know a new campaign was formed, and i started my campaign at a time that had a lot of traffic on the site.

Good luck

That's the secret really...establish yourself before you launch.

Campaign owners need to be friendly and start connecting with others (even though it's tedious/boring) it really pays off in the end.

Getting people to know about you before you launch, getting them excited and interested helps the cause.

Perhaps people don't trust what you say, but they may trust someone else's comments about your project. This is where the term "influencer" comes in.