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[AncientSled]

I teamed up with the Fundy Biosphere Reserve and kicked off a campaign on the 15th to support a global tree-planting initiative in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves around the world. The gist of it is to get backers playing games, and having those games support the tree-planting initiative beyond the timeline of the campaign itself, while the backers enjoy (and tweak to their liking) an increasing repertoire of games.

I had intended to launch on Tuesday, as everyone recommends, however I had to postpone in order to ensure that I had everything I needed from all of the people behind the campaign. The Thursday launch was to come in under the "Break Kickstarter" promotional wire, and so launch we did, for better or worse.

At the moment, things are moving uncomfortably slow, though I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will change soon. An influencer's organization has expressed that they may give a shout out, which could make a difference, and with the importance of Biosphere Reserves, we will likely get some news coverage soon.

You can find the campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/an ... epocalypse

Feel free to provide your feedback. It's been a rapid-fire learning experience, and the "Story" has undergone several revisions over the last few days. The essence is the same, however at the recommendation of several people the delivery has been simplified, and simplified again. The more complicated gameplay that had originally been envisioned when preparing the video will be moved toward the end of the campaign, and backers will be led there over time, step-by-step, if that's the route they want to take. (The complexity and dynamic of what was originally planned would likely have been child's-play to players of EVE Online, in retrospect, however the desired backer audience is much larger.

It's a humbling experience to champion a cause like this, which is believed to be for the greater good, and to have the first few days effectively be met with "crickets"...I do hold out hope that the campaign will gain steam in the month that remains, but for everyone out there, please take heed at the advice to build your audience in advance of launch.

[nomlinz]

AncientSled - appreciate you being really honest and vulnerable here. It's definitely true to build that audience in advance of the launch and only launch when your campaign is ready.

Once you're live though, even without an audience to build upon, the best thing to do is aggressively outreach every single day to people out there who is within your audience (or has an audience similar to yours). One method to find the most relevant ones is to reverse engineer some other similar campaigns that have been successfully funded
- find a similar campaign that was funded
- copy their image
- put it into Google image search
- Google will spit out different blogs/articles/videos that talked about that campaign
- follow that lead and pitch that same person who talked about the campaign, they'll most likely also be interested in yours since it's similar to one they've already talked about/covered

Best of luck out there!

[AncientSled]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply! Being honest and vulnerable is often the best way, even though it's not always the easiest

I appreciate the advice, and have (and will continue) to reach out to those who I believe share the same altruistic intent and conviction to do something about it. Ideally someone with a broader audience will take up the torch, and point their following my way.

I will definitely give your approach a try -- it sounds like a good way to identify the best people to approach in this regard!

[Cristina]

This post has been moved to the General Chat + Introduce Yourself section.