While large backers definitely give your project a boost, they also take away from the size of your new audience. One of the biggest benefits to Kickstarter is that it allows you to talk to more people. Every time you post an update, you get into the inbox of people who want to hear from [...]
I see a lot of rewards in the thousand dollar range on Kickstarter. Sometimes projects even skip the most lucrative pledging tiers altogether, going from $20 to $200 to $1000. To me this is another example of people misunderstanding how Kickstarter works. The idea of crowd-sourced funding is that a lot of people will pledge [...]
Another factor to consider is your own personal deadlines. In both of my Kickstarter projects the timing and length of my campaign was set by outside factors. I wanted to hit deadlines and timing windows which forced me launch at times that might not have been optimal.
You may have some timing windows that you [...]
According to Kickstarter’s Kickstart School: Setting Your Goal page, statistically the most successful projects run for 30 days or less. Since they have data on projects, I would say this is a good number to go by.
During my interview with Dan Provost, co-creator of the iPhone tripod mount Glif, he [...]
Projects that can sustain momentum over time will do well. Most campaigns will see a lot of activity at the beginning and the end, with a lull in the middle. Setting the time limit on the project is really about guessing how much momentum you can sustain during your project.
This is very hard to [...]
Of course you don’t necessarily have to play it safe. Craig Mod provides an interesting counterpoint to the “be reasonable” argument.
“Our biggest mistake was that we set our financial goal too low. It’s inevitable that a Kickstarter project becomes less exciting and loses its ‘gambling’ element when the financial goal is met and there’s [...]
So what are some reasonable expectations for funding amounts?
For a single person with a limited or no built-in audience, $5000 or less is manageable, $5000 to $10,000 will be hard but doable, $10,000+ will be very hard. For projects with more than one creator and a limited or no built-in audience, each creator can [...]
It’s time to focus on your budget and really look at what you need to make the project work, because setting your goals too high might actually hurt you. It takes a lot of work to get a project funded and you should be realistic about what your needs are.
This was one mistake [...]
