Setting Your Goals Archives - A Kickstarter's Guide

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The Paradox of Choice

By Nelson/Roberto On January 1, 2012 · 20 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

We love choice. In any given year every single film on Netflix is watched at least once. The Long Tail is an economic theory and excellent book, which explains why this happens. It states that due to the infinite shelf space of online retailers, people will now have almost limitless choices as to what they consume. We are living in a world where people can find exactly what they’re looking for and are willing to pay unbelievably high prices to get those special unique items.

At the same time, we hate choice. Having too many choices when we don’t have a lot of time, can be overwhelming and confusing. Limitless choice works when people have the time and energy to pay attention and look for the very best. When they don’t, people want quick and easy choices.

The Coffee Joulies project is one of [...]

Pricing theory, thoughts about pricing your Kickstarter rewards

By Nelson/Roberto On December 30, 2011 · 30 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

The psychology of pricing is very difficult and complex. This book is too short to really get into it, but here are some things to think about. If you would like an in-depth look at pricing theory, I recommend Smart Pricing by Z. John Zhang

People enjoy a purchase more if they pay more for it. This is counter-intuitive. A common misconception is that people are very price sensitive, and always look for the best possible price. That might be true for food or gas, but most people coming to Kickstarter want to connect with other people. Stay away from really high reward levels, but don’t undervalue your rewards either.

If a higher priced reward is not significantly better, then why pay more? The tricky part about creating rewards is increasing value to match the increase in price. For example, if you are making an album you could [...]

The Allure of a Large Backer

By Nelson/Roberto On December 28, 2011 · 19 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

Going for the BIG bucks

By Nelson/Roberto On December 26, 2011 · 22 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

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 smaller amounts of money. Pricing rewards in the thousands of dollars contradicts this idea. It is very hard to get people to spend large amounts of money on a perfect stranger.

In my experience, pledges of a $1000 or more came from people who knew me BEFORE I ran the campaign, not people who found me online. They are close family and friends who wanted to support our work. If someone is going to pledge in the thousands, you probably already know them. They already believe in your project, and you may have an inkling [...]

Managing Deadlines

By Nelson/Roberto On December 23, 2011 · 28 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

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 are trying to hit. Meeting these timing windows can be tricky, because you run the risk of not putting enough work into your campaign before it launches.

The most important factor here is the size of your project and how much you’re going for. If you have a tight timing window and a smaller size project, then you might need to launch before you have worked everything out. If you’re going for a large amount and have a big project, then it will pay off to wait until you have everything ready to launch a [...]

30 days or less

By Nelson/Roberto On December 21, 2011 · 27 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

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 explained why shorter campaigns are better.

“Anything longer than 30 days was kind of unnecessarily long. It’s either going to hit or it’s not. And if it doesn’t, then you are kind of dragging it out.”

I think this is a great way of looking at the timing. If people like your idea, they will like it right away. A longer campaign won’t necessarily make the idea any more attractive. He also makes the point that the attention span for things on the Internet is usually less than 30 days.

A Kickstart’s [...]

How long your campaign runs depends on one thing, momentum

By Nelson/Roberto On December 19, 2011 · 30 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

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 judge, and I have no real way of predicting this. Some projects that I think are going to do well, don’t make it, or only finish at the last minute. Other projects that I’m unsure about get funded right away. It is hard to say exactly where momentum comes from, but you should be prepared to deal with it.

In his blog Kickstartup, Craig Mod talks about planning media coverages to avoid “dead zones” in momentum. You can see from all the wonderful data he provides that there were several days in the [...]

Why be Reasonable?

By Nelson/Roberto On December 16, 2011 · 23 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

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 still time on the clock (just look at our funding graphs above for empirical evidence!). An ideal situation for any Kickstarter project is to define a financial goal that is high enough to just be met within the allotted time.” – Craig Mod, Kickstartup

Perhaps for Craig’s project, the goal was set too low, and it might have been able to get more backers. However, I just want to point out what I think is the key sentence in his entire post.

“We took advantage of the vast contact lists we had built [...]

Reasonable funding goals

By Nelson/Roberto On December 14, 2011 · 20 Comments · In Setting Your Goals

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 probably bring in $7000, assuming their networks do not overlap too much. For projects with established audiences it really depends on the size of your audience. Nataly Dawn raised $104,788 from 2315 backers, but one look at her Youtube channel shows over 88,000 subscribers. Videos from her group Pomplamoose get over a million views. The majority of her backers are people who have been following her for awhile. If you don’t have this type of built-in audience, think hard about your goal.

You are free to set your funding goal to whatever you [...]

Focus on what you need

By Nelson/Roberto On December 12, 2011 · 25 Comments · In Setting Your Goals