In 2009, only five weeks after Kickstarter launched, Perry Chen gave an Ignite talk about what makes a successful project. Even though the site was still very young, many of the ideas he presented still hold true.

1) Be Real – “It’s humans asking other humans to help them.”

2) Have a clear goal – “It’s not sponsor my life. It’s not fund me as an artist for some vague pursuit.”

3) Offer fun rewards – “It’s about finding ways to provide value to the people who are helping you out.”

4) Show you can execute – “So anyone can throw up a page, anyone can have idea, but before people are going to open their wallets they want to know you can execute.”

5) Involve the audience – “The line between creators and the audience is getting blurred every day.”

6) Spread the word – “Your idea isn’t going to mutate out there. Your going to need to push it out there and get your friends to help you spread the word.”

“If you do these six things, you are going to have a really great crowd-funding experience.” – Perry Chen

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

So what does it take to get funded? That is a key question, the one I’ll be exploring in this book. For now, I thought I would share some of the founders’ thoughts on what they think it takes to get funded.

Each Project is a Story

During a talk co-founder Yancey Strickler gave in June of 2011, he explains how every project is the story.

“Each Kickstarter project is a narrative of a real person doing something important or something meaningful, something they care about. We get to follow along. We get to act as an audience. These are people talking to their audience’s peers. These are people just like you and I, trying to raise money for an idea, trying to build support for their idea from people just like you and I.” – Yancey Strickler, Creative Mornings June 2011

Strickler goes on to explain that Kickstarter is a video-driven site. When people come to a project page, the first thing they do is click on the video to see what the project is all about. He calls the videos “anti-commercials” because they are like advertisements for an idea, but authentic.

The other way that stories are told are through rewards. Great rewards tell the story and share the experience with the audience.

Yancey on Why Projects Fail

Yancey Stickler believes projects that fail, do so for several reasons. Either the creator is going for too much money, or he or she has no history or “proof of concept.” Creators either have unrealistic expectations, or they are too commercial.

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

It is a great way to build support for a project that you want to do. It also has additional benefits such as:

Connecting to an audience – This can be an existing audience or one that you build through the campaign. You will be able to ask them for support, exchange ideas, make friends, and do business. Having a group of people that you can turn to repeatedly, will make launching future endeavors that much easier.

Cutting out the middleman – In many industries such as film and music, one must go through a middleman in order to have a project funded. With Kickstarter the fans are the people who fund your project. If they want to support you and see it happen, then it will.

Exchanging value – That means that both the project creator and the backer get something from the transaction. The project creator gets to see his or her idea come to life, and backers get a reward. This could be a cool new product or the good feeling from helping a friend.

Retaining control – Traditionally, when working with middlemen and other organizations, they end up owning the rights to your artistic work. On Kickstarter this is not the case. You retain full control and are free to do whatever you would like with the finished product.

Gaining Permission – When people back your project, they are not only giving you money, but they’re giving you permission to talk to them about your ideas and future projects. Every time you send a message to your backers it goes right into their inbox. Like many other forms of digital marketing, you now have a way to talk directly to people who want to hear from you.

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

“Projects. Projects. Projects. Kickstarter is for the funding of projects – albums, films, specific works – that have clearly defined goals and expectations.” – Kickstarter.com guide lines.

Why is Kickstarter so obsessed with projects? Because they are tangible and help focus creators and their audience. Projects have specific goals, deadlines, and outcomes. This makes it easy for potential backers to understand where their money is going. Ideas without specific objectives are harder to support because the outcome is unknown. Projects also work well with Kickstarter’s all or nothing model, because patrons have an easy way to tell which projects are definitely going to happen.

A Creative Edge

Kickstarter describes itself as “a new way to fund & follow creativity.” It is geared toward, and is an important site for the creative arts.

Perry Chen explains:

“The landscape for creative ideas has been really constrained, because ideas need to be revenue generating… so most ideas are thrown away. What we are hoping is that other 99% of ideas can now come to a place like Kickstarter and get community funded.”

“By not forcing things to have to generate revenue, you give them a chance to really come to life… [In the past] those [projects] have been supported by grants, rich uncles, and foundations.”

Kickstarter provides a space for these creative ideas to be funded.

In order to post a project on the site it must be within the parameters Kickstarter establishes.

“Kickstarter can be used to fund projects from the creative fields of Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater. We currently only support projects from these categories.” – Kickstarter.com guidelines.

What if your project is not in the “creative arts?” Don’t get discouraged, for Kickstarter uses the term liberally. Many projects that you may not think would be classified as “creative arts” get accepted by Kickstarter. However, all projects must have some creative element in them. If you are considering using Kickstarter to raise funds, make sure you read through the guidelines in its entirety.

All Shapes and Sizes

With over 20,000 successful campaigns, there are a wide variety of Kickstarter projects. However, most are trying to do one of the following.

Kickstart a Larger Project

Kickstarter is a great way to fund parts of larger projects or businesses. I used the site to start Identifying Nelson. Others have used it as a way to launch a product which turned into a business.

Finish a Project

Zach and Jonathan used Kickstarter to save Blue Like Jazz (the movie) and raise money to complete the film. They are not the only movie that used Kickstarter to help put the finishing touches on their project.

Pre-sale

One of the most famous Kickstarter projects, TikTok+LunaTik Multi-Touch Watch Kits, used Kickstarter as a way to pre-sell their kits. It’s a great way to test the market for a product before actually committing to making it. If the product doesn’t sell, you haven’t put any of your own money on the table.

Support a Community

The team behind Diaspora used Kickstarter to create an open-source Facebook alternative. Since the final product was free to download once they were done, you did not necessarily have to support the campaign on Kickstarter. However, by supporting the project, the whole open-source community benefited.

Spread an Idea

Because of the viral potential of Kickstarter, it is great for spreading ideas. If your project really resonates with an audience, it might spread far and wide. The Manual, a project about improving design principles, used the site to publish a book and spread the idea of better design to a larger community.

Do Something Fun

Ever wanted to build a giant Robocop statue in downtown Detroit? That’s exactly what the Imagination Station Detroit team did. They used Kickstarter as a way to get a life-sized Robocop statue built the heart of Detroit. They even got the actor who played Robocop on board. How cool is that?

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

Girl Scout Cookies

On the final day of my Kickstarter campaign for A Kickstarter’s Guide I got this wonderful tweet.

@dewittn @Kickstarter is like investing in your friend’s kids Girl Scout cookies without the calories

— DanielleVonFulenberg (@Danielle_VBF) September 5, 2011

Danielle might have been joking but I think she is on to something. Kickstarter is very much like purchasing girl scout cookies. Not only are you helping the girl scouts, but you are getting some great cookies. It’s not exactly charity and its not exactly capitalism. Kickstarter lies somewhere in between. People support you and your project but also get something concrete in return.

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

Kickstarter is a platform for someone with a creative project to obtain financing for their idea by receiving small amounts of money from a larger group of people. Each project has a public page, funding amount, deadline and rewards.

The funding goal is the minimum amount of money that a project needs in order to happen. If a funding goal is not met by the deadline, the people backing the project are not charged, and the creator receives no money. This may seem a bit harsh, but it is a very important aspect to the way Kickstarter works.

Deadlines are set by the project creator and can be as long as 60 days. According to the Kickstarter School shorter projects tend to be more successful than longer projects. The number of days remaining in a campaign is displayed on each project page.

The project page provides all the information about the project. This usually includes a written description, video and rewards. I will go in detail about each of these aspects later.

Rewards are an important part of Kickstarter, and each project is required to offer them. Rewards come in many forms, from a physical product, to services, to early access. They depend on how much someone pledges to support a project.

During the campaign a creator can post updates about how the project is going. These updates can be for the general public or just for the people who have already backed the project. Once the project is completed, the creator is responsible for honoring the rewards that were offered during the campaign.

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

The Patron Model

In tech circles raising small amounts of money from a large group of people is commonly called “crowdfunding” or “crowd-sourced funding.” This is a buzz word and does not actually describe what happens on Kickstarter. Who is this crowd? Where do they come from? How do they find us? The word crowdfunding makes it seem so easy. All we have to do is post a project and the crowd will fund it. However, that’s not really what happens.

Founder Perry Chen describes Kickstarter as a newer version of the patron model, which lies somewhere between altruism and capitalism. People not only give to a project because they like the idea or creator, but they also get something in return. The reward could be to see the project come into existence or to get one of the Kickstarter rewards created for the site.

The idea has been around for a very long time. Mozart and Beethoven used a similar funding model to premiere concerts and first print editions of their works. Patrons of the visual arts were rewarded by being able to keep and display the artwork. The Kickstarter model is similar, but it’s turbocharged by the web and its social aspects.

The web allows for ideas to spread very fast and helps connect creators with an audience. The all or nothing deadline encourages patrons to share and promote the project quickly or risk see it disappear. Fueled by Facebook, Twitter and other social sites, Kickstarter projects can take on a life of their own, as patrons spread the idea far and wide.

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

Kickstarter was founded in 2009 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. Since its launch over 20,000 projects have been successfully funded, with people pledging more than 75 million dollars. However, Kickstarter wasn’t always this big. Much like your project, Kickstarter began small.

In 2002 Perry was working in New Orleans and trying to put together a concert. He wanted a way to query the audience to see if he had enough support to go through with it. From this initial idea Kickstarter.com was born. However, it would take another seven years before the site would launch.

“I didn’t necessarily know where to begin. I wasn’t coming from working on the web” says Perry in an interview with TechCrunch. “At the time…I couldn’t have been less interested in dedicating my life, which is clearly what it takes.” Fortunately for us, he met some like-minded individuals and began working on the site.

A couple years, later Perry moved back to New York City, his hometown. He met Yancey while working as a waiter at a restaurant called Diner in Brooklyn. Yancey was a regular and worked as a journalist. One day Perry mentioned an idea he had for a site that would allow him to raise money for creative projects. Yancey liked the idea and they began working it. However, neither of them had technical backgrounds. It wasn’t until they met Charles Adler that the idea really started to take off.

Recalling the early years, Yancey said “At the beginning… it was a few people with a piece of paper and not much else.” He spoke of how they would wake up every morning wondering “Is today the day that the three people who live in Palo Alto, who are working on the exact same idea launch their site?”

In order to get the site funded they reached out to David Cross, an actor on Arrested Development. Perry was friends with David’s cousin, and she helped arrange the meeting. David came on board as the initial investor and was joined by a few other artists later. When they were finally ready to launch, they sent invitations out to 30 of their friends and asked them to share it with five of their friends. In essence, they kick started their own site.

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A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.