Post #630604 by martian-tiki on Thu, Mar 29, 2012 9:14 PM

Some unsolicited advice on kickstarter from someone with a few successful projects and a backer of several more.

1. Your video puts the emphasis on some neat looking designs - but you aren't offering them for sale. Kickstarter culture is mostly pay-in-advance. So while you may have plenty of skull inventory, your video makes me want the ones that you would be using my money to make and are not offering for advance sale.

Featured mugs being - The Mug of the Berzerker, The Monkey one, Barnacle Beach and the Barnacle Beach Shot glass.

2. The vast majority of projects that make it seem like an easy thousand are in fact projects started by people who are lucky to have generous friends. If all you end up doing is selling merchandise to people you already know then its not worth giving 10% of your friends money away for the processing fees of a middleman website. Real example I raise a thousand dollars with 3 small projects as stages for the same goal with about 30 total backers. Someone I know raises about $7000 for his project with around 120 backers - but he still only had about 20 Kickstarter backers that were already members and stumbled onto his project. ALL the rest signed up only to help him - which STRONGLY suggests he helped get kickstarter around a hundred new customers but kickstarter only got him 20 new customers. I think kickstarter is great and I've used it successfully - but that's their business model in case you didn't know.

If you get severely lucky and have something that clicks enough with the hipsters then yes you'll have a very successful campaign. Surprisingly you have 5 backers that didn't join just to help you out. Or maybe you have friends that already like kickstarter.

3. If you almost succeed don't be afraid to try again with a lower goal.

Best wishes