Art by James Toogood
WILL’S ARTICLE LINKS
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229782
https://www.geekwire.com/2015/9-tips-for-crushing-it-on-kickstarter/
https://www.littlemight.com/articles/kickstarter-step-by-step
SHOW LINKS
NATHAN W. PYLE STRANGE PLANET COMIC
Subtle Ad: DRAWINGS V
DAVE KELLETT’S FUNNY KICKSTARTER VIDEO
What makes one Kickstarter campaign flop and another launch like a rocket? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share the secret sauce to making a Kickstarter fund quickly, beat the algorithm, and deliver big time, based on real world experience and hard-earned lessons. This podcast episode was recorded before Will’s latest Kickstarter launched -- keep an eye out for upcoming content about Will’s newest Kickstarter success!
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INTRO
Let’s get right into it! Will’s kickstarter has come and gone by the time you’re listening to the podcast, but it hadn’t launched by the time they recorded the podcast.
HOW TO RUN A KICKSTARTER
This won’t be a complete list of things you should do to run a good kickstarter -- just an overview on the types of things to do. There are great YouTube videos about how to run them if you want to dig deeper!
One of the biggest challenges -- lots of people have zero platform to make an announcement for their kickstarter. They don’t participate in social media, they just come up with a product and want to make it big. People are less receptive to cold promotions these days, we mostly take recommendations from friends. If you have no platform, you need minimum $10k to even start testing on your product, with no guarantees that it will work out. You don’t know if people want it, and it’s expensive to even know who your audience is.
NATHAN W. PYLE STRANGE PLANET COMIC
It can take years to develop a decent social media following, though not always -- Nathan Pyle has three million instagram followers, and he built his following fast -- within a year, because his comics were consistent and funny. It’s not a unique thing, but he brought a little bit of a different angle to it. He has an established platform for his comics now. If you have good stuff it will rise to the top.
When Will mentions kickstarter in his college talks, he gets eyerolls. People teach themselves not to believe in themselves. It’s easy to look at success and chalk it up to luck. It goes beyond that. Asking your friends to share your thing doesn’t work. You need your own platform.
It isn’t effective to leverage someone else’s fanbase, you should build your own fans. Unless there is significant overlap in what you’re doing and what your friend is doing, it might not be worth it -- their fans might not like your work.
BUILD A PLATFORM
You could start a blog or a newsletter or something like that! You need a way to announce what you’ve made to your audience. Just getting started, you’re better off making a website and a newsletter or an email list. Make it so your newsletter shows up in your follower’s inbox frequently and not just when you’re about to release something. Jake’s email reach is way better and has a way higher clickthrough rate than his instagram account. The link-in-bio method slows you down on instagram.
Reverse engineer your numbers -- look at your following and gauge what percentage of them would back your project. Then find out how many followers you would need in order to get the amount of backers you would want. Email lists have a bunch of different tactics, but you can offer people something for free to get them to sign up to your email list -- “Chapter one is now in PDF form, it’s free for anyone on my email list, the link is here”. All year you will be emailing them with updates about your work. Then, leading up to the launch, start emailing them more about the upcoming kickstarter with regular reminders and updates.
Jake uses Convertkit for his email list -- it’s very thoughtfully geared towards creators. You can take your email list and create a shadow list on Facebook, which lets you import your email list and then Facebook will find similar users to market to.
It’s better to build your project, and have a finished project ready to publish, and then use Kickstarter as a way to fund the publishing or fabrication of your product. Do not launch a Kickstarter for a project that isn’t already finished or 90% done. Jake has launched a Kickstarter based on a plan alone and it took him three years to complete due to life issues that popped up right after it was funded. It put a huge amount of pressure on him.
Will has a friend whose Kickstarter was funded four years ago. He can’t go to shows anymore because people will accost him for it.
Getting emails for your email list at art shows or conventions is a great idea -- you can hand out business cards or have a running list for people who stop by your booth. Jake’s friend has a list that is compartmentalized by city and state so that he can email people in a city when he is doing a show near them, alongside his larger list.
You can start working on your Kickstarter page months in advance -- it can sit as a draft for a long time before you launch. Don’t wait until the last minute to create an account and build your page -- it can take months, especially if you have different businesses or if you are working with a partner who would want to see the balance sheet.
Lee had a Kickstarter that was funded right before the financial year, and so had to pay taxes on all of the money he received without being able to deduct his expenditures. You can work with your accountant to minimize this potentially -- we aren’t giving tax advice on this podcast though.
MINIMUM VIABLE FUNDING GOALS
There’s a couple of things to keep in mind:
Remember that Kickstarter will take 10%, so your goal should be above that.
Charge extra for shipping, because international shipping can cost a lot. Charge as much as it will cost you.
Kickstarter will highlight the projects that are doing the best and that fund the fastest -- set your goal to be lower than you need so that it funds fast and gets promoted by the algorithm. The big risk here is that even if you don’t hit your internal target, you have to deliver if it funds, so you might be short on capital. Will doesn’t necessarily advise this because the risk is pretty huge. The safe advice is to charge more for your goal than your product will cost. Will’s book goal is $3,000 whereas his printing costs will be around $10,000. He is setting it low because he wants to fund in an hour. (Ed. Note from the future: He funded in 5 minutes!)
Will’s last Kickstarter project was cancelled due to copyright issues. He set the goal lower than needed and he funded really quickly, and ended up at the top of every search on Kickstarter. The algorithm boosted him because he was doing so well.
Look at articles online that provide timelines for what you should do before your launch, and be ready to get the word out for your pre launch around a month or so before you launch your page. It’s a good idea to feel out your audience beforehand, and post WIPs of different products you could include as bonuses for your Kickstarter. Your following can make a great focus group.
CROWDFUNDING VIDEOS
Do you need one? Jake thinks no, Will thinks yes. Don’t do one unless you can do a really nice one.
Subtle Ad: DRAWINGS V
Keep your video short -- less than a minute. Don’t do anything longer than a minute or two because nobody will watch that much unless you’re really funny.
DAVE KELLETT’S FUNNY KICKSTARTER VIDEO
Don’t try to be funny if you’re not funny. Tell them the story behind the creation of your project. Your audience will want to know about the struggles in your life or whatever it took to get you to the point of making this project.
Jake dislikes the idea of making a video because he prefers to get the backers to the core content as soon as possible. Lee and Will think that there is no negative outcome to having a video, and recommend using it as a way to familiarize yourself with potential backers.
LAUNCH TIME
Don’t schedule anything for the day that you launch your Kickstarter, you’ll be swamped with everything going on if you’ve done everything right. The same goes for the last few days of your Kickstarter as well.
Make sure everyone knows the exact time that your Kickstarter launches. You want to get as many sales as possible as soon as possible. This will boost you in the algorithm.
Providing limited numbers of signed products or early bird discounted products will help sales happen early on.
Run your Kickstarter campaign for around 30 days, longer or shorter are not as effective. Kickstarter recommends 30 days. Posting something about your campaign every day can be helpful and gives you something to do during the campaign -- consider building up a bank of art beforehand. You can also use reference images, sketches, and so forth to use as content. You can get away with reposting stuff you posted a year or more ago -- followers don’t really mind older content if you repost old work. You get new followers who haven’t seen your old work.
This site lets you track your sales figures and gives you projected sales figures. Almost everyone has a high bar in the beginning but it drops after the first few days. Most campaigns also get a spike at the end. Your goal is to pump up the middle of your campaign by posting often.
AFTER YOUR KICKSTARTER
You can go to other platforms -- Indiegogo does a program called In Demand that lets you continue your funded Kickstarter campaign. You can keep making sales during the time you contact and work with your printer.
Thoughts on Kickstarter Facebook pages or other ad pages that charge a fee to promote your campaign? Generally avoid these -- they don’t really help much at all. They don’t work. Most people who use them pay money for traffic and don’t get the traffic that is promised.
You don’t have to wait for a gatekeeper to let you publish your product. You can take control of your future and make what you want to make.
Kickstarter is a great way to leverage your following to reach a wider audience. You can sell to your audience as well as the people who will find the project on Kickstarter’s site. If you have enough of a following, you could sell directly to them and circumvent Kickstarter -- this is an endgame scenario though.
Maybe you don’t have an idea for a product right now, but your life could be changed overnight by Kickstarter. Projects are freedom.
WILL’S ARTICLE LINKS
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229782
https://www.geekwire.com/2015/9-tips-for-crushing-it-on-kickstarter/
https://www.littlemight.com/articles/kickstarter-step-by-step
LINKS
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Aaron Painter: painterdraws.com. Instagram: @painterdraws
Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.
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