Preparatory work to help you conquer Kickstarter [some forgotten truths]

    You came up with a cool idea, recorded an amazing promotional video, spent several months preparing, creating a page for a week, launching a campaign in anticipation of dizzying success and ...

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    nothing happened ...

    In this post I will try to share with you some well-known (and not so) moments, which is often neglected by domestic developers, although they can have a significant impact on the fate of your project.

    A few words about taxes


    You probably know that in order to launch a project on Kickstarter you must be a resident of the United States (however, there are a number of other countries, but the United States is still preferable). There are 2 ways to get around this limitation: open a legal entity in the States or use the services of an intermediary. If you plan to attract significant investments (more than 100 thousand dollars), an intermediary is not for you. It makes sense to enlist the support of an American accountant and open a legal entity. In any case, taxes will have to be paid, but there are many options for reducing them. Fiz. the person is not suitable for two reasons: high taxes and, in case something goes wrong, the individual will be fully responsible to the beckers. As for intermediaries, in addition to ~ 9% (Kickstarter + Amazon), they will take 10 more, plus a certain amount for working with the project ($ 500-2000).

    By the way, Kickstarter can be used not only as a way to raise funds, but also as an excellent marketing weapon for launching a product in new markets. For example, projects of one client twice collected significant amounts (> $ 250`000), but were canceled at the last moment. Firstly, there is no problem with the smut with taxes, deliveries and deadlines, secondly, the project passes the test of battle, receives a certain share of media attention, gathers a certain audience around it and gives a certain idea of ​​the potential demand in new markets. And yes, Kickstarter, among other things, can act as a low-cost and effective tool for scaling a company. But I, it seems, somewhat departed from the topic.

    Get to the point


    In general, the success of your campaign consists of 2 factors: attracting an interested and money-convertible audience, and a well-prepared Kickstarter page.

    With well-prepared pages, things are more or less good, but still allow me to mention a few things.

    • In addition to creating a good promotional video and page design, take care of the competent structure of the awards.


    It is difficult to give alternative advice that is suitable for everyone, so carefully study the projects of your competitors. You must have at least a few unusual rewards. Take care of people who are willing to pay 50-300% higher than other beckers for the unique opportunity to participate in the design of a certain character, choosing the right sounds and other little things that will give a person a sense of involvement in the project. For example, from the latter: there were a couple of people who wanted to say hello to mom / dad / girlfriend / humanity on a billboard, which was the “usual background thing” of one intricate game, paying an extra 750 bucks for that. A trifle, but nice.

    It’s very likely that you should include Reward on the “Give Back” list .. This is not our invention, but it really works. Becker may not be interested in your product, but he will gladly put out a couple of tens (hundreds?) Bucks if he knows that thanks to him, some orphan from an orphanage, or a poor family from a neighboring village, or a small local school received this cool useful gizmo. Among other things, this option can serve as a good clue for journalists and bloggers who are much more willing to agree to cover your project in the media (but more on that later), realizing that they help a certain circle of people with their post. Win-win-win situation.

    As in any business, special attention should be paid to pricing. Take a look at similar campaigns, think carefully about the numbers. After the launch of 4 successful projects, which raised more than 350 thousand dollars in total, I personally came to the conclusion that 1 dollar reward is evil. The initial five-dollar option will bring much more money if your project is really worth something. There were several successful examples when projects collected more than 10 thousand for 1 dollar, but this is not your case with us (if you just do not have an army of thousands of fans on Facebook and a couple of well-known top bloggers).

    Many projects do not reach the line due to excessive crushing of awards: 1-3-5-7-10-15-20-30-50-100dollars. In this case, a potential becker can “not tighten up” to really attractive and advantageous (for you) offers. 5-20-50-70-100 bucks in this case look more preferable (again, it all depends on your project, but do not be afraid of higher options, and mercilessly remove excess small values. You need more money, do you ?). Of course, the rate should be justified, which is why I urge you to move your brains well to create truly juicy and attractive offers.

    Analysis of similar projects


    No matter how unique your idea is, there will always be several (dozens?) Of similar projects. Study them well.

    Many people don’t know that if you add a plus to a short BitLite link to a kick-project, you can get quite detailed information about the clicks. For example, if you follow the short link of the Passion Planner project (pre-adding a plus), which by some miracle has already earned $ 480.652 with the declared 10,000, you will see quite detailed information about the transitions, including time intervals (through which, using Google, you You can try to track the most important publications), geography and sources of clicks (the latter, as a rule, is not so important, because in the first place Facebook, then Twitter, then many small sites) http://kck.st/1un3QW2+. By the way, this project, which offers a free PDF version for users who have helped spread information over the network, is a great example of how to get the most out of every visitor to your page.

    Carefully google sites and blogs that posted any information about related projects. https://images.google.com can help you speed up the process. Searching for images of competing projects is a good life hack that can save time and find information about additional potential communication channels. Make a database containing information about blogs, authors, their contacts. Find truly relevant resources. SimilarSites.com helps you find similar sites.

    Work with the press


    • Even if you already have an excellent base of journalists and bloggers, do not rush to shower them with your pitches .
      To get started, install some kind of tracking add-on to your mail. I used Streak , which makes it possible to understand whether your letter was open and forgotten, or if the journalist did not even notice it in a continuous stream of messages. Thanks to this, it will be easier for you to decide what to do next: is it worth it to duplicate the letter, send a reminder, wait for an answer, or just score.

    • If you know English at a sufficient level, or know a person who knows it, go to profile on reddite. As practice shows, it can be an excellent resource for attracting backers, but for this, you need to make a certain contribution. Agree, few people have the desire to seriously look at a person with zero posts in his profile, who offers to get acquainted with his amazing and unique project. Prepare a dozen or two interesting posts in advance that are not related to your project, periodically upload them to relevant subreddits and take part in discussions. Before starting the campaign, try to come up with several viral posts that you will fill in at the beginning / throughout your campaign. A boosted account and good posts brought 10-30 percent of our campaigns. By the way, being in Editor's choice on Kik on average contributed about 20 percent of the total.


    By the way, about your database with the contacts of journalists. I hope that you understand that bombarding the media directly with letters is practically useless. You need to collect contact information of the authors . In addition to emails, I highly recommend that you subscribe to Twitter, blog, and your victim’s Facebook.

    There is one quite effective and obvious strategy that often works, but is rarely used:
    Instead of throwing journalists messages about your projects, become their fans.These are the same guys as you and me, who differ only in that they are specifically bothered by sassy startups who regularly litter mail with all kinds of nonsense. Stand out! Try to just treat them humanly. First of all, subscribe to their Twitter, Facebook, blog. Regularly monitor the release of new posts and leave the first relevant comments. Hurry up first to thank the author for such a useful article. Twitter is awesome. Retweet their messages (they notice it, believe me), mention them in questions, try to start a discussion. It is desirable that your name on Twitter, Facebook, blog comments, match the name of your mail. You can also leave a personal message on Twitter that you are going to send him an email: " could I drop you a quick line on an exclusive story?". It works. Especially when you see in its information space. It takes a lot of time, sometimes it strains, but it works. And the trick is that having got such contacts, you can always give the blogger useful information for you (and for him?) In the future, these are good contacts. Thanks to this approach, we regularly receive publications in TechCrunch, Mashable, TheNextWeb. And then they spread like a snowball. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you do not do mass mailing on the basis of journalists, but use a more personalized one. second approach. The exhaust is much higher.

    Many people write about writing a press kit: forget about it. A folder with good, juicy pictures on the dropbox and 5-7 bullet points about your project (here you should also mention the social component and Give Back Reward) is all that a blogger needs. Well, share a link to a ready-made, but not yet launched page on Kik. There he will be able to find further information for the post, plus will give a certain sense of uniqueness.

    In conclusion, I note that any campaign on Kickstarter is a daily, almost round-the-clock work, for at least 2 months. That’s why it’s not worth putting the campaign longer than 30 days. And breathe out yourself, and interest will fade. As a rule, there is only one powerful flash of interest, then money drips a little bit, during the remaining campaign. In general, success largely depends on the start. Quickly started - attracted more attention. Well, do not forget to actively communicate with beckers, so that they help you in promotion. I gave a good example above: a girl offers a free PDF version for reposting in social networks. And Facebook, as a rule, brings about 30 percent of all money. This must be taken into account.

    That's all for today. Perhaps there are not enough concrete examples here, but I cannot use them because of the NDA. At the same time, I tried to convey fairly obvious things, which for some reason are very rarely paid attention to. I will definitely think over more practical tips that have helped us in the past, and maybe I'll write another post.

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