Kickstarter: Pros and Cons

  • Tutorial
Today we will share tips on creating a project on a crowdfunding site and describe the process using the kickstarter example, because, unfortunately, it is the most popular and has the most stringent requirements - you won’t have any problems with the rest of the sites.

List of tips:
live application cases
write live application cases of your product / project, and not list features. The user is interested to know how the product will help him, and not what he can and how wonderful he is. Unfortunately, giving advice is easier than following them. Despite the fact that we knew about this when creating a promotional video, we still managed to step on the rake described in the article.

promo video
create a promotional video is necessary. Users can watch the video and, if interested, read the text, but are unlikely to do so if there is no video. Do not forget the simple truth: it is better to see once than hear a hundred times. In this case, read. When creating a video, from the very first shots do not hesitate to show the most interesting thing - talking heads are terribly tired of everyone and if it can get away with well-known people, it is unlikely to get it for others. In the best case, the user clicks the video, and given that the kickstarter does not allow jumping to unloaded areas, many videos remain unplayed. The duration of the video also applies here: 3-4 minutes wherever it went, but if the user sees that more time needs to be devoted, his desire to even just turn on the video drops sharply. Can you tell an idea in 1-2 minutes? The best way! If you need to give details, then you can put them out either in another video in the project description, or simply in the text.
If you simply have nothing to show, since you have only a bare idea in your hands, then find someone who will talk about the idea brightly, with charisma. There is nothing more dull than looking at a boring narrator.

voice acting
if you decide to create a promotional video and even if you voice it in your own language, it is better to resort to the services of a professional announcer than to try to voice it yourself. On fiverr.comor another resource you can easily find a suitable candidate. Good pronunciation and diction are your assistants in gaining the favor of the user and in his understanding of the information conveyed. No need to force people to rewind and increase the volume to maximum to hear what you said. Duplicating information in the form of subtitles is a great idea: this will help those who find it difficult to perceive English by ear, or if for some reason you voice a video in another language, then give information in English at least in subtitles.

write correctly
errors greatly affect the user's opinion, so reread the text more than once or twice. If you write in a language that is not native to you, it is advisable to give proofreading to someone who knows it perfectly. This is quite a budget, you can once again use the services of fiverr.com

simplicity,
we consciously took the risk and prepared our first project for people with knowledge of such scary words as Bitcoin, P2P, etc. We published information about the project, respectively, in various specialized forums, but this did not work, for which, in general, we were ready. After publishing on kickstarter, we received many letters in the style of: “Wah! It sounds very cool, but completely incomprehensible. " Therefore, we decided to write for the future for a wide range of people. It is difficult: “to write simply about difficult is not easy” K.O.

emotions are
sometimes very difficult to tell ordinary users what the salt of your product is. In this case, play on emotions. Let the user not understand all the technical subtleties (often this is not necessary), but say “Shut up and take my money!” ©. Humor, a good joke or some kind of emotional charge is a great addition to the video and can encourage people to take the last necessary step towards their decision to help the project and / or share a link to it with their friends. Assistance in disseminating information is often more important than direct financial participation.

common misconception
there is a widespread misconception that the main thing is to go on a kickstarter, and there are already many who will support the project. It's not like that at all. Kickstarter practically does not give you donors (only if you are not lucky to get into Project of the Day or Staff Pick) you need to attract them to kickstarter yourself! This is one of the reasons for the disappointment and the question “why then go for kickstarter?” This is a good question and recently more and more people have been asking it themselves, refusing third-party services and collecting money on their own sites. If you are ready to organize a fundraiser, then in fact, you should consider not using the kickstarter services, or use another platform, which has fewer requirements and often takes a lower percentage. So, what are the pros and cons when posting on kickstarter?
Minuses:
  • You must be a resident or have a friend in US / UK who is ready to help you so that you have a bank account in one of these countries
  • pre-moderation. You’ll still have to do a promotional video and all the necessary information for potential donors, however, the kickstarter requirements are being tightened and not every project will be pre-moderated: there is no ready-made prototype? The path to the tech section is closed to you. Is your project related to charity? The path is closed. Also, not every IT project will pass if the moderator considers it “not creative enough”. The project should have a clear phase of completion, that is, you will not receive money for a project that does not have any product at the exit. More information here www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines
    However, according to them, about 75% of projects are moderated
  • in case of a successful fundraising, you will pay 5% Kickstarter and another 3-5% Amazon Payments + taxes in the country of an open account
  • this is not a clear minus, but you need to keep in mind that financing for kickstarter works in the “all or nothing” way, that is, if your project has not collected the full amount, then it will not be funded

Pros:
  • if you are selected by the kickstarter team in Project of the Day or Staff Pick, this will significantly increase the flow of people to your project page, respectively, significantly increase the chances of collecting the necessary amount
  • no need to think about the technical side of the issue of raising money
  • It’s easier for users to trust and give money on kickstarter than on your site, especially if you are still an unknown little team
  • we received several offers from Chinese manufacturers after placing our project on kickstarter - obviously, they are monitoring it for possible cooperation

And another answer to the question that we were asked repeatedly: is it possible to publish the same project on different sites at the same time? Yes you can. This is not prohibited by the kickstarter rules, but it is very difficult to convince people to come to one site, do not scatter them in different ways. Nevertheless, upon completion of the collection at one site, you can try to continue to collect at another. At the end of fundraising, people often continue to ask how and where they can participate in supporting the project.

awards
you must offer something to your donors in exchange for their money. Usually this is the very result of your project, a certain product and various trinkets like souvenirs, T-shirts, mugs and other things. To offer interesting and worthwhile rewards is a big deal. Even if people want to support your project, but the rewards are frankly weak and useless, you should not rely on cash flow. At the same time, you need to be very clear that if you need to collect, for example, $ 10,000, then you need to declare $ 30,000 - $ 40,000, since you should include not only the cost of rewards and expenses for Kickstarter and Amazon Payments + taxes, but also the costs of your campaign: promotional materials, PR, etc. The numbers given here will give you some idea. Http://148apps.biz/kickstarter-pros-and-cons/

create a community
probably the most important advice: before publishing the project, take care of creating a loyal community around it - people who will support you and your team morally and financially, and also help in disseminating information about the project. To do this, write articles, talk about your development experience, which may be useful to others. Show the process of creating a project, technical details of implementation, details. Why it was done this way and not otherwise. Be generous in sharing your experience, perhaps people will help you in return in due time. However, remember: there will always be those who do not appreciate your work, your project or article. People can be negative for a variety of reasons. Thank those who expressed constructive criticism, albeit not with the best word, this is still worthwhile help and will help you improve the project / articles; and keep silent but do not engage in controversy in the opposite case - yes, it’s a shame when they criticize something that has been done so much work, but what you said in a rage can greatly damage the cause, even if the critic is not right. Remember, people are emotionally on the side of other users, not yours. This is not because they are against you, it’s just that in these relations you are and they are an unflattering word to one of the users, it is easily perceived by others.
Give your users the opportunity to subscribe to your newsletter, collect their email addresses and you will have the necessary initial audience after launch or during fundraising. It is necessary to collect at least several hundred potential donors before publishing the project, some of them will be the first to be pulled by others - it is much easier for a person to decide on something if this decision has already been made by someone else. Sociality in action.

PR,
you can spend a certain amount of banknotes on promoting your project through Facebook, Twitter, etc., but we ourselves do not consider this a good idea. Try to interest users in a useful product / project and they will voluntarily help to promote it. This is better than feeding them ads. Also, do not use the services of people withfiverr.com or other resources in the style of “telling your product to my 100,000 twitter followers!” These are exaggerated numbers and they will not help you attract people - it is checked.

Press releases
Press releases are a very good option, but take time to create. And, most importantly, we still have to convince him to publish specialized resources. Before sending, be sure to study the format of the publication and honestly tell yourself if your materials are suitable for them. You should not send a press release to everyone.

personal contact
Another good option would be to contact the press directly. At the end of the article you will find a list of people who can help disseminate the information. Please do not spam! Respect other people's time, contact only if you are sure that your material may be of interest to them.

and the last
use
www.alexa.com
www.google.com/trends
if you need to find out the popularity of the resource for the intended publication.

Remember that it is often worth publishing your projects not only and not so much for the money, but so that people just learn about it.

We will try to take into account all of the above when preparing a new project, the announcement of which we will do in the foreseeable future. If you want to receive a notification about it, then we will be glad to see you in the list of subscribers to our newsletter ! Either you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
We hope that our experience will help you in creating your own projects!

links:
www.kickstarter.com/help/stats useful numbers of kickstarter statistics
www.kickstarter.com/projects/1129580574/ia-individual-assistant link to our previous project

Some alternatives to kickstarter:
www.indiegogo.com
www.rockethub.com
peerbackers .com
www.crowdtilt.com

If your project is related to charity, then the following sites will help you:
crowdrise.com
www.globalgiving.org
www.gofundme.com
fundrazr.com
www.justgiving.com
www.firstgiving.com
www.causes.com

For press releases. Thanks to lastochkoff and his article habrahabr.ru/post/141371 :
tips [at] allthingsd.com
tips [at] businessinsider.com
news [at] centernetworks.com
tips [at] geekwire.com
press-leads [at] gigaom.com
new [at] infoq.com
tips [at] inquisitr.com
editorial [at] kernelmag.com
tips [at] lifehacker.com
muonews [at] makeuseof.com
tips [at] pandodaily.com
ashish [at] pluggd.in
tips [at] readwriteweb.com
hello [at] splatf.com
editors [at] tech.li
tips [at] thenextweb.com
tips [at] venturebeat.com
tips [at] xconomy.com Web

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