KickstarterForum.org

[hyperstarter]

It's not just social media, I wanted to mention that. It's getting people's "Hands on" what you're doing and getting honest feedback.

To get people to promote on your behalf, you need to establish a relationship with them...a stranger asking another stranger for help isn't going to work well. If they connect with you and your campaign, then they'll be more likely to support you.

My campaign doesn't launch until March, but one thing I have realised is the importance of starting social media way in advance. It takes time and work to comment, like and post and build up relationships with people on social media. This is a full time job and is so important to gather a following before you launch. Have people ready to talk about you or to help promote you.

The most important thing for me was making it more personal. So the social media is not pushy or salesy but rather building good content which people naturally want to follow. Also, commenting on other posts, wishing other people Good Luck on their campaigns and following and communicating with potential backers across social media so they build early trust. Am working on this now so lets see what happens - fingers crossed!

Thanks!
Ella
mealmonsters.com

[Adam_b]

So far, with my first kickstarter campaign, I have learned that getting the word out seems to be what will ultimately gets people interested in funding your project. So having your link in as many places as possible is ideal. Kickstarter is tougher than you think!!

check out my first kickstarter campaign at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/89 ... al-tv-show

[mikecTH]

This is my second time around the track launching TabletHookz https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ta ... ref=csyrj6

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We've been going for 13 days and currently 70% funded, our first campaign attempt was unsuccessful so we needed to take stock and try again, if at first you don't succeed try, try and try again right !!

We wrote to all our backers and asked them for feedback on what they thought we had done well, and what we hadn't done well. There was lots of great information that we got back, below is a mail I sent to the backers prior to our re-launch, we got feedback on the items we listed and much more - without the community we wouldn't be where we are today (but no lady singing yet !!)

We still have some way to go and sometimes it feels like we're running out of steam but we'll juts keep plugging away - it's a full time job doing a campaign though, a slave to the laptop & phone. A real fine line between sharing information on facebook and not being one of those annoying people talking about the same thing over and over again !!

TabletHookz - looking back

Dear TabletHookz Believers….
Our Washup

Well we didn’t make it first time around and we’ve been trying to figure out why and what we can do to make another launch a success – hopefully with your help again please

Here’s some of the observations and we welcome your thoughts on these and indeed any others you may have.

1. The published times to the rewards was too long – we ended our campaign 6th December 2016 and we said we would have the rewards out in April 2017. We think we can do it in 2-3 months now.

2. Did we lose people at the postage hurdle, prepared to pledge £10/€12/$13 and then resent having to pay £3/€4/$5 for shipping and they stopped, should we have one price that covers worldwide shipping so there is no postage to add or would we lose backers who see an initial pledge for example of £13/€16/ $18 and no postage added ?

3. Did we try at the wrong time of year – November/December -with hindsight - isn’t historically a good time to launch a campaign. Black Friday, Thanks Giving and Christmas around the corner etc all apparently have a negative bearing.

4. Would March be a good time for us to re-launch with the expectation of having those TabletHookz out to people for the family summer vacation travels.Historically March is a good month for Kicskarter.

5. Our Target was too high, we aimed too high, we based our prices on lots of backers at cheaper prices, we didn’t get lots of backers so we failed to get early momentum, which is critical for corwdfunding.

6. We’ve managed to secure some funding from elsewhere so the new amount we’ll be asking for is less – we also will not budget in a fancy printed box for the product but a cheaper recyclable one – but don’t worry it will still come with a microfiber carry pouch (a bit bigger we have decided).

7. We didn’t have a website before, we will by the time we go live so keep an eye on http://www.tablethookz.com as we develop it

8. As much as we liked out initial video was it too long to keep potential backers engaged – we’ve got two versions now – the short and the long both available to see here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=U ... c9Km8-oCxw

9. I didn’t feature in either video – do I need to sit in-front of the camera and talk about the product and show you who I am to instil trust ? – maybe I will put some face time in to the beginning of the video, still not 100% sure about this - is it the product or the team behind it people want to see - or both?

10. Did we have too many rewards – time to strip it down to just 5 simple rewards we think

11. Was there too much content on our page, do we need to trim it down and make it more slick

12. We now have reviews out there already by bloggers and gadget and travel sites so they can feature in our launch from day one with links to what they had to say.

13. On another note we’ve now had our patent granted and it was published today and our European Trademark has been accepted & registered and our international designs have been accepted in numerous more countries.

So, as you can see we’ve been busy trying to assess why it didn’t work and indeed if we think a re-launch will. If you have any ideas, you’d be willing to share or even disagree with any of the above please do get in touch. We want this to happen and to weigh everything in our favour.

Thanks

Mike

[NateMcCoy]

Currently I'm trying a kickstarter (for a feature film) and I've found it extremely difficult. Personally, I don't think I had all the media I needed to make a good first weekend, but time constraints forced me to start before I was optimally ready. Advice: Kickstarter over indie gogo for products/gadgets/inventions/games... film/tv projects are better served on indie gogo.

Also, think about having all friends and family that will initially back as soon as you go live to help get you over an initial hump. For advertisement, you will be bombarded with PR people that claim to be able to help you. All are beneficial in someway, but they also all reek of sales pitches, just do your research before hand and talk with a person before you even launch to suss out posers and good people. It won't be much money and should help you get that initial burst you need to create terminal velocity for your project. If you look at mine right now it's woefully low, and I feel I've got a good thing to ask funding for... but I didn't do any of these things that I'm advocating you do now. (I didn't do enough research before hand)... hope this helps! and good luck!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/20 ... roductions?

our website: http://www.onlyhumanproductions.com/current-projects

[SteamTeam5]

I just launched mine, but the biggest thing I've learned is to be careful about the language you use in pre-launch marketing. It's my theory that the people who signed up to be notified about our launch think that they've already supported our mission (to get girls excited about STEM/STEAM) simply by signing up for notifications about the launch. So, in the future, I won't use the words "support" in pre-launch campaigns.

[hyperstarter]

Not sure I understand your point on using "support" in your wording. If someone signs up and gives you their email, it's a pretty big deal that they're interested in what you're doing. Nowadays it's pretty hard to collect emails, compared to say 5 years ago.

[garrettrmartin]

I think the most important thing is just realizing how much work goes into creating a campaign. It's something that has to be started months in advance and includes working on it everyday to build that following and make sure you know the message your trying to get across. I'm currently on my third campaign and still have a lot to learn as it's not something that happens overnight!

[RobQTran]

.

[nina_prus]

The main mistakes that staggered the project's progress were due to the fact that we rushed into Kickstarter without thinking through some key issues, such as:
1. Solid connections with mass-media.
We studied many articles regarding media communications, but it is important to understand that if you haven't developed something groundbreakingly unique, useful and technologically advanced, the chances of getting into Forbes, TechCrunch and alike is very slim.
2. SMM is important, and, in our case, it was non-existent.
We know, it does sound odd and “how could anyone launch a project with this kind of a gap”, but, for a while, we could not find a suitable marketologist.
All SMM was conducted by our team and while we were relatively active on Facebook, other social media was rather abandoned by us, not to mention our blog.
3. Communication with the audience.
We participated in a variety of events and even collected a number of contacts at CES, however, except for a “Happy New Year!” e-mail, we never contacted any of them.
This was a very unfortunate mistake: you should always seek an opportunity to contact the people that are interested in your project for any reason, whether you have valuable news to share, an advice to give or simply remind them about what you are doing.

[lowkey]

Just a small update in between : My experience with managing multiple Kickstarter Campaign.

1. What works for your campaign might not work with others.
2. The moment you have to decide if you want to get and want to get more than you should.
3. Getting press is still a very hard thing to do for free (even after 2 years doing the same shit)