Reading throug this, I'm seeing so many helpful tips that I wish I knew BEFORE we laucnhed earlier this week. Still, there are some pointers here we will incorporate into our campaign -- we're over halfway to our goal and are hopefuly for a successful finish!

-Jake
The retractable no-touch tool is now available on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fe ... ref=6swv3l

Thanks for the important information.

Community Marketing is the best way to attract genuine backers.

Kickstarter observations so far:

This is my first kickstarter campaign.

I was unaware that the added shipping cost was added to the fund raising total, but grateful it is, it boosts my crowdfunding.

I was surprised with how many spam messages I received because I launched my campaign. All wanting to help me boost my campaign. One even offered to help me reach my $4,000 goal for a mere $2,995.

I love, love, love, the stats available through the Kickstarter, but it’s easy to get obsessed with them.

Every day I set a goal and every day I come up a bit short, but that’s okay. It’s about 50/50 if I’ll make my goal or not, but I’m hopeful.

Salvador Briggman’s YouTube channel is a must before launching a campaign, although there is a lot of content to sift through and it becomes overwhelming, but it’s all good.

The book The Kickstarter Launch Formula is good, but the YouTube channel was better for me. I’m a visual learner.

I took the plunge to use Facebook ads. It was a lot cheaper than I expected. It’s too early to know if it’s effective, but for $5 a day($35 for seven days) it’s worth a try.

Kicktraq is also a useful website.

Google Analytics is just okay, but I do tend to obsess over the real time stat of how many people are visiting my page at the given time.

Another thing I obsess about is the number of people who are following and signed up to get a reminder at the end of the campaign. Right now I have about 3 times the number of followers than backers. I’d wish I could convert them before the end, but I’m hopeful I’ll convert some before the campaign ends.

I’m 10 days into my campaign and it’s 46% funded. I’m anxious on whether or not I’ll make my goal.

Win, lose, or draw, I’m happy I launched my campaign, although it’s hard work and I don’t know if I’ll do it again.

My funding right now is about 56/43 56% of traffic is from the Kickstarter website and the 43% is from me that I brought in.
I wish I could convert more visitors (right now my conversation rate of visitors to my campaign is between 8-10%).

I wish I knew about the custom tag urls before I launched my Facebook ads so I could see if it is working. I’ll use them if I use the ads again later in my campaign.

Rick

Hello to all.
I would like to start at Kickstarter very soon. I am in the field of online games. I joined this forum to get the best tips to have good results. Thanks TCL, I find your tips quite logical. I will take note of them.

Thanks for the great discussion.

1) Don't get sucked into the spam emails you will get from countless people offering to make your KC a success. When you go live with a preview you'll get tons of these!

2) Plan ahead! It takes a lot of work and effort to make a campaign and get everything set up - images, layouts, wording. That doesn't even include the promotion!

Loved reading all these!

This is without having yet concluded my KS campaign, but I would recommend using any failed campaigns as a window of opportunity.

This can be accomplished by using an initial limited campaign as a means of creating interest in your content. Particularly if you have a minimal, if not non-existent, following. Your first campaign does not need to be successful in terms of funding if it can be successful in terms of generating excitement.

I was able to find a lot of KS creators with initial campaigns that failed. But after producing decent results in the KS campaign itself, they were able to use that initial failure as a springboard to create highly successful campaigns afterwards (many with upwards of $100,000 against their first goal of $10,000). The people who had backed their first failed campaign were still interested in the project, and attracted even more attention to the second campaign.

FBK wrote: ↑Mon Sep 01, 2014 3:51 pm My TOP TIP is to launch with a tribe.

A tribe is at least 10 people (or 100), who will tell 10 people, and that have a debit or credit card, who know how to use the internet and social media, and who will become a “ride or die” supporter and spread the word about your campaign.
This tribe is usually made up of your family and social media friends.
(I think of a tribe as campaign volunteers, you are asking them to commit, not just donate and walk away)

This only works if you have relationships that are pre-established like this. There are plenty of individuals that lack such. Not to mention, not everyone will be interested in the subject of any given campaign. There's an older post on here from someone who launched their comic on KS. Support of from their "tribe" pretty much dropped out the second backing the project was an option. It was a pretty harsh lesson to be learned - but it's also really important to note on suggestions like this.

It's all well and good for those who have a supportive immediate circle, but this is not advice that would work for everyone.