Your First Step To A Kickass Kickstarter
Having run several successful Kickstarter campaigns, sometimes artists ask me what they should do to run a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Recently I realized that I was leaving out the first, and most important step, especially for a creator who is new to crowdfunding.
The first step to launching a successful Kickstarter?
Support a bunch of Kickstarters.
While it may seem like I’m encouraging you to put money into crowdfunding, to somehow give to the community of artists - that’s not really what I’m after. That’s just a side effect of what I’m after. What I’m really after is for you to get the backer experience.
I want you to figure out why you chose a particular campaign to back. What attracted you? What made you say yes, this is the one that deserves my cash? Was it humor? Slick presentation? The product? The people? The story?
When you become a backer, what is the experience. What kind of updates appeal to you and make you feel good about supporting the project? What annoys you? What strategies work when the creator hits delays? Who did a great job of communicating, and why did that work?
What problems did the creator run into? Did you anticipate that sort of problem? What would you do if you ran into that problem?
If a campaign fails, why did it fail? If it succeeded, how was it different from the campaign that failed?
“But J.R., I don’t have all the money in the world! I can’t be giving 100′s of dollars to Kickstarter campaigns!”
Then don’t. Just give a 1$. Just one! Pick 10 campaigns and give them a dollar. Find projects that are similar to what you’re doing, and, more importantly, where the creator is someone like you. If you are a student, find students to support. See how they worked that angle. If you are an experienced creator returning to making art after a long departure, find creators like that to support.
You can learn how it feels to back a project, what it’s like when you see a creator fail, succeed, and struggle, and how it feels to back a project that goes through that adventure.
Then, when you start your own project, you’ll know what it’s like to be on the other side.
So really, it’s all about empathy. Empathy is the first step.
