Want to know who your true friends are? ... run a Kickstarter campaign

I’ve ran 5 Kickstarter campaigns to date. The first one was successful, followed by two campaigns I ran simultaneously that were no where near reaching their funding goal so I cancelled them a few weeks in (thank goodness, that's a whole other story, but plush animals were better off not being fulfilled), followed by another successful one, and my most successful campaign yet (which is active right now). I purposely wanted to wait until I reached my funding goal before posting this article. But, running a Kickstarter, or any crowd funding campaign for that matter... is HARD and provides a lot of insight to who your true friends are.

What many people might not realize, unless you’ve created a Kickstarter before, is that it’s a popularity contest… and the first 48 hours are critical. How you do in those first precious hours will seal the fate of your entire campaign. It's beneficial if you can get buzz around your launch, having eager family/friends/coworkers/faithful followers all ready to hit that little green "pledge" button once the campaign goes live.

Because, if you do, that attention to your project will result in more attention. Your project will become a "staff pick", news stations will pick it up (see the infamous Potato Salad campaign) resulting in more press and eyeballs on your campaign, and you'll end up crushing your funding goal within hours. But despite this clear formula for success, it is tough to get that dedicated group of people to pledge in those crucial hours... or pledge at all. 

My best guess at why friends and family aren't anxiously hovering over that green button the moment you go live is simply their naivety, naive in their understanding of what Kickstarter is, how it works, or the importance of their punctual pledges.

Things you might not know unless you’ve ran a campaign:

1. Creators can see whether or not you’ve backed their project.

I can't tell you how many friends and family have liked a post about my Kickstarter projects or even gone as far as to comment and reshare about how they can't wait for the book only to never pledge. Don't get me wrong, resharing and social exposure is great, but not everyone realizes that the campaign creators can see who backed their project and can follow along with the Kickstarter dashboard. Creators know exactly who backed the project, what websites were used to find the campaign, and how much money each backer pledged. It's even possible to tie into Google Analytics to gather more insights into how traffic was driven to your campaign. Seems obvious, right. After all, creators have to fulfill orders when the campaign funds.

"Creators know exactly who backed the project"

2. You don’t have to choose one of the rewards

I get it, you don't want a children's book. Maybe you don't have children! But what many people might not realize is you can support your friend's Kickstarter without having to get the product they are selling. You can choose "no reward" as an option and can pledge as little as $1. Maybe the cheapest reward is $150... that's okay, you can still give them $1. I respect friends who can't afford my products or simply don't like them, but pledge a little to tell me they're thinking about me and want to support my self funding venture however they can.

3. It’s all or nothing

There are other crowd funding sites that are more like traditional e-commerce sites. You pledge for a product and your credit card is immediately charged and you get that item. Not the case with Kickstarter. The creator only gets the money IF their campaign is funded... it's all or nothing. This is nice for backers because it gives you a little time for "backers-remorse" (see next point), but not so nice for project creators. We tend to put our funding goals much lower than the cost it actually takes to "come out even" in the hopes that we'll reach our funding goal. I can't tell you how many friends/family have told me "oh, you reached your funding goal, I assumed you no longer needed to raise money". Soooo not the case.

For example, if I were to only reach my funding goal for my current campaign I'd lose $11,825. I wanted to self publish my book regardless of how much I raised and I already footed a lot of the expenses up front (think illustrator, samples, animations, videographer, etc) so I chose $18,000 for my goal knowing I'd lose money because it felt "reasonable" and it meant that I wasn't stuck with a larger loss of not covering at least some of my costs. That being said, I am ordering way more product than I'm selling through Kickstarter, so I knew that even if I came out after Kickstarter with a loss, I might be able to make that up selling the excess product through traditional channels.

4. You can adjust your award before the campaign ends

Because of the last point above, backers credit cards aren't charged until after the funding date. In my case, for my current campaign, it's the last day in February. So on February 28th, 2017 at 8pm eastern time, all of my backers will finally have their credit cards charged. That means, for backers, they can adjust the amount they've pledged up until that date. You can increase, decrease, or cancel throughout the duration of a campaign. Which brings me back to the start of this article... knowing who your friends are. It costs you literally $0 to be ready to go, ready to push that green pledge button to help draw attention to your friend's Kickstarter campaign. Because after that initial hype is successfully achieved, you can simply cancel your pledge.

It costs you literally $0 to be ready to go, ready to push that green pledge button to help draw attention to your friend's Kickstarter campaign.

So next time your friend asks you to back their Kickstarter campaign, show them some love, even if it's just to give them that initial push they desperately need.