What do I need to know before launching a KickStarter?

Kickstarter is only good for certain types of projects. Spend time to analyze numerous other projects in your category to document what they did right and what they missed. If you're not a consumer product, Kickstarter is probably not for you.

Consider that your Kickstarter campaign will require your FULL-TIME attention for the entire month it is running. You cannot successfully launch the campaign and then sit back to wait for stuff to happen. This is a campaign, morning, noon, and night, and you will need to give it your utmost effort throughout to have it meet goals.

Make sure you plan for all your expenses, especially the taxes you'll owe and fees. Don't ever whine to your audience about the difficulty of raising funds or meeting goals. Have your plan to deliver rewards laid out and calculated well in advance to make sure things are delivered timely.

Kickstarter can be a great resource for some projects, but it's not right for all projects. Make sure you're a good match before you burn this avenue. If you don't succeed, you hurt everyone in your category, not just your project.

And lastly, to reiterate what others have said, you MUST bring your own audience to Kickstarter. Kickstarter will NOT provide you an audience. That's probably the most common mistake made.

Good luck! Work hard!

1. You need a story. Not all good projects have a good story. And not everything with a good story is a good project. But you can't crowdfund without a story that will resonate with your intended constituency.

2. You need a crowd. (a) You can bring your own. (b) You can collaborate with those who have their own crowd. (c) you can create your own crowd with your own advertising/promotional campaign. Those are the only three options you have.

3. You can't rely on Kickstarter to supply your crowd.

4. You should have a plan B if Kickstarter fails or if it succeeds.

5. Equity Investment from your Crowd. You should plan, as that second gear to sell equity to your kickstarter contributors with an Equity Crowdfunding that is locked and loaded to go in the background (see generally truCrowd.com)

Work on your campaign months in advance. Don't set up campaign and then start. Do not pay anyone for marketing. Seriously, there are so many companies out there promising great results that charge thousands or tens of thousands. Don't do it. Its a pure money burn if you don't get funding. Their business succeeds at an un guaranteed cost to you. Maybe there are firms out there that changed since I worked through one several years ago. If you do decide to go that route, tell them to provide you with their success stories and their failures ALL OF THEM. That means names and count so you can evaluate their success and failure rate. When I did this to a number of the firms that start flooding your inbox...none of them could offer ANY numbers that justified their fee.

You would be better off putting that money toward a salary for an inhouse marketing employee...a good one anyway.

Hi Roderick,

I would suggest you Influencer Marketing most that will definitely help you to get success on KickStarter as well as on other crowd funding platforms.

I want to know this one too.

in one word: be prepared! You must create a community (social medias, landing page and most important bloggers) before you launch your campaign. Kickstarter gives many tips on how to make your campaign a success. Good luck!

Roderick-

Crowdfunding is an amazing channel to kickstart a new project!

Here are some quick pro tips:

- Crowdfunding is all about community, so be prepared to spend quality time creating and cultivating a community

- Kickstarter is based on pledges. This means that unless you reach your goal, all funds will be returned.

- If your strategy is created properly, you should expect peak results at the beginning and end of your campaign period, so if your pledges start to wane by day six, don't freak out!

- Consider consulting a pro. As I mentioned, crowdfunding is a very rewarding channel, but only when the strategy is created well. I recommend consulting with experts like the Arora Project (www.aroraproject.co) for this type of campaign

Hope this helps!