Megaloptura on Kickstarter

Day 1 / 30

Our first Kickstarter project has begun!  I’m super excited about this.  So much so I could explode J Check it out here.

We are only asking a threshold mark of 20k for this project which is very low considering the amount and quality of work.  We have given ourselves stretch goals and believe these to be very practical.

Anyhow, the purpose of these blog entries is to allow others to track and learn from our experience with Kickstarter.  I will try to cover everything in as much detail as possible without making you want to shoot yourself in the face from boredom.

Preparing for Kickstarter

The first thing we did was to do research.  Unfortunately sometimes there is so much information on a topic that it makes it really hard to find real usable data.  There are about a 1000 blogs and 10,000 articles on how to be successful with Kickstarter.  The majority of them have the same main points so I won’t cover all that.

Then we looked into statistics:

How much does a project get funded on average?

What is the average length of time?

How much of the proceeds of a package go to the reward?

What rewards do people like?

What rewards do people think suck?

How long should the video be?

Do we actually have to have a working game to make a video?

How far along should the game be before doing Kickstarter?

What is “Kicking it Forward”?

Should we use “Kicking it Forward”?

On an on….I will try and cover all these questions with the answers that we concluded on.  However, if there is one thing that we do know right now up front, it is that every project is different and may be subject to different influences.  So this by no means is a set of absolutes.  Do the research.

Q: How much does a project get funded on average?

A: We found this to be all over the place!  We saw some projects get ridiculous amounts while others that looked better or just as good just squeak by.  The only thing we have concluded so far is how much coverage a project gets directly influences its funding.  So we are trying to do our best to get the word out about Megaloptura.

Q: What is the average length of time?

A: From what we can tell you can pick between 15-60 days for a project.  According to Kickstarter stats the 30 day option was the best.  However, we couldn’t tell because it was very difficult to find many other projects that didn’t do anything other than the 30.  So it is hard to draw a conclusion about this on so little data.  We just have to take Kickstarter’s experience on this one at face value.

TIP: One thing to remember is that weekends are not as busy as week days from the stats we saw.  So when you setup your 30 day project remember that it isn’t a multiple of 7 so there is a possibility of getting 5 weekend days in there if you aren’t careful.  So when you pick your launch date, be sure you look at a calendar to make sure you only get 4 weekends and the rest week days.

Q: How much of the proceeds of a package go to the reward?

A: This was a difficult one to figure out.  The reason I say that is that we had found articles where people didn’t make much at all due to the Kickstarter fee, the credit card fees, the prize itself, the shipping of the prize, and not to mention the time and money to set all this up.  So you have to leave yourself a lot of wiggle room so you actually get some funding.

Q: What rewards do people like? - What rewards do people think suck?

A: Of course we primarily focused on the gaming sections and not other Kickstarter areas.  What we saw was that some rewards (though they looked cool) simply weren’t received well.  For example we thought about shirts.  So we went to many completed projects with shirts for rewards and then totaled the amounts they made and what percentage that contributed to their bottom line of funding.   From the projects we looked at….not to many people liked shirts (which was a surprise to me).  So we scratched that as a reward.  We did this on and on to come up with the rewards we have. 

Of course there are what I call “Swing for the fences” rewards where you can get half your funding in one reward.  I couldn’t find reliable stats on these.  Some projects had 0 backers while others sold out.  It is hard to say about them.

Q: How long should the video be?

A:  Sigh…again this was another thing that was very subjective.  Some projects had very short videos and did well, others, especially the 1M+ had movies basically.  We spent a lot of time and effort trying to convey our passion for developing this game, our ability to complete this project, and a little of the actual game play on a conceptual level.  In the end we cut out a bit of my blathering because…well it wasn’t needed.

Q: Do we actually have to have a working game to make a video?

How far along should the game be before doing Kickstarter?

A:  This is a catch-22 for some.  If you have a project and you need funding to build it, then you can’t have footage of the actual product now can you?  However, from our experience the projects that had video proof of the products existence do much better.  So we waited till we were to a point where we had testable game play to record before doing Kickstarter. 

There are a lot of projects (even very big ones) that had nothing but concept art to go off of though.  So it can be done even if you have vaporware.

Q: What is “Kicking it Forward”?

A: We didn’t know what this was until we came across it on other projects.  Kicking it Forward is a pledge that a Kickstarter project gives that they will use 5% of the profits (after Kickstarter and after costs) to help fund other Kickstarter projects. 

Q: Should we use “Kicking it Forward”?

A: I say, “Hell yes!”  If the universe is good enough to allow me to do what I love for a living, and make a profit based on a project that was funded by the generosity of others, then it is my karmic duty to push it forward in an effort to make someone else’s dream come true.  The idea that money from the profits of Megaloptura literally could change the course of another person’s life for the better is worth it all!

Tomorrow I will try to go into what we learned about building out project site for Kickstarter.

I hope this helps other people wanting to use Kickstarter or some other crowd funding solution for that matter. 

You can help us

If you’d like to contribute to the Megaloptura project we will be super grateful!  You can also help by spreading the word!  Tell your friends, tweet a link, tell your facebook friends!  Anything you can do we appreciate! Here is a tiny url to use if you want to help spread the word.... http://tinyurl.com/ao2dd2r
 

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