The First “Big One”. My Kickstarter campaign dashboards - part 3

My fourth Kickstarter campaign was for a deck of cards. My third had also been for a deck of cards and that made it the first time I’d followed up with a product in the same category as a previous one.

There are plenty of good reasons to have a consistent theme if you’re going to run multiple Kickstarter campaigns. It’s not something I did until my fourth campaign, but better late than never. I believe it was part of the reason that this fourth project did significantly better than my previous ones - raising more than my previous three put together. This was my first “big one”.

Different people will have different perspectives on what a “big” Kickstarter project is. You’ve probably heard of a few really big projects such as Exploding Kittens which raised nearly nine million dollars. But those are extremely rare. Only 843 Kickstarter campaigns have ever raised over a million dollars. That’s 0.1% of launched Kickstarter projects.¹

It’s worth bearing in mind that, these days particularly, a seven-figure Kickstarter project will likely have a six-figure budget to get there. My projects are more modest than that so I was extremely happy with how this one went.

Project 4 - ONE DECK GAME Cards

As I said, this fourth project involved a deck of cards. Not just any old cards though. The idea behind One Deck Game Cards was to create a single deck of cards with which you can play chess, dominoes, checkers and other games, as well as any regular card game.

One Deck Game Cards on Kickstarter

In many ways, because this project did so well, there’s less to talk about here.

As with my previous playing card campaign, the funding reached 100% on day one. Although having said that, the first 24-48 hours probably weren’t as good as they should’ve been. The funding progress graph shown below roughly has a typical S-shape to it, but the line isn’t as steep right at the beginning as I would’ve liked.

The last couple of days were strong though. The first couple of days should’ve had a gradient more like that.

One Deck Game Cards - project dashboard

Why it did well

There are always two big parts to Kickstarter success - the product itself and then the marketing. One can compensate for the other to a certain extent, but you really need to nail both to do well.

On the product side there are some factors that make the perfect Kickstarter product.

Firstly, what you’re offering has to be something novel that catches people’s attention. You want people to see it and think: “ooh, that’s cool/clever; I’ve never seen something quite like that before”.

I think I achieved that with these cards.

Then a key thing, which is unique to crowdfunding, is that people need to want it, but not need it tomorrow.

They also must be willing to pay in advance to support you to make this thing a reality.

If you want to try and hit the sweet spot when it comes to a great Kickstarter product you need to consider those factors.

On the marketing side, for this campaign I had a good list of previous backers/customers, and similarly an existing list of press/blog contacts. This campaign was featured in Gizmodo, Core77 and elsewhere.

Not only is it obviously great to have a readymade list of people to tell about a new project, a proven track record also builds trust with potential first-time backers.

I also implemented some paid advertising again, and that helped to keep up the momentum throughout the campaign.

Another point to note — if you look closely at the graph above you can see a steepening of the gradient around the 3rd November. That coincided with the end of the “early bird” reward pricing.

So in summary, I had a novel product that excited people and could easily be understood in a few seconds, and I executed well when it came to letting potential backers know about the campaign.

Project 5 - King/Queen Print

I’ll finish this week with a brief look at my fifth Kickstarter project. Just a brief look because it was a very different type of project.

Every January, Kickstarter promotes an initiative called Make-100 which is where people run campaigns offering just 100 of something.² I’d wanted to do one for a while and the timing just after the larger previous project seemed ideal.

The project was for a hand-drawn artwork that I would offer as a limited edition print of 100. The funding goal was low because there were no real economies of scale, and mostly I just thought it would be fun.

Make 100 print on Kickstarter

There’s less to learn from this campaign because it was just a small one, but it’s interesting to look at the completely different shape of the funding progress graph and understand what story that tells.

It also goes to show that Kickstarter is great for low-budget, shorter projects. Don’t not do something just because you think it’s too small. It’s also a perfect way to gain experience before running a more complex project on Kickstarter.

Make 100 print - project dashboard

For this project I spent zero on marketing and just relied on my previous Kickstarter audience and word of mouth. Note the £0 raised from external referrers on the graphic above.

As well as the funding target being low, the total possible funding was capped because of the limited number of rewards on offer.

The final factor was the relatively high unit price - £100 for each of the 100 available rewards.

The result of those slightly unusual variables is the stepped funding graph you see above.

If I’m honest I would’ve hoped to get a few more backers for this campaign, but it was never meant to be a big money-maker and I was really grateful for the support I got. Mostly, I just enjoyed creating the piece and was very happy that I could share it with a handful of people around the world.

Next week

If you enjoyed this analysis of these two campaigns, you might like my last two posts, here and here, where I’ve shared in-depth looks into the data behind my first three Kickstarter projects.

Next week will the last one in this mini series and I’ll share a breakdown of dashboards from the Kickstarter campaigns that came after these ones. You’ll see that all those products have stayed on the playing card theme.

If you’d like to catch that, make sure you sign up below to my newsletter.

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¹https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

²https://www.kickstarter.com/make-100