Kickstarter Math

...is weird, at least to Marian Call. I thought I had covered some of Ms Call's writing in the past but apparently not, so add this to our series of occasional reports from people who've braved the frontiers of Kickstarter and come back to report (see here from the Doubleclicks and here from Amanda Palmer and here from Ferret Steimetz).

Calll's blog entry from earlier this week is intended as a "you should do this" for anyone thinking of doing a Kickstarter. It even includes a template spreadsheet to help you (the prospective project organizer) figure out how much you'll need to raise. Her philosophy is interestingly different from some of the Kickstarters I've backed.

For example, she asserts that people should raise what they can raise, and deliver on that amount, rather than trying to raise what is needed for their vision project and risk not getting funded. I've backed a number of (computer) game projects on Kickstarter that had sizeable budget estimates and when they didn't make those budgets they chose not to make the games rather than produce a smaller and possibly inferior project.

Much of her other advice is quite valuable, notably "do your research and use real numbers rather than guesses" and "run (what if) scenarios". Your project may not get figuratively buried by the next Hurricane Sandy, as happened to one of her projects, but you should have a reasonable plan for what to do if something that really ought to happen ends up not happening.

Another important part of her advice: ask your fans what they want. This is part research and part fan service. If your rewards just happen to be the things that excite your fans then not only are they more likely to pick support levels you want them to pick they're more likely to share that excitement with other fans. If you don't know what your fans want then you're doing a Kickstarter at the wrong time. Yes, it's important to fulfill your dreams and produce that awesome thing that will take the world by storm but if nobody knows about it, nobody gets excited about it... well, there are cheaper vanity presses by far.

She has a full list of recommendations at the end of the blog post that I think are required reading, so I won't reproduce them here, But let me pull out two that - as someone who participates in a number of kickstarters every year - are my particular bugbears. Number one: early and late rewards. ARGH. Think it through, people. Don't make me feel second-class because I didn't back you in the first week and don't annoy me by trying to get me to go back to Kickstarter and change my pledge level because you just added a cool thing.

(For the record, I also hate the airlines' current practice of trying to get me to pay more at check-in time for a "seat upgrade". F that - if I'd wanted that seat I would've bought it when I bought the ticket. OTOH airplanes all seem to fly full these days so maybe I'm the odd one out.)

Number two: for the luvva god, do not make me go through some annoying hoops creating some other account somewhere just to get my pledge fulfillment. As I mentioned, I back a lot of games, and most games have forums for the players and fans to talk about the game. OK, fine, I'll create an account there. But if I have to skip through screens of "buy extra stuff" and then create an account just to give you money... feh, I may just click away. My time is worth something, too.

In the end, I think Call's blog post is somewhat mistitled. Kickstarter math isn't so much "weird" as it is "way more complicated than you think from the outside." But that's a pretty wordy title.