{"id":1189,"date":"2015-02-01T20:27:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T01:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2015-02-17T11:30:54","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T16:30:54","slug":"life-after-crowdfunding-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/promotional\/life-after-crowdfunding-part-1","title":{"rendered":"Life after crowdfunding, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been about six weeks since \u201cThe Ottoman – animated short film\u201d successfully raised $76,700 during its 30-day campaign on Kickstarter<\/a>. This was Luckbat Studio\u2019s first-ever attempt at fundraising, and although we succeeded in reaching our goal, we also learned some surprising lessons along the way.<\/p>\n

\"kickstarter-chart\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ottoman<\/em> is a somewhat atypical production compared with most of the other projects listed in Kickstarter\u2019s Film category. For one thing, despite not being a commercial studio, we have a much larger team than most no-budget independents. We\u2019re also not adapting or remaking an existing property, which means our film has no pre-existing fan base.<\/p>\n

Thus, the reasoning we\u2019re outlining below may or may not apply to other aspiring crowdfunders out there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about how much your project needs. It\u2019s about how much people think it\u2019s worth.<\/h4>\n

Phrased another way: make sure you do your homework.<\/p>\n

Kickstarter\u2019s all-or-nothing fundraising model is designed to keep campaign creators honest. If a project\u2019s backers get the impression that its ambitions are wildly out of sync with its goals, they\u2019 ll steer clear. But as critical as it is to make a sober assessment of what a realistic budget for your project looks like, there\u2019s another, even-more-important assessment that a creator needs to make, and it\u2019s a lot more sobering: how much money everyone thinks you and your project deserve.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no getting around this. You can have all the passion in the world for your project, but if the average joe feels your graphic novel, or album, or game, is entitled to \u201cten grand at most,\u201d then there\u2019s a good chance that amount is where your campaign is going to plateau. No, it\u2019s not fair. And it seems counterintuitive, since there are a near-infinite number of potential backers out there. But crowdfunding lives or dies on the consensus of crowds.<\/p>\n

Before you launch your campaign, make sure you ask a bunch of people (not just your friends and relatives) how much they think your project deserves. And if that number is way off from your planned budget, you might want to step back and re-think your strategy.<\/p>\n

Your goals are not Kickstarter\u2019s goals.<\/h4>\n

Since Kickstarter\u2019s business model is based on taking a cut of all successful campaigns, it\u2019s tempting for a campaign creator to assume that the company is behind you every step of the way, working tirelessly to maximize your chances of success. And it is. To an extent.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s important to keep in mind that Kickstarter is also running a campaign, of sorts. They\u2019 re trying to become the biggest, most popular crowdfunding company out there. And that makes them strongly motivated to showcase those campaigns that make them look popular and successful. Would your campaign get a boost from being featured on the main Kickstarter page? Almost certainly. Would Kickstarter get a boost (of goodwill, of credibility, of money) from featuring you? If not, well\u2026<\/p>\n

Remember, when a campaign fails, Kickstarter gets nothing. There are a limited number of slots on the website, and a limited number of hours in a day, and Kickstarter is going to devote its time and energy to supporting those campaigns that are headed for the biggest payoff. If your campaign is still firing on all cylinders, that might be you. But if your fundraising has hit a wall in its second week, and you find yourself praying for a jolt from Kickstarter\u2019s publicity engine, the thing is, there are a lot of competing campaigns that just hit 300% of their goal. And those ones are guaranteed<\/em> to make Kickstarter happy.<\/p>\n

The perception of success might be more valuable than actual success.<\/h4>\n

Hopefully by now, everyone in the Kickstarter community is aware that, if a campaign fails to reach its goal, it gets no money and the backers aren\u2019t charged anything. Financially, it\u2019s extremely low-risk. But that doesn\u2019t matter. Backers will always behave as though their pledge is a suitcase full of cash. Time and time again it\u2019s been shown that campaigns experience a big spike in pledges after<\/em> their goal has been reached. Even though their money is never at risk, it\u2019s as though the backers are still trying to avoid the risk of disappointment.<\/p>\n

So how does this insight help a campaign\u2019s chances of success? Consider the \u201cOttoman\u201d campaign, which squeaked past its $75,000 goal at the last second, thanks to a generous matching-funds offer from Maxon Computer<\/a>. We took almost four weeks just to break past the 50% mark, which for most campaigns would be fatal. We received minimal media coverage, no promotional help from Kickstarter, and never went viral, judging from our total backer count, which was less than 300.<\/p>\n

Our goal was set at $75,000 because that\u2019s what we calculated we needed to pay the animation team a fair wage. However, consider an alternate scenario: imagine if we\u2019d set our goal at $33,000. We potentially would\u2019ve hit that amount during week three, at which point those backers who\u2019 d been on the fence start reaching for their wallets. The Kickstarter algorithm, noting that the campaign has passed 100%, lists the project up on the \u201cPopular Campaigns\u201d page. At that stage, with the project guaranteed to get made, press coverage becomes a lot easier to attract, and the hype begins to kick in.<\/p>\n

Or maybe none of those things happen, we stall at $45,000, the campaign \u201csucceeds\u201d despite having raised little more than half of what we calculated we needed, and the project momentum is crippled. It\u2019s a hell of a gamble.<\/p>\n

Kickstarter is a machine that converts hype into money.<\/h4>\n

It sounds like we\u2019re advocating deliberately low-balling your own needs to create an exaggerated impression of your success. But that\u2019s not what we\u2019re getting at. We\u2019re saying that backers are extremely risk-averse, and are only willing to collectively pledge up to the amount that your project feels like it\u2019s worth. Whatever that amount is, you need to figure it out, because that\u2019s<\/em> the number you should be setting your goal at. If you really need double that number to reach your budgetary goals, you\u2019 ll have to make up the rest with shameless self-promotion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been about six weeks since \u201cThe Ottoman – animated short film\u201d successfully raised $76,700 during its 30-day campaign on Kickstarter. This was Luckbat Studio\u2019s first-ever attempt at fundraising, and although we succeeded in reaching our goal, we also learned some surprising lessons along the way. The Ottoman is a somewhat atypical production compared with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-promotional"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1256,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}