Using Kickstarter To Fund an RPG Game Project

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My Kickstarter project’s pledging period isn’t complete yet, but it was able to reach its funding goal within two weeks. (I’ll try not to directly pimp it here.)  I know before I started the project I was very interested in what other Kickstarter project creators said, so I thought I would try to repay what I learned to date.  Note that the project pledging period isn’t complete yet, so I may revisit this topic later.

First, the brief overview of Kickstarter: Kickstarter is a website where one can post the details of a project (even if only planned or incomplete) and anyone interested may pledge toward finishing the project

Here is my advice, in hopefully easy to digest numbered-bullet form:

  1. Read Kickstarter’s FAQ.
  2. Read some of the blog posts they highlight where successful project owners have shared their insights.  (They are listed in the FAQ linked above.)
  3. Based on the above point, I noted that some projects noticed that if they reached their goal early, their pledges per day dropped significantly until the last few days of the pledge period.  Therefore, to keep interest have ideas for a bonus/stretch goal o r two to announce if the goal is met early. These will be done on an honor system as you’ll be getting the money from Kickstarter even if the bonus goal isn’t met.
  4. Reach out to people who would be interested in your project beforehand. If there are blogs whose topics match perfectly, talk to those authors. Do so for three reasons: they will likely help you refine the project; they may volunteer to help in some specific way; you want them on your side when you announce it because they will likely help promote it.
  5. Go out to the larger RPG forum sites which have advertising forums and make a post: ENWorld, theRPGSite, rpg.net, rpggeek.com, and boardgamegeek.com may have some crossover.  (What sites am I forgetting?)
  6. Write a blog post yourself for your own site.
  7. Remind the blog writers you contacted in #4 to make a post.
  8. Post (on your blog and on the ad forums) again when you get 50% of the way to the goal.  Post when you have other news.  However, don’t post  too often.  Definitely not every day.  Every week may work.  Maybe slightly more often if you have some very noteworthy information.
  9. Take advantage of Kickstarter’s built-in Update feature.  Write updates there, and point your other messages/ads to those updates.  Alternately you could centralize your messages on your own website and link to your site from Kickstarter’s Updates and other messages or ads.  In any case, do the Kickstarter Updates in one way or another because those go to all your existing backers.  The updates may encourage people to consider a new reward or simply remind them about your project and then they are more likely to post about it elsewhere.
  10. Don’t make the rewards too complicated.  Unfortunately, people can’t pick multiple rewards so instead of making the rewards complicated one needs to add text to the description of the project or to the rewards themselves.  For example, in many cases where a physical product is involved international shipping has an extra cost.  So each of my rewards notes “Backers outside of the US and Canada please add $X for international shipping.”  So someone outside the US and Canada knows to pledge $49 for the $40 reward, for example.  Otherwise, you would need to have 2x the number of rewards.  The more reward levels you have, the more the person needs to think and the more they think the more they will prolong pledging.
  11. Don’t make the rewards too complicated, part 2.  Likewise, I wanted to offer an optional tie-in product.  But instead of doubling the rewards with  “Product X” and “Product X and Product Y” I simply noted in the description that the alternate product was available and how much extra to pledge.  People are free to pledge an amount above the reward they select.  So they may simply pledge the extra amount and tell you later what extra product they want. That said, make sure you note these optional product(s) prominently.
  12. Offer the main thing your project is about as a reward.  While Kickstarter likes projects to have special rewards such as “name a minor character in the book” or “get your name in the credits” I feel it is important to let your backers pledge for a copy of the work (if there is one) through Kickstarter.  Sure, you may be selling the book/game/whatever on your website, in stores, and/or other online locations after the fact, but at the moment someone is pledging they have decided they like the project enough to put money behind it.  Shouldn’t you make it easy for them to get a copy?  Yes many would seek it out later… but what if they forget, lose interest, etc?  You’ve got to give them as many opportunities to buy and this point (when they have already decided the project is worth money) is a golden one.

Ok, I *almost* made it to the end without linking to my project: DungeonMorph Dice.