Last week I shared a list with my thoughts on the 10 steps you need to consider before launching a Kickstarter. Kickstarter of course, has become a massive mecca for the publishing of board games in recent years and because of it, we were able to fund our first game, REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat. However, Kickstarter has an incredibly steep learning curve which is why so many projects also fail. Since my article last week focused on Kickstarter pregaming, I only thought it fair this week to share some thoughts on 10 considerations to expect once you’ve launched your Kickstarter.
What is interesting is that this list was originally written in the middle of our campaign for REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat in the fall of 2020 as a form of self reflection. At the time we had not yet funded, COVID was in full swing, and we still had about two weeks left in our campaign. Funding at that time was not yet certain and as such, these are the real life impressions of a campaign still in motion.
10 Considerations To Expect Once You’ve Launched Your Kickstarter
1. Email lists really are that important – Everybody says it because it’s true. The most effective way to grow your fan base is to develop your email list. It’s easy to “like” or “follow” somebody, but submitting an email takes a little more commitment and so prioritizing emails should be your #1 priority before launching. How many do you need? Easy, as many as possible. I know that’s a cop out answer, but you can never have too many and a realistic number depends on the size of your funding goal. For reference, we launched REDLINE with just under 500 on our list and we hit 50% of our $12,000 goal in less than 48 hours. But if we had 1,000 on our list, I believe we could have funded day 1. Lesson learned.
2. Launch day pressure – There is tremendous pressure on Kickstarter to fund in the first 24/48 hours. Right or wrong, that seems to have become the measuring stick that separates the elite KS campaigns from the rest. And right or wrong, backers will look at your campaign and judge it based on how quickly you fund. There’s nothing wrong in my opinion with taking as long as you need, as long as you get to the finish line, but not everybody will see it that way. For the best chance of a massive success, stack the deck in your favor and push hard to fund out of the gate. You will avoid so many other problems, like #3 and 4 on this list if you do.
3. Momentum is everything – Speaking of expectations, it’s important to keep your campaign going after the initial hype has worn away. You always want to keep things positive, excited, and inevitably moving forward. This can get especially difficult if you started off slower than expected, so plan ahead. We did this with ours with daily updates on the game’s design, showcasing new content, fan contests, and Q&A’s and AMAs. (ask me anything) Anything you can think of to keep your campaign moving forward and keep backers engaged should be on the table. Be aware some backers will pledge early but leave if they get cold feet or feel things are going south so keep pushing forward.
As a side note to this, I must give a slight warning here with 20/20 hindsight. There is also a thing I learned as too many updates. During our campaign I tried to post updates everyday to stay engaged with our backers. Problem is, after awhile of doing this I noticed our pledges would always go down right after doing so. This went on for nearly two weeks and was extremely frustrating before I connected the dots and saw the correlation. Some backers just don’t want to be spammed. Or some saw those updates as reminders we had yet to fund and so they pulled out. Once I stopped posting daily, the rescinded pledges stopped. But we probably lost around $1,500 of backing this way so be careful. Ouch.
4. The deadzone is real – This ties into momentum, but after your first few days, action seemingly hits a wall and pledges slow to a crawl. (This is where we were at as I wrote this list.) And though we still had plenty of engagement it’s easy to tell a lot of followers are waiting until the end to commit to backing, which makes sense and is perfectly understandable. Even Facebook ads that we were running and converting before launch had stopped dead in their tracks. Backers love to pledge and be part of something early on, but once that new car smell is gone, it becomes a much tougher sell. So make sure you have a plan to keep your campaign alive in the middle of it. Ideally that’s what stretch goals are for, but they only work once you fund and do nothing if you haven’t hit your goal.
Again, looking back with 20/20 hindsight here, we ran our campaign for 35 days I believe. A long time. The problem is that so much of a campaign’s middle is waiting to simply get to the end, where you will see a bump in pledges again, that it makes little sense to prolong the agony. Running a shorter campaign of 3 weeks would have cut out the dead time, keep momentum tighter and get us to our goal faster. Something to consider for sure!
5. Expect a lot of solicitations – Once you launch, you will get bombarded with offers for ad agencies or similar companies to market your KS to success. I can’t speak for everyone, but in general these never seem to work and they prey on campaigns desperate to fund who have no plans in place to get there. Be weary and don’t get suckered by their claims.
6. Shipping – Shipping is a bitch no matter what you do about it. A few pieces of advice. Find a good shipping company willing to help, will answer questions, you’ll have plenty, and give you quotes ahead of launch so you can clearly share them with your potential backers. You can also ship yourself if you don’t mind taking on the task and your numbers of product sold are manageable. The current trend on KS these days seems to hold off on charging for shipping until after the campaign ends through popular pledge managers like CrowdOx or BackerIt. This gives you extra time to get everything straight but also keeps KS from taking their 10% fee from your shipping fees. Shipping is one of the most technical aspects of launching so make sure you take time to get it done right.
7. Trailers and demos – Truth is, you need both and we only launched with one, lol. I did not have a game play demo when we launched REDLINE and that probably cost me a few $1,000 in pledges looking back. Backers asked to see one and I had to tell them that wasn’t available. A rookie mistake looking back, but at the time, because of COVID, rushed time tables and ignorance, I thought our KS was strong enough on its own that we could get away without one. However my backers kept asking for a video demo before committing. Seeing is believing and we couldn’t really show that. Realizing my mistake I recorded a basic one on Tabletop Sim, which helped, but had it been there day 1, I know we would have nabbed more 1st day pledges. You get one chance to make a first impression. Don’t shortchange yourself. A trailer and game demo is the expectation. Don’t buck the trend.
8. Look at your competition – There are hundreds of Kickstarters out there just like yours. So study them. Dissect them. Learn from them and see how they funded. How do they word their copy? What kind of backer rewards are being offered? What do their graphics look like? How did they handle shipping? Pledge a little to become part of their campaign and follow along with their emails and updates. Do not straight up copy them of course, but you would be foolish to ignore what works for them and could for you.
9. High priced rewards – I was super surprised when most of our higher tiered limited rewards sold out in the first few days. A good sign. These high tiered pledges are worth a lot of money and can give your campaign a real boost in funding if backers like what you have to offer. Problem is, I underestimated the demand for them and since ours were mostly sold out that means a lot of future pledges going forward will be smaller and slow down our funding. I would have been smarter to create a few different higher value packages to give more options to backers and the campaign more of a boost in money raised. But as I had little idea what the reception for REDLINE would be back then, I can’t beat myself up too much over it.
10. Be flexible and listen – As you can see, we made a lot of mistakes upon launching our Kickstarter campaign. Not only were my backers demanding a game play demo but more product as they loved REDLINE and wanted more of it! Unfortunately my initial stretch goals weren’t aligned to that demand. For you see, REDLINE is an expandable card game which means it was designed to grow over time with new cards being added to the game for more deck building options and game strategies. Problem was, our campaign didn’t really offer extra cards which kinda defeated the purpose of an expandable game. That lack of extra cards was a missed opportunity but at the time, we honestly had little idea of what the reception for the game would be and so were careful about offering more when the initial concept was yet unproven. Realizing my mistake I quickly adjusted our stretch goals to meet those expectations. (Yes, you can change your Kickstarter campaign story and stretch goals, after launch, even rewards as long as they haven’t been bought yet.)
We pivoted and created what we called the REDLINE Upgrade Pack. 12 extra cards we’d offer to backers as a way to build and tweak their own decks with right away while the game was getting off the ground. And to make them extra special we created these cards with special alternate art which would only be available with the initial production run of REDLINE. This gave backers more of what they wanted and took that valid complaint off the board. But it also showed our intent to stay flexible and not only listen to our community but to hear it.
Problem is, as a stretch goal, the Upgrade Pack ultimately wasn’t met when our campaign ended. Which was a shame because we were just as excited as our backers to make more cards for REDLINE as they were. Luckily we made just enough money through pledge managers once the Kickstarter ended that we still had the Upgrade Pack made and offered it as a free thank you gift to our backers for helping us to make our campaign a success.
Looking Back
It’s funny to look back at this list and relive those stressful days of our Kickstarter all over again. What’s missing in the list is all the angst and doubt that comes from launching a campaign, because ours went right to the end before funding.
After getting through our own little deadzone, REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat did finally fund in the evening only one day before ending. Entering our final week, we had been stuck about $3,000 short from our goal and as time was running out there was a reality setting in we may not fund. But REDLINE had come a long way and it wasn’t done fighting yet. Blasting out to every channel we had that our goal was in sight, the numbers started to creep up in the final 48 hours. Bit by bit our funding trickled up and we were soon on the verge of funding. I still remember laying in bed frantically hitting the refresh on my phone browser to check our campaign status when we magically went over our goal. A HUGE sigh of relief came over me and shortly after I got bombarded by text messages from friends who had been refreshing along with me. Though I was too mentally exhausted to properly celebrate at the time, I do remember feeling so proud of REDLINE and our backers for willing it into existence.
And still am.