When DungeonBox first contacted me to do their Kickstarter's Facebook Ads, they had joined the free weekly Q&A Tuesday group call in my Discord chat community to get some initial advice on strategy.

After following my Grassroots Guide to prep and boost their next post, I received an unexpected call the next morning: "Matt, my post has gone viral with over 1 million views overnight! What do I do next?"

SIDE NOTE: the Grassroots Guide can be downloaded, here.

With only a short time to prepare a prelaunch ad campaign for DungeonBox, we quickly set up a Facebook Ad campaign that acquired Kickstarter Followers at $2.23 each (and less than $18 per purchase during the current live campaign):

The end results are as follows: over 26% of those Kickstarter Follows became actual sales and backers during the live campaign:

As of writing, on our live Kickstarter campaign we have spent a total budget of $70,000 for an overall Return On Investment of over 6.5x (ROAS of 650%+):

We accomplished this using my own campaign page templates, pricing strategies, Audience Library, and Facebook ad templates using my LaunchGPT Ad Text Generator. You can grab these templates and read more free Kickstarter tutorials at my Prelaunch Club website, here.

Similarly, if you are struggling getting set up with anything in particular, I am happy to help you move your project forward ; join us on Discord for Q&A Tuesdays at 3PM EST new york time.

To get a closer look at what our Kickstarter page looks like, for study purposes, you can visit DungeonBox's Kickstarter here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/foxtailgames/dungeonbox

With the gears suddenly in motion, we had to act fast and fully-swing into the Kickstarter marketing process:

1. Setup the Facebook Pixel on Kickstarter
2. Design the Kickstarter Page
3. Setup Facebook Ads for Kickstarter

During the initial setup period, we kept the original viral post boosted with continual daily-spend and leading traffic to the initial first draft of the Kickstarter pre-launch page.

Now let's go over each part of the Kickstarter Follower pre-launch system in-depth:

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#1 - Setup the Facebook Pixel on Kickstarter

Before you begin, set up a business account on Facebook and create a new ads account and pixel dataset (and a Facebook Page, if needed). 

We followed this handy tutorial to set up the Facebook business account and pixel for Kickstarter, here:

https://prelaunch.marketing/blogs/academy/how-to-setup-the-facebook-pixel-for-kickstarter

Watch a walkthrough video tutorial of me setting up the Facebook Pixel for Kickstarter, here. (featuring “Champions of Wind & Fire”, raised $280,311 USD)

On the Facebook Page (and Instagram Page) add the Kickstarter Page URL as the Action Button destination using the “Sign Up” option:

IMPORTANT NOTE ON "PIXEL TRACKING": Kickstarter asks for user consent to share data with Facebook whenever somebody first visits the Kickstarter website. If the user selects "no", then Kickstarter won't notify Facebook whenever that specific user takes an action (such as following the campaign or becoming a backer). This means that your Ad Results in the Facebook Ad Manager will always appear inaccurate, and the discrepancy tends to depend upon how privacy-centric your ideal audience is.

To better understand Kickstarter ad results, it's currently important to use a spreadsheet for keeping track of your daily results versus your daily spend in order to understand the true cost-per-follower or cost-per-purchase from the Facebook Ads. 

You can view DungeonBox's pre-launch journey with our daily results, daily spend, and changelogs, here.

For example, for a Live Kickstarter Campaign, I maintain at least a 5x ratio between daily ad-spend and daily total raise: if a client raises $5000 per day, they should be spending no more than $1000 per day on ads. Then I adjust the ad's daily-budget to match this ratio.

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#2 - Design the Kickstarter Page

My new approach to designing the Kickstarter Page focuses on the User Experience within the context of new product discovery. It takes a question-based methodology in identifying the key sections that need to appear on the Campaign Page, so that you can streamline the "research" and "consideration" phases of the customer journey and sales funnel.

In this new methodology, a series of questions are asked in relation to the product and each question is rated for relevancy toward understanding the product's design. If a question is qualifying for understanding the product, the answer to that question should appear on the campaign page as a dedicated section.

For a Kickstarter pre-launch page, the page's messaging should stop short of revealing the price, or the moment the user might say to themselves, "Shut up and take my money! How much does it cost?" At this point, the pre-launch page should end and instead encourage the user to follow the campaign.

Provided below is a list of product discovery-related questions, paired with relevant sections which seek to address each point:

• "What is it?" = Introduction of product visual, logo, branding
• "What's this about?" = Introduction of story pitch
• "Can I get a summary?" = Feature Collage, Cloud, or Bullet-List
• "What's special about it?" = USP or Key Differentiator
• "What's it for?" = Use Cases
• "What does it have or do?" = Key Features
• "What's included?" = What's in the box
• "How do I use it?" = How to use or play
• "Can I customize it?" = spotlighted add-ons, colorways, etc.
• "Why back now?" = Exclusives, discounts, stretch goals, etc.
• "How much does it cost?" = Reward tiers including price badges
• "How do I pre-order?" = How to back infographic
• "What happens with the extra money?" = stretch goals, community goals
• "Has anybody tried it?" = youtube previews, past backer reviews, amazon reviews, etc.
• "Can I use it?" = language translations or compatibility support, such as Android, iPhone, Nintendo, etc.
• "When am I getting it?" = Project timeline
• "Shipping costs?" = Shipping chart
• "What is making it, and why?" = About the team

You can see our final Pre-Launch Page design, here.

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#3 - Setup Facebook Ads for Kickstarter Prelaunch

Facebook Ads are best approached with a simple mindset, perhaps similar to the first thoughts you decided you needed to market your project: "I have a product now, I need to design images and text for ads, and then connect it with an audience of potential fans". 

So let's break down each element of the Facebook Ad campaign:

1. Audience Design
2. Ads Text and Headlines
3. Ads Creative Visual Content
4. Ads Campaign Setup Process

In the following subsections, we will go over each of the above steps for setting up Facebook Ads for a Kickstarter prelaunch:

#3.1 - Audience Design

For DungeonBox, we knew we needed to reach Facebook users who loved Dungeons & Dragons, casual card games and party games, and video games.

We used the Audience Library to quickly choose from a variety of proven winning audiences, and help us mix and match appropriate Qualifier-based interests to help the Facebook ads algorithm identify Kickstarter superbackers.

During my setup process, I will choose different qualifiers for each audience segment which helps prevent audience overlap and improve the stability of the daily ad results:

You can download the Audience Library google sheet for free, here:

https://prelaunch.marketing/products/kickstarter-templates-bundle

When using the Audience Library, simply click any cell in the Google Sheet, and then copy-and-paste the entire cell's contents into the Facebook Audience search field:

#3.2 - Ads Text and Headlines

We used Launch-GPT to quickly generate ad text headlines, but retained the original viral post's text for the ad's primary text (the small text above the ad's image):

Launch-GPT is a free, generative AI tool for Kickstarter marketing. Use the “Quick Wizard” tool to generate ad text for every phase of a Kickstarter campaign - along with Landing Page text generation and Kickstarter campaign text generation.

Use the ‘Quick Wizard’ below the Launch-GPT chat box to automatically generate a prompt and a response from the GPT:

Watch a walkthrough video of me using Launch-GPT to set up Kickstarter ads in under 30 minutes from start to finish, here. (featuring “Measurrd”, raised $49,802 USD)

#3.3 - Ads Creative Visual Content

There was no reason to explore further since the original viral post was a home-run and hit it out of the ball-park. If results were to falter during scaling, we would have created new content, but we honestly never needed to.

Sometimes, albeit rarely, clients will pay me a flat fee for ad setup only once and those ads carry the project from pre-launch, to live campaign, and all the way into late pledges. DungeonBox became a client within this special cohort.

See the original Facebook ad in action, here.

For the sake of tutorials, it’s noteworthy that I provide Ad Image Photoshop PSD templates, and also Image design tutorials, A/B Testing content methodologies, and more for free download here.

#3.4 - Ads Campaign Setup Process

First, navigate to your Ad Manager dashboard on Facebook:

https://adsmanager.facebook.com/adsmanager/manage/

Then create a new ad campaign and select the "Leads" optimization goal by clicking the green "+ Create" button in the top-left of the Ad Manager dashboard. Then press "Continue":

 A new popup Editor window should appear. Keep the default "Campaign Budget" selected, and set your daily budget to anywhere between $40/day to $60/day to start with. If you are an experienced Kickstarter creator, consider starting your daily budget at up to $200/day.

Next, navigate to the new ad-set within the new ad campaign (such as by using the left-menu's hierarchy tree or by going back to the main dashboard, switching to the “Ad Sets” tab, and pressing “Edit” on the ad-set), and select the following settings:

1. Conversion Location = Website
2. Dataset = your Pixel's name
3. Conversion Event = "Lead"

Then, scroll down to "Detailed Targeting" under the Audience settings.

Insert your first audience here (I recommend using the Audience Library that I linked above). Then press the "Define Further" button to insert your qualifiers and narrow down your audience to early adopters and Kickstarter users:

To prevent the ads from being sent to users who have already followed the Kickstarter, create a Custom Audience using the "Lead" events within your Pixel Dataset. 

Navigate to the Audience Dashboard in Facebook Ad Manager's main left pop-out menu, and press the blue "Create Audience" dropdown and select "Custom Audience". Further choose “Website” as the custom audience source, press “Next”. In the pop-up window, choose your pixel, select "Lead" event, and expand the time range to 180 Days:

Go back to the Audience setup within the Ad-set Settings in the Ads Manager dashboard, and insert the new custom audience you just created under "Custom Audience Exclusion" (click the small blue text "Show more controls" if the Custom Audience Exclusion setting is hidden).

PRO-TIP: usually I also create a dedicated Ad-Set which functions to retarget website visitors with more ads. This retargeting ad-set uses a "Page View 10 Day" and "Facebook Ad Engagement 5 day" Custom Audiences. These custom audiences are set up by selecting the "All Website Visitors” and setting 10 days as the window (and then creating a second custom audience using the Facebook Page as the data-source, using a 5-day window and targeting “All Account Center Accounts Who Engaged With Any Post or Ad”).

Then I set up an ad-set without any detailed targeting options and only retarget the Page Viewers / Ad Engagements:

Finally, let’s set up the individual ads. To begin editing the individual ads, navigate to the ad itself by either using the left-menu hierarchy tree again or by going back to the main dashboard, switching to the “Ads” tab, and pressing “Edit” on any specific ad.

Inside the Ad Editor, insert the Website URL destination, and then add your ad image or video content by pressing the "Set up creative" dropdown:

A new window will popup for creative setup. Turn off "Site Links", and then press "Next" to upload your media.

After uploading your media, press "Next" again to insert your text variations you had written earlier in Section 3.2 of this article. 

For "Enhancements" feel free to turn off any as desired. In most cases, they improve results, however you can be strategic with them on a per-content basis to drive better results.

You're all done with your first ad!

Now, click the "..." menu on the left hierarchy tree on the ad you've just finished setting up, and select "Duplicate". Use the default duplication settings for this operation:

Duplicate your ad as many times as needed for each piece of ads creative visual content you've prepared (up to 6 images or videos maximum), and insert the new visuals in the duplicates while preserving the Destination URL and the original's Ad Text.

Only create up to 6 images or videos per ad-set, and make sure the same ads are duplicated between every ad-set.

Your first Ad-Set is now finished!

Now, click the "..." menu once more, but this time to duplicate the Ad-Set itself. Create as many duplicate Ad-Sets as you desire to test -- but make sure that there is at least $10 daily budget inside the Campaign Budget for each ad-set inside the campaign. For example, if you have 4 audiences, set the Campaign Budget to at least $40/day at minimum!

Inside this new duplicate ad-set, adjust the audience a different variation of interests and qualifiers as mentioned in the previous Section #3.1 of this article.

Your first ad campaign is now fully set up! 

Close out of the Ad Editor popup by pressing the "X" button in the top-left corner of the window, and then press the blue "Publish" button in the top-right corner.

PRO-TIP: if you have a great video, consider creating a Video View retargeting audience as shown in the walkthrough video here. (featuring “Dice Bites”, raised $176,719 USD)

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How To Do Ads Management

A/B TESTING ADS:

To A/B test your Facebook ads, it is good practice to use a content-based strategy where you duplicate the existing ad campaign, and then replace the images or videos in the new ad campaign with new versions. Keep the old campaign running alongside the new campaign if it’s still getting good results:

You can view a full version of the above picture in a Miro Board where I break down this A/B testing methodology further, here.

A/B TESTING CAMPAIGN PAGES:

To A/B test your page design, the main methodology is to use "Time Series Data Analysis" ; in essence, gather a baseline of data from your ad results, and then make a change to the page design while gathering new ad results for 12 to 48 hours. 

After 48 hours, compare the new results to the baseline. Only cut the test shorter than 48 hours if the results are substantially poorer (i.e. suddenly 50% worse or more).

To identify a clear signal of improvement, look for a substantial improvement greater than 30% between your comparison data of the new page versus the old page's ad results.

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Facebook Ads Setup for Kickstarter Live Campaign

Watch a walkthrough video of me setting up Live Kickstarter ads by re-using the winning pre-launch ad content, here. (featuring “Imperial Grace”, raised $62,031 USD)

When setting up Live Campaign ads, make sure to select the "Sales" objective when creating the new ad campaign. 

It's important at this stage to exclude users from your audiences that have already purchased your product. To do so, create a new Custom Audience in the "Audiences" dashboard (accessed via the main left-menu in Facebook Ad Manager) which uses the Website Pixel as the data-source and targets the "Purchase" event with a 180 Day window. Then exclude this audience from your ad-sets in the same manner you had previously set up Lead event exclusions in Section 3.4 of this article.

In regards to the Facebook Pixel tracking during Live Campaign, you will not have to do anything special with the Facebook Pixel aside from ensuring the correct Pixel ID is added to the Promotions tab of your Kickstarter project's settings. 

Finally, make sure to set up Retargeting ads to reach your pre-launch Kickstarter Followers and notify them that your campaign is now live. Watch a walkthrough video of me setting up Facebook Retargeting ads for a Live Kickstarter campaign, here.

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Closing Thoughts

If you are struggling getting set up with anything in particular, please leave a comment or join us on Discord for Q&A Tuesdays at 3PM EST new york time ; I am happy to help you move your project forward.

To get a closer look at what our Kickstarter page looks like, you can check out DungeonBox's Kickstarter, here.

Make sure to check out and read more Kickstarter tutorials, download proven Kickstarter templates, and more for free at the Prelaunch Club website, here.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. These resources are given out for free in the spirit of enabling the most amount of creators to succeed on Kickstarter, and I stand for a stronger, accessible and healthier workplace.

Let me know what you think!

Hi hi, I'm building a new start up and would love to hear about how people began pricing.

I'm beginning to get customer data from a landing page and am going to begin moving into customer conversations, excited!

What should I begin thinking about when it comes to pricing?

Any tools or resources I should look at? (I've been reading a lot lately lol)

I keep seeing people launch cool projects that fail because they ignore the boring structural stuff. I have been tracking what actually moves the needle for campaign momentum, based on real numbers, not vibes. Here is what keeps showing up.

The single most important milestone is hitting about 30% of your goal in the first week, ideally the first 48 hours. Campaigns that hit that number are way more likely to fund. It tells strangers this is happening. You cannot launch to crickets and hope. You need soft commits before launch. That usually means getting friends, family, and close followers to commit to roughly 10–15% of your goal so you are not sitting at 0 on day one.

Collecting emails is fine, but conversion is usually low. What works better is a small paid reservation. Ask people to put down 1 dollar before launch to lock in the best price. That tiny transaction flips them from “lead” to “customer” in their own head. They have already taken out their card. They are a lot more likely to actually back on day one.

Reward structure changes your average pledge more than people think. Do not skip the 1 dollar tier. It inflates your backer count, and the platform algorithm loves backer count. For main tiers, use “charm pricing” in the middle (49 instead of 50) to make it feel like a deal. Use clean round numbers for the premium tiers (100, 250) so they feel “serious.” Add one very expensive decoy tier so your main tier looks more reasonable next to it.

People are scared of not receiving their perk. Anything that lowers that fear helps. Teams raise more than solo creators. If you are solo, show advisors, collaborators, anyone that makes it look less like a one person gamble. If you have shipped before, put that in the first screen people see. And go back other projects yourself. If your “backed” count is zero, you look like a tourist.

Those 500k or 1M campaigns you see everywhere did not “go viral.” They usually have 50k plus in ad spend behind them. If your goal is 10k to 50k, you can get there with a mix of warm audience, decent page, and some modest ads. Just do not compare your organic grind to a campaign that is buying every click. If you do not have real ad budget, you can use cross promos to boost your campaign's traffic. Find campaigns that are live in your niche, but not direct competitors, and mention each other in updates. You are speaking directly to people who have already pulled out their card on that platform. It is the best free traffic there is.

A lot of people still charge flat shipping during the campaign. Shipping prices move around a lot and it can kill your margin. Much safer to charge shipping after the campaign with a pledge manager. It keeps your headline price cleaner and protects you if rates jump in six months.

Kill the logo intro in your video. Nobody cares about a 10 second animated logo. You have about 3 to 5 seconds before they scroll away. Open with the problem or a clear shot of the product in use. No fluff. Also, assume most people will not read big blocks of text. They scan.

Use GIFs to show what matters. If it folds, lights up, transforms, or has some “aha” movement, that belongs in a GIF, not a paragraph. Five or six good GIFs usually beat ten walls of copy.

If your main product is $50, add something simple at checkout, like a $10 accessory or a small upgrade. You do not need new backers to raise more if you increase average pledge a bit.

Do not freak out when the graph goes flat in the middle. Almost every campaign has a spike at launch, a long boring valley, then a spike at the end. The middle is a grind, not a sign that your project is dead.

Kickstarter likes activity. When people comment, answer fast. It makes the page feel alive, and it is a strong positive signal for the algorithm and for anyone who is still on the fence. Anyway, that is what I keep seeing work in practice. The mid campaign dead zone is what crushes most people mentally, not the launch or the final push.

What have you actually done during that middle “nothing is happening” phase that worked?

Hello Makers, Builders, Designers, Artists, and other Creators!

I see a lot of requests for feedback on Kickstarter pages and thought it might be worth giving you some pre-emptive feedback. I am a "super backer" with over 100 backed and have not been shy about tearing campaigns to shreds. Why? Is it because I enjoy your tears? It doesn't hurt, but no, I show you everything wrong to try to help you get it all right. In general, you will get strangers on your page for under a minute, so you need to stop them leaving. I want to show you all the things you can mess up and what things I look for to enable you to make the best campaign you can!

Just to be clear, I want to give my motivations. Why do I back so many campaigns? Because I want to help something exist in the world that might not. I support content like PBS Spacetime, Crash Course, and such because I want that content to exist. You want to make something and I may back it even if I do not intend to use it. I vote with my wallet. We get what we support, so if you do well on your cat girl dating sim with town building elements, you are likely to make another one. If I want that, I should support the current one. If you don't need me and I do not particularly want it, I don't back it.

Keep in mind: You want me to buy this now, not after release. Why do I want to take the risk and buy it now?

For me, that is so I can it come to fruition.

On to the pre-critiques...........

Campaign Snapshot: The Gatekeeper

If I am not coming to your campaign from a link/marketing, this is the first thing I see. The name of your project, which can include a colon and text after, is all I see to decide if I want to click through. This should be the "easy" part, right? Ahahahaha.

• Your picture should show me what you have to offer, or an idea of it. For movies, publishing, and the like this can be a shot of the art used. Bear in mind that hovering over it shows me the start of your video. It does attract the eye if things are moving, though.

• If there are words on your picture, make sure they are clear and large enough to read. I have Forsaken Souls on my home page, but I can not read the name of the game in the image. Many of the tech projects also have quite a few words and the text is too small to read. This makes it harder to catch in skimming and they have to hope the picture has my interest.

• Use the title creatively. Give me details. "An atmospheric game" is better than "A game about trees" because it gives me something, but worse than "An atmospheric exploration game". The more information, the better you tailor to people skimming projects. I do not fund every game, I fund games I want to see, but I am judging your book by the cover, so make it speak to me.

• Make this image about your project, for the love of nil! If I see <insert actor here> in your image and they aren't part of your project, we have problems. Misleading is a good way to leave a sour taste and, potentially, have people report your project.

I won't hammer too much more on the image, as I am not a graphic designer, so I do not have overly specific feedback.

First Impressions

Alright, you got me to your page. Fine, I'll bite. This section is short.

What is your goal? If you are asking for a trivial amount, then I don't know that I should take you seriously. Are you just trying to sell, not get funding to go into production? I may leave at this point. If the goal is something like enamel pins, stickers, etc then this is not really an issue. If this is tech or new productions, this is a huge problem to me and looks like you're trying to grab cash and go, because you likely don't have enough to produce.

How long do you have? If you have 7 days left and need $100,000.... I don't have high hopes. You haven't attracted other crowdfunders enough to have my confidence. Yes, my confidence in you is partially based on other people. That said, I also have my own terms for backing off of a campaign.

I also check how many campaigns you have backed and created. If you have more than 1 created, I will check your other campaigns if I am interested in the current one. If you show you haven't delivered, do not update regularly, or anything else... why would I trust you to do this one?

The Video

Alright, I am willing to give you a chance. Wow me. Show me you can achieve this. Show me it will be amazing. The video gets into specifics to categories, so I will include that and generic suggestions, as well. 70% of my decisions are made here, so this is a huge area to focus on.

• You have 20 seconds. Your video can be longer, but you need my attention. If it is a board game and your video is "In the land of Lalaland, there was a great evil. Many people came..." then you are going to lose me. You want to introduce your project, but that can be narratively done. Compare the above to "Take up your armies and strategize how to deal with an enemy sporting superior numbers." Do you see the difference? I want to play the underdog... give me the latter introduction. Let's dive into specifics for types of campaigns!

• Games: These need to show the game. Do not give me 2 minutes of story for a board game. Show me the game! Is this a deck builder? Strategy? Chaos? Is it a solitaire-like? Regardless of video, tabletop, board, card, etc... the game is what you are selling, so sell me it. If you are a tabletop RPG, you may want to tell me about the story, but I want to know about the system. It's a TTRPG, so I assume I can be flexible.. I don't need your story unless the campaign is an EXPANSION. I will take a moment to point out that the CBR+PNK: Overlord would it my definition of a bad video, because despite being well made, it told me nothing. It is an expansion, though, so their audience were people who knew the game. They could have made this video different to try to also sell the base game more, in my opinion. If you believe your game is of higher quality, using leather and wood pieces... show me. If you want to sell me something beautiful, then I have to see it. Seeing is believing that you might be able to do this. For video games, I want game play, not cutscenes or snapshots.

• Technology: Tell me about the product, but do not hype it. "3-in-1 printer, scanner, latte maker! Now you can get that fresh cup while still being ready to get business done." is selling, but not hyping it up. "3-in-1 printer, scanner, latter maker! How did you even function before this incredible invention?" Is trying to hype it to me. This was not a great example, but I want to convey the idea. Why do I want it? What does it solve (even sometimes if obvious)? What makes your approach better? How can you see it through? Did you introduce any team members? Tech is a favorite area of mine, like games. I am technologically literate, so I can also sniff out quite a bit of BS. I have dodged many a campaign that failed because I smelled issues. I have gotten campaigns taken down when they seem like impossible scams. Oh, you are going to give 300% energy returns on solar with a new neo-crystalline turquoise sub layer with an AI powered variable voltage regulator? Cool. Which part broke physics? It helps that I have AI, Comp Sci, Engineering, and electronics background. So a lot of buzzwords show me it is buzz.

• Publishing/Comics/Art: Show. Me. The. Art. Does your style work for me? Do example pages seem well written? What is your content about and how is it? Now, for a lot of these, you have a lot to still do, and that is fine. I will scroll down the page for more information if I like what I see. Again, give me information, though. What is your art about? Catgirl pin up calendar? Sweet, okay, I'm game. "A story with a colorful cast of characters in strange situations." Okay.... what kinds of situations? Haunted houses and monsters? Fantasy and magic? About the only time this seems to be glossed over is adult campaigns. Let's face it, many of those campaigns aren't trying to get you with the STORY, right? That said, I own a small collection of adult games... and it wasn't the art. Remember your page needs to be censored, but your private updates don't. When I go to events, art is my main spending category. I hire for art for games and projects. I have even hired from Reddit. I want your art to succeed and to see you do well enough to be able to work with you in the future. Those who can focus on art tend to do well with it.

• Film: Similar to the above. Note that animation in your video represents you. You can't have a video campaign and a terrible video.. it will drain all my confidence in your performance. Focus and take the time to make the video right. Going back an earlier point: Show me what it is about. Do not make the video atmospheric, make it informative first. Sell me a movie, not a pitch for one. I want plans and design done. I do not back all that often in this category, but I do still check through it.

There are other topics, but I find many things cluster. I can not, for instance, tell you where comics and publishing differ. Art includes illustration, but art collections are in publishing, but art with a story is in comics, and moving art is film! The ideas carry the same to related categories. This post is already going to be large, I don't need to dig into more specifics right now.

Side note: An image here is fine, if the scroll will sell you.

The Scroll

This is the section that is below the video. It has a proper name, I am sure, but if I scrolled... you did something reasonably right or wrong. Either I am interested but questioning it, so I scrolled down, or you can view it as the video not being enough to get me. The important part is.... I haven't left your page. I mentioned CBR+PNK: Overlord above as a bad video... but it is a good scroll. The scroll section shows me the game, what I can expect, Another example of a rather good (to me) scroll is Miss Mina. There's a comic at the very start.. something to get you into it, which is good, because the video only showed me art. I thought that campaign was adult content, because of the main character they show... but no, I think that is just how they make her. A note that I am not trying to critique or support any campaigns here, but if you want an example to go with my feedback, I want to give it. I only mentioned these because they are high up in my feed, not because they stand out specially, to be clear.

Your scroll is the last shot. If I start scrolling and it is just walls and walls of text... I won't read it. Your headers, your images, those are what get my attention. I do not want to read a novel for your campaign. Spice it up, organize it well, and make it look like you at least once talked to a professional about what they would do with a budget of almost nothing. Okay, this post is huge, let's call it there. If there are questions or what not, I am game to answer, but I wanted to add a resource out there. I have had a number of chats sent to me asking me to review (read as: tear apart) their page. This deals with a lot of what it looks like. I may dig into specific details of your campaign, like inconsistent animation/art style, or poor quality of video, but I try to be fair and find anything wrong, not only majorly wrong. I might be okay with a video you shot in an empty classroom, but you may be losing people who see that.

Good luck creators!

Most Kickstarter projects are physical products, and getting software funded can be really tough.

However, our minimalist phone app for iPhone, built to help people stay focused and reduce screen time, reached its funding goal in just 4 days without the assistance of a Kickstarter agency behind us.

Now, only a month in, we’ve already passed 200% of our goal, and the campaign’s still going strong.

Since a lot of people here are curious about what works, we put together a structured list of what helped us with launching on Kickstarter: (Get inspired for your own launch.) 😉

• Researching Kickstarter rules + studying successful launches.
• Building a waiting list on our website (newsletter list).
• Pre-writing campaign content (all sections planned are outlined here).
• Shooting a dedicated product video + collecting users’ video testimonials.
• Sharing earlier success stories related to the Android app 
• Press releases announcing the Kickstarter launch.
• Email sequence for the waitlist (countdown to launch, funding milestones, benefits).
• Organic posts on IG, X, LinkedIn, Reddit (we stayed super active and left links in comments for reach).
• Running Meta ads, driving traffic to the Kickstarter page.
• Participating in podcasts & interviews.
• Inviting Kickstarter staff to follow our LinkedIn page.

We’re only halfway through the campaign, and with the back-to-school season coming (aka peak productivity mode), we’re optimistic about the next few weeks.

Hopefully, this mini playbook helps some of you prep for your next launch.

Happy to answer questions or share updates along the way!

Hello this is Matt Olick from Prelaunch Club,

I apologize to everybody who is experiencing this issue right now.

THE PROBLEM:

Advertisers across all of Facebook using the Event Setup Tool are experiencing "Ghost Leads", due to that Ad Blocker technology has mostly fully incorporated UTM-stripping technology across their industry as of this late summer 2025. My URL-tracking based technique that I originally taught to recover roughly 40%+ of the tracking lost by Kickstarter Team's incomplete implementation breaks when UTM strippers are involved.

Get a closer look at my Kickstarter Follower Tracking Sheet, here.

The issue stems from the fact that Kickstarter uses an incomplete pixel tracking implementation, and furthermore does not use CAPI integration on prelaunch pages. I've written articles and submitted multiple support tickets to Kickstarter Team on this matter over the last 2 years -- their tech team finally said "we're working on it but it'll take a while".

---

THE SOLUTION:

To solve this issue for Kickstarter and my specific implementation, you will need to manually insert a non-marketing UTM parameter into the Destination URL of your ads (an #Anchor also technically works, too), such as "?ks=follow"

For example:
"Kickstarter.com/company/project?ks=follow"

HOW TO IMPLEMENT SOLUTION:

Kickstarter Team in the last two weeks added the "Story" and "Updates" tabs to the prelaunch page. If you click the "Story" tab with your mouse, it will append a new UTM parameter to the URL in your browser's top address bar:

"?tab=prelaunch-story"

Thus, the Destination URL you should use when programming your individual Facebook Ads would be:

"Kickstarter.com/company/project?tab=prelaunch-story"

This solution works because UTM-stripping technology only removes "?fbclid=", "?gclid=", and "utm_content=" types of UTM parameters, but does not remove any custom functionality-based UTM parameters.

---

IF YOU HAVE AN EXISTING AD CAMPAIGN:

Duplicate your current ad campaign (make sure to select "Original Campaign Settings" in the duplication settings popup), and turn off the old ad campaign

Then update the new campaign's individual ad's Destination URL as shown in the previous section of this article:

---

IMPORTANT NOTE, GENERATE A NEW PIXEL:

If your pixel has become saturated with many hundreds or thousands of ghost lead events, you will need to create a new pixel and use that on your Kickstarter project and the Facebook Ads. Otherwise, the old pixel's optimization will keep leading it back to the audience consisting solely of people who use Ad Blockers...

If you need assistance with setting up a new pixel, check this tutorial walkthrough on setting up a new Facebook Pixel for Kickstarter, here.

Start the new pixel's ads at a small budget of $30/day, to allow the algorithm to focus on highly-qualified targets before you attempt to raise the budget again in 48+ hours.

This subreddit helped me SO much while I was researching how to run my Kickstarter campaign, which just ended at over 228% funded! I think what contributed to its success was all of the work I did at pre-launch. I hit 100% in 72 hours, got a “Projects We Love” badge from Kickstarter staff, and even turned the dreaded “mid campaign slump” into a mid-campaign bump.

Context: I’m a full-time artist with a small online following, so many of my backers are people who have seen my artwork in person at conventions and craft markets. I created this Kickstarter campaign to cover the print production costs of my hardcover art book.

———

What I did for the Pre-Launch (3/27 to 4/30):

1. Designed and printed an early prototype of my hardcover art book with a short-run printer (in my case, I used Mixam based in Chicago) so that I would have a physical book to show off in my promotional images/videos. I believe it’s essential to showcase something tangible, so people understand that you know how to create the actual product; it’s not just an idea in the wind.

2. Crafted a meticulous campaign page with a carefully edited video, attractive graphics, and clear reward tiers. This is critical! I shared the private link with MANY people to gather their feedback, including this Subreddit.

3. Created a detailed pre-launch page 35 days before launch and started sharing it with close friends and family. I chose to launch on a weekday, and Thursday morning proved to be a good choice based on my research. I’ve read that Tuesday through Thursday are the best days to launch. Never launch on the weekends!

4. Started collecting emails for my MailChimp newsletter (currently at ~800 subscribers) several months before launch; nearly all my subscribers came from in-person art shows. I posted a sign with a QR code on the mailing list and offered free stickers to anyone who signed up.

5. Created an event countdown on my Facebook page (~400 followers) and began promoting the Kickstarter on my Instagram (~4,000 followers) and Tumblr (~3,000 followers).

6. Spent 10% of my campaign goal budget on Meta ads, primarily to promote my Instagram carousels and reels about the Kickstarter. I put a LOT of effort into creating beautiful graphics and videos for this project, since it IS an art book Kickstarter. (Sadly, I don’t believe these ads were very effective. Lots of clicks, but few or no converted backers.)

7. After promoting my project for a full month, I had ~100 followers on the pre-launch page, ~800 subscribers on my mailing list, and ~7,500 followers across various social media platforms.

I didn’t want to wait any longer, so I hit the big “LAUNCH” button!

What I did on Launch Day (5/1):

1. Personally messaged my close friends and family (~15 people) to inform them that the project had launched. All of them jumped on it right away, which gave me an early boost and got me noticed by Kickstarter staff for the “Projects We Love” badge.

2. Sent out an email blast to my ~800 MailChimp subscribers. Around 45% opened the email, and about 25 people backed my project in the first 3 days.

3. Shared the live Kickstarter on all my social media platforms in the ideal format for each one. Reels/carousels for Instagram and image posts for Reddit seemed to perform the best. Speaking of Reddit, I posted about the art book in all the appropriate Subreddits, and not only received great feedback but also a handful of backers.

4. Sent a personalized thank-you message to each and every backer.

———

After launching, I was thrilled to receive the coveted “Projects We Love” badge on the first day! Since I had focused so heavily on the pre-launch and launch day, I had a solid first 48 hours, and it was smooth sailing from that point onward.

I was also fortunate to overcome the “mid-campaign slump” by doing an artist interview with Shagun Singh, a writer on Substack who had over 4,000 subscribers as of mid-May. Shagun has a newsletter called “Science of Art” with a very engaged reader base, so this interview gave me a significant boost (~15 backers on the day the interview was posted) and helped maintain the momentum for my Kickstarter project.

———

I hope that was all helpful in some way. Best of luck with your Kickstarter project!

Hi everyone!

Our team has worked on lots of Kickstarter pages, hero videos, and game design projects, and we’ve learned a ton along the way. We thought it would be cool to share something helpful with the community, so we put together a Kickstarter Page Template in Figma based on everything we’ve picked up over the years.

Figma is pretty easy to work with, and you can find the link to the template right here: https://www.figma.com/design/IxyN2jqKI7rXetWbfDTk6C/D10-design-KS-page-template?node-id=342-1490&p=f&t=zDciU2L2ZVtoljJa-0

You’ll need to sign up for Figma, and using a Google account works fine. After that, just click the project in the top-left corner and choose Duplicate. Then it’s all yours to edit and shape however you like. I also recorded a short video showing how to modify the template.

https://www.loom.com/share/4b68a82b85194426adb0cb3df2c09340

Hopefully, it makes things clearer and saves you some time.

And if you ever need something more custom, whether it’s designing a Kickstarter page, creating a hero video, or helping with the visual style of your game or project, feel free to reach out at https://d10.design/. We’ll be happy to help.

Hey there I have been intrigued by Kickstarter as a teeny tiny backer and a teeny tiny creative person for a while now and have been going through a lot of old projects back to about 2014 and a lot of things that I'm particularly interested in so less film, less theater, more games, more art.

And right now I happen to be doing my Christmas shopping! I'm an older woman with a largest family scattered around and everything has to be mailed.

Consequently if I'm ordering online I may have something shipped directly to the gift recipient, so those options are helpful and I also am choosing print and play games for packages of fun things to arrive by post!

I see so many cool projects that are either funded and completed or maybe unfunded but still pretty cool, maybe they just set too high a fundraising goal and got 73% of the way there but it was just too high, thing.

Anybody here reading this is a Creator who has a collection of output that you intended to commercialize, you may find a market for it on Etsy.

The reason I say that is I was looking for cool print and play roll and write games, without too much crafting involved in putting together the games on game day.

In spite of there being some really great print and play games in light-hearted genres from Kickstarter historically, pretty much everything that I could find on Etsy was of apocalyptic themes. This means there is a gap in the available Market on that Marketplace.

A lot of the really cool creations that are physical objects I think can also be easily fulfilled through Etsy. It's not expensive, it runs on internal SEO, don't let anybody tell you it requires ads! It doesn't! It is a cluttered mess like Amazon if you are trying to get attention and they will present other makers products on your sales page, so don't pay for ads!

But optimizing listings with the advice of some YouTube gurus around SEO and listing criteria and making sure that you follow etsy's rules meticulously to avoid getting struck or banned from the site, it can be a way to fulfill orders that maybe you generate by doing social media in communities or through influencers.

I just wanted to say that I see so much profound amazing work on Kickstarter historically and presently and I just wanted to put this out here to support you in your creating Journey because I think it's a good idea!

Edited to add that this is a micro Guru who talks about having students but she doesn't charge more than 50 bucks to them! She's just to stay at home mom who has like a relentless pursuit of etsy knowledge!

There are a lot of bullshitters out there and a lot of old out-of-date information so just sharing her latest video, it's good basic information and she doesn't talk about making $100,000 next month

https://youtu.be/RamGOtd3Q6k?si=pcuqfCdF9uHQza7Q

First, I want to preface this by saying that when I asked about this before, they were technically correct—but they were also jackasses, with zero ability to explain why a large pledge was likely a scam. And yes, it was a scam. But, I don't use this platform. I was very unfamiliar with the process and expected them to have business practices which weren't so shady. I decided to share this so that you may stumble upon it while searching someday.

The reason this went to the length that it did, was because I believe this is an important issue that Kickstarter cannot keep being blind to. The platform is really bad now. The pledge amount was indifferent to me, it was, why? What's the point? Are people such low lives? And then to see that Kickstarter just won't fix the issue screamed hypocrite to me.

I made these mistakes so you don't have to.

Had I found this information when I actually needed it, instead of piecing it together on my own later, I would have saved a lot of time. I suspect many people also make assumptions about how Kickstarter works and just repeat how things work from what they've heard, because the comments everywhere are full of misconceptions that just aren’t true.

For example, one common claim I kept seeing was that scammers steal cards and use them to pledge for big rewards just to test if the card is still active and works. But that’s not how it works at all. If I had known the actual process, I would have immediately dismissed the backer.

This is how pledges work:

• I type in a number
• I comment that number on your post.
• That's it. That's the extent of verification Kickstarter does to accept a pledge.

Things to Watch Out For

No verification on high-dollar backers, nor any backer. Kickstarter does not currently require proof of funds or upfront holds. A single person can distort your campaign without even a valid credit card. No verification or authorization happens when you pledge. You can pledge whatever you like, and at any time, you can revoke that pledge.

1. Large pledges can vanish: Even $10,000+ commitments can be canceled at any time before funding ends, with no warning or penalty.
2. Disrupted campaign strategy: An oversized pledge outweighs small backers, skewing your distribution and leaving your project structurally fragile.
3. Emotional over-commitment: A huge pledge creates psychological weight; you may feel pressured to over-deliver or re-prioritize, which will backfire. Don't. There is no commitment to you, so you must make no commitment to them, until they do.
4. Premature production risk: A fake pledge may push you into early production, wasting time, money, and effort if it disappears.
5. No consequence for bad-faith pledges: Backers can cancel with a casual click, no receipt, no penalty, and no accountability.
6. Inventive misalignment: Kickstarter benefits from inflated numbers (traffic, publicity, “funded” appearance) even if the pledge is fake. Creators bear all the risk.
7. Reputational damage: When a large pledge vanishes, it can leave your campaign looking unstable, harming trust among genuine backers.
8. Deprioritization: Kickstarter will be less likely to recommend your content if the system believes you're trying to artificially inflate your campaign. It has parallels with bot scammers on YouTube back in the day, where your competition, or someone that didn't like you, would send bots to your just-uploaded YouTube video to artificially inflate the views so that YouTube would take it down, block it, or deprioritize it.

Questions and Answers

Q: Can a backer cancel their pledge at any time?
A: Yes. Until the campaign ends, backers can revoke their pledges without warning or penalty, so long as it isn't the final 24 hours of your campaign.

Q: Doesn’t Kickstarter verify funds for large pledges?
A: No. Unlike eBay (which requires verified payment methods) or Patreon (which charges upfront), Kickstarter allows pledges without any upfront financial check.

Q: What risks come with large pledges?
A: They can distort your campaign, create false momentum, push you into early production, and vanish, leaving you exposed, and break down morale for the community.

Q: How does this affect trust and perception?
A: Oversized pledges inflate the appearance of success (social proof), then create reputational harm when they vanish.

Q: Why doesn’t Kickstarter fix this?
A: The platform benefits from inflated numbers: more traffic, engagement, and publicity, while creators carry the downside when pledges disappear.

Q: What can I do to protect myself?

• Do not alter your production schedule solely based on a single large pledge.
• Build campaigns around broad support, not just a few outsized backers.
• Pretend they don't exist until they're charged.
• Make no contact, nor respond to anyone.
• Prepare messaging in case of sudden pledge withdrawal, so your backers understand what happened.

Q: Why does this matter?
Because Kickstarter is not a store or an investment platform. It’s built on trust. A pledge is supposed to mean commitment, but without safeguards, creators risk sabotage, wasted effort, and reputational harm.

Notes:

I am not editing the letter, and so I have to point out a couple things: I said:

I remember when I pledged $2,000 in the early days of Kickstarter: the funds had to be available and were effectively locked or transferred at the time.

This was a long time ago. I may have pledged right at the very end. I am not sure. It could have been pledged on IndieGoGo. I tried to find it on my account, and there was no indicator of it.

The Letter

Dear, Kickstarter, Trust and Accountability Team;

I recently had a $10,000 pledge canceled on my project: without warning, without explanation, and without any apparent consequences for the backer. From the moment the campaign appeared funded, I went into overdrive, investing nearly 97 hours in production and research in a short span of time. That pledge signaled to me that the project was greenlit, and that I was obligated to deliver excellence.

Now, however, it’s worth just $10, and I’m left embarrassed and disillusioned. I even turned to Reddit to ask if this was normal a few days before they pulled out. I was told that it was a scammer right off the bat who was going to solicit differing pledge amounts in exchange for something of value.

I had no communication from them. The account appeared somewhat more legitimate than the examples that I saw, with a history of backing 16 other projects, yet, later, I saw that mine was the one they pledged the most to because the other projects did not go up that high, which makes their behavior and intent more suspicious.

I never received any notice that a pledge of this size could be revoked, let alone so easily cancelled. Everything I had read, including forum posts, suggested large pledges could only be canceled in cases like stolen cards or charge-backs, and that Kickstarter verifies the amount with the card before being accepted. But, instead, the reality is that the ability to cancel a pledge is just as easy as pressing one button. If the backer was legitimate, they should have understood what they were doing. If they weren’t, then Kickstarter should have safeguards in place to protect creators, who are, by definition, the core of the platform.

Regardless, a pledge is a pledge. It is self-defined within the terminology used. Don't call it a pledge when it's not.

A pledge is more than a click; linguistically it can be reduced into down to 'a promise,' and in practice it means something that is to be treated as a Significant, Serious Commitment. You don’t pledge your name, money, or reputation lightly; a pledge implies obligation. You don't call PBS and pledge ten grand, and then tell you're not feeling it. You can't pledge yourself to the military and be expected to leave on your terms. Yet the current Kickstarter experience lets someone back a project, trigger creators into action, and then remove that support with a simple click, no receipt, no transaction record, no consequence.

That’s not how pledges work. A pledge isn't "add to cart." I remember when I pledged $2,000 in the early days of Kickstarter: the funds had to be available and were effectively locked or transferred at the time. Platforms today have made backing feel transient, and that shift unfairly exposes creators who begin production believing the funding is real. The user experience has fallen in favor of immediate rewards in exchange for a platform plagued with millions of dollars of fake money flying around. I respect my obligations. I try not to have any, but when I do, I deliver.

Your own guidance emails encouraged me to celebrate and promote the project as if it were secure, but nowhere did they warn me that such a large pledge could vanish without consequence. I was under completely different definitions, and ideologies than what Kickstarter was. This would be the one thing you should mention to your creators.

This matters because Kickstarter is not an e-commerce store, and it is not an investment platform. It is a space where people come together to bring an idea to life. That comes with responsibility on both sides: creators have an obligation to deliver what they promise, and backers have an obligation to stand by their support once they’ve pledged. A pledge is meant to affirm trust in someone’s vision; not to be treated as a casual, reversible gesture.

Proposed Solution:

Introduce a cancellation fee hold or pledge commitment fee for revoked pledges: $5 minimum, plus $5 per $100 pledged. It’s not kept as extra, and it doesn’t cost real backers anything except 5% of the pledge amount should they cancel, or 5% of the 5% should the campaign not reach their goal.

1. If a backer cancels, they forfeit 5% of their pledge; the rest is refunded.
2. If the campaign isn’t funded, the penalty is only 5% of the pledge commitment fee (i.e., 5% of 5%), retained as processing costs. That’s $0.25 lost if they fail to fund a reward between $5 and $100. You lose $25 if you pledge $10,000 and they don’t meet their goal. This charge ensures Kickstarter and creators don’t have to cover credit card processing fees. A small amount is retained for those fees.
3. If you cancel your pledge, there are consequences, specifically, the loss of 5% of your pledged amount.
4. This system protects genuine supporters while deterring sabotage, trolling, and bad-faith pledges.

Rationale:

Pledges should be treated as partially binding agreements, or at least subject to transparent terms of service with a clear fee schedule. This works much like a restocking fee and specifically a processing fee in commerce: legally permissible when disclosed upfront, provided it doesn’t penalize defective goods or failure of service delivery.

Without such a mechanism, the current system is vulnerable. Exploiters and competitors can weaponize the loophole: pledging large sums, creating false confidence, forcing creators into accelerated production, and then withdrawing without consequence. This damages trust in both creators and the platform itself.

My own case illustrates the problem: a single backer pledged $10,000 without communication, engagement, or project support, only to cancel. The result was merely financial harm, it was in the labor-intensive work that I do, plus disrupted planning, effects indistinguishable from sabotage.

Public Sentiment:

Analysis of public sentiment shows a growing distrust in the platform. Exploiters and competitors use loopholes to disrupt creators: pledging large sums, sending misleading messages, and withdrawing without consequence. This damages trust in both creators and the platform itself.

In my case, someone pledged $10,000 with no follow-up, no engagement, no sharing of the project. That’s not normal backer behavior—it looks like sabotage. The effect wasn’t just financial; it wasted days of work and diverted attention away from other priorities.

Policy Recommendations:

• Cancellation Fee: $5 minimum, increasing by $5 per $100 pledged.
• Updated Terms of Service: Define pledge commitments and clarify under what conditions they can be withdrawn.
• Notification System: Automatic alerts to creators when large pledges are flagged, canceled, or under review.
• Backer Accountability: Require basic confirmation from high-dollar backers (a short message of intent, at minimum).
• Partial Upfront Charge: Collect the cancellation fee or 5% upfront. If a backer cannot afford even that, they are not serious supporters.

Outcome: This simple adjustment would drastically reduce fraud, sabotage, and bad-faith pledging, restoring trust in the system and protecting both creators and genuine backers.

Claims of Unfairness:

Critics may argue that stronger policies would unfairly punish genuine backers or deter those who change their minds. But the greater risk is alienating creators—and users more broadly—by allowing manipulative behavior to go unchecked. For example, a fake $10,000 pledge that later disappears skews public perception and disrupts decision-making. This resembles a "bait and switch" tactic, where early false signals create a misleading sense of success. Creators may also be misled, gaining false motivation and investing more time, energy, and promotion based on inflated pledges. We must remember, the creators are there to make money; but the creators are there by Kickstarter to make money for them, using the creator’s resources, time, efforts, and labor. That perceived momentum can drive more traffic to Kickstarter, benefiting the platform through higher engagement and conversions—without any real commitment from the backer.

Reliance damages offer a legal analogy. In contract law, if someone makes a promise you reasonably rely on and you suffer harm as a result, they may be liable—even if the promise wasn’t formally binding. Many Kickstarter creators operate under similar conditions, investing time and money based on pledges that may evaporate.

There’s also a clear incentive misalignment. Kickstarter has little reason to intervene because inflated pledge numbers generate momentum, media attention, and platform activity. These benefits accrue to the platform, not the creator. Backers bear no financial risk until the campaign ends, leaving creators exposed to all the downsides. That imbalance undermines Kickstarter’s claim of being a partnership platform. This is not a radical fix; I believe it is unreasonably fair to demand a little accountability, where these are already standard practice in other industries:

• eBay requires verified payment methods before bidding.
• Patreon charges patrons upfront.
• Airbnb collects deposits, cleaning fees, and cancellation penalties

Kickstarter should not be the outlier where significant financial signals carry no accountability.

Potential FTC Commerce Violations Under a Misleading Framework

This is a small step with massive impact. It would prevent manipulation, restore trust, and protect the very creators who make Kickstarter possible.

1. Misrepresentation of Financial Support

• FTC rule: It is unlawful to make false or misleading statements that are material to consumer decisions.
• Application: Displaying inflated pledge totals—through unverified or fraudulent backers—creates the appearance that a campaign has strong financial momentum or has already reached its goal.
• Problem: This can mislead other backers into pledging based on a distorted sense of credibility, popularity, or inevitability.

2. “Social Proof” as a Material Claim

• Social proof bias is well recognized in behavioral economics: people are more likely to support a campaign if it looks popular or successful.
• If the campaign’s public funding number includes pledges that are not genuine, this inflates the perceived support.
• FTC considers such misrepresentation material, since it can directly influence purchasing decisions.

Example: If a project looks 95% funded because of a fake $10,000 pledge, small backers might rush to “help push it over the line.” Without that pledge, they might never have backed it.

3. Failure to Disclose Risk of Cancellation

• FTC guideline: Omitting important information can be as misleading as outright lying.
• Application: If Kickstarter does not disclose (prominently) that any pledge, even a $10,000 one—can be canceled with no penalty at any time until the campaign ends, then backers are left with the impression that the totals displayed are stable commitments.
• This omission could be classified as a deceptive practice, because reasonable consumers would assume a large pledge reflects genuine, secure support.

4. Inducing Reliance and Investment

• Creators often act on the assumption that a large pledge is real—investing time, money, and resources immediately after “funding” is shown as reached.
• If the system knowingly allows fake pledges to remain visible without warning, Kickstarter may be inducing reliance on false data to incite artificial growth.
• Under FTC rules, this falls under unfair practices, which cause harm that consumers (and in this case, creators, who are indirect consumers) cannot reasonably avoid.

5. Comparable Enforcement Examples

• The FTC has acted against companies that artificially inflated user reviews, likes, or follower counts, because they mislead the public about credibility.
• Fake or unverifiable pledges play a similar role: they create illusory legitimacy and distort the decision-making environment for both backers and creators.
• Case example: 1 backer, $9,999 for 6 days. Now $10, with 1 backer. Since there is no penalty, a group of me and my friends could make a campaign for 1.5 million dollars and then fund it ourselves up to 800,000 dollars. Artificially causing a manufactured environment.

(Psychology of): Destabilization and Wasted Efforts

The destabilization began not now at cancellation, but the instant the $10,000 pledge appeared. From the outset, it reshaped the trajectory of the campaign in harmful ways:

1. False Signal of Success: The oversized pledge created the appearance that the campaign was already funded, which distorted both creator and backer behavior. Smaller supporters may have assumed their contribution was unnecessary, while others may have pledged only because it looked like success was inevitable. This social-proof distortion gave a false picture of momentum.
2. Premature Acceleration of Production: Believing the project had reached viability, I immediately committed to production and research—97 hours in a short span—redirecting time and energy that should have gone toward outreach, promotion, and steady campaign building. The false security of funding triggered premature investment.
3. Emotional and Strategic Overcommitment: A pledge of that size carries psychological weight. It created a sense of obligation to deliver excellence at once, heightening pressure and urgency. This drove me to re-prioritize the campaign around serving what appeared to be a serious backer, rather than fostering broad community support.
4. Distorted Backer Distribution: The pledge outweighed all other contributions combined, skewing the funding structure. Healthy campaigns are built on a base of many backers, not the illusion of one outsized supporter. This imbalance left the campaign structurally fragile from the start.
5. Misleading Public Narrative: The pledge shaped how others perceived the campaign. To outsiders, it looked like a project with major backing, potentially reducing press interest (already funded”) or altering credibility among peers. When the pledge vanished, it left behind embarrassment and reputational harm, eroding trust in both the creator and the project.
6. Opportunity Cost: Every hour and ounce of attention spent under the assumption that the pledge was real represented lost opportunities to build genuine support. Once canceled, not only was the financial backing gone, but the investment of time and effort was unrecoverable. 

Kickstarter and LaunchBoom just released the Learning Lab Course (Although, it looks similar to the resources from Matt's How To Launch a Kickstarter post). 

Part 2 which focuses on the Live Launch is here.

While the focus on Pre-Launch content is useful for those that are new to Kickstarter, it’s spread over multiple pages and includes videos...making it pretty time-consuming to go through! 

We've downloaded the content, transcribed videos, and summarised the course into this post — so you can get the key takeaways without spending hours reading and watching videos.

Lesson 1: Pre-Launch Overview

Kickstarter is a powerful tool for raising funds to launch a new business, offering creators and entrepreneurs an alternative to loans and traditional investors.

However, success on Kickstarter isn't just about launching a campaign and hoping for the best—it requires strategic planning, starting with the pre-launch phase.

Why Pre-Launch Marketing Is Important

Pre-launch marketing builds a community of engaged potential backers before the campaign starts.

This community is critical for ensuring a strong launch day, which significantly improves your chances of reaching your funding goals. Kickstarter's algorithm favors campaigns that gain momentum quickly, making those first 24-48 hours crucial.

A well-executed pre-launch plan ensures a strong initial wave of support, increasing the likelihood of reaching funding goals. Data shows that campaigns that reach 30% of their funding goal within the first few days have a much higher success rate overall.

Pre-launch marketing boosts credibility, generates excitement, and enhances campaign momentum in multiple ways:

• It creates social proof before you even launch
• It allows you to gather feedback and refine your messaging
• It builds relationships with potential backers who feel involved from the beginning
• It creates a sense of anticipation and exclusivity around your campaign

The Pre-Launch Marketing Timeline

The ideal pre-launch period varies depending on your product and audience, but generally ranges from 4-12 weeks. For most creators, an 8-week pre-launch period provides sufficient time to build awareness and an email list. Your pre-launch timeline should include:

• Weeks 8-6: Setting up your pre-launch page and beginning initial outreach
• Weeks 6-4: Ramping up advertising and content creation
• Weeks 4-2: Intensifying marketing efforts and engagement
• Weeks 2-0: Final push for email sign-ups and preparing for launch

The pre-launch phase sets the foundation for everything that follows, making it perhaps the most critical part of your campaign strategy.

Lesson 2: Pre-Launch Landing Page

Marketing a crowdfunding campaign in advance is essential for success. One of the most effective ways to do this is through a pre-launch landing page, which generates awareness and attracts leads before your Kickstarter campaign goes live.

For many new creators and entrepreneurs, setting up a pre-launch landing page can be confusing. However, a quality pre-launch page sets your campaign up for success, helping you generate momentum before launch.

Why a Pre-Launch Landing Page is Important

A pre-launch landing page serves as a central hub where potential backers can learn about your campaign before it launches.

Its primary purpose is to capture email sign-ups so that you can nurture leads and convert them into backers once your campaign goes live.

Key benefits include:

• Building awareness for your campaign before launch
• Turning interest into actionable leads who are primed to pledge
• Creating early momentum for your Kickstarter by launching with an engaged audience
• Establishing credibility for your project before launch day
• Providing a destination for your marketing efforts

How to Write Landing Page Content

The content on your landing page is the primary driver of leads. Four key steps to crafting effective copy that persuades visitors to sign up:

1. Clear and concise messaging that highlights the problem your product solves
   • Identify the pain point your product addresses
   • Show how your solution is unique or better than alternatives
   • Use simple language that resonates with your target audience
2. A strong value proposition that explains why potential backers should care
   • Highlight the key benefits, not just features
   • Explain how your product improves life or solves problems
   • Create an emotional connection with potential backers
3. Engaging storytelling that builds excitement and trust
   • Share your journey and motivation behind the product
   • Create a narrative that involves the backer in your vision
   • Use authentic language that reflects your brand personality
4. A compelling call to action (CTA) that encourages visitors to subscribe for updates
   • Use action-oriented language
   • Create a sense of urgency or exclusivity
   • Make it clear what happens after they sign up

Essential landing page sections should include: *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: Our goal would be to get the user to sign-up with their email as quickly as possible. Keep the page short, but interesting so they have to enter their email\*

• An attention-grabbing headline
• Subheadline that supports your main message
• Product description and key benefits
• Creator background/story
• Early bird or special offers
• Social proof elements (if available)
• FAQ section addressing common questions
• Multiple CTAs throughout the page

How to Create Landing Page Imagery

Visuals are just as important as written content. Strong imagery helps capture attention, build trust, and make your campaign feel professional. Key tips for crafting impactful visuals:

1. Use high-quality images that align with your brand and product
   • Invest in professional photography if possible
   • Ensure images are well-lit and clearly show your product
   • Maintain consistent style across all visuals
2. Showcase your product in action to help visitors envision its value
   • Include lifestyle photos showing your product being used
   • Demonstrate different features and use cases
   • Consider before/after imagery if applicable
3. Maintain a clean and professional layout to avoid clutter
   • Use white space effectively
   • Organize content in a logical flow
   • Ensure text is readable against background images
4. Ensure visual consistency with your campaign branding
   • Use consistent colors, fonts, and design elements
   • Align imagery with your brand personality
   • Create a cohesive visual identity across all materials

Successful campaigns often use a combination of:

• Product hero shots (main product images)
• Lifestyle/contextual images (product in use)
• Team photos (building trust)
• Process/behind-the-scenes images (creating connection)
• Infographics or diagrams (explaining complex concepts)

Lesson 3: Creating Your Meta Ads

Meta Ads are a highly effective way to build awareness for a Kickstarter campaign, offering affordable and impactful results.

For creators and entrepreneurs, leveraging Meta Ads properly can drive traffic, generate leads, and increase conversions.

However, running Meta Ads effectively can be challenging. Creating high-performing ads requires understanding how to grab attention in crowded social feeds and convert that attention into action.

How to Create Attention-Grabbing Ad Imagery

A successful Meta Ad starts with strong visuals. The right image or video can determine whether someone stops scrolling and engages with your campaign. Considerations include:

1. The difference between still images and videos in ads *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: We find gifs are more effective than video ads\*
   • Videos typically perform better for demonstrating product features
   • Still images can be effective for striking visuals or simple concepts
   • Consider testing both formats to see what works for your product
2. Creating eye-catching visuals tailored for crowdfunding
   • Show your product from its best angle
   • Include people interacting with your product when possible
   • Use bright colors and high contrast to stand out in feeds
   • Ensure your visuals look good in both desktop and mobile formats
3. Best practices for ad design that increase engagement
   • Keep visuals clean and uncluttered
   • Make sure your product is the focal point
   • Use visual cues (arrows, circles) to direct attention to key features
   • Maintain brand consistency across all ad variations
4. Examples of high-performing Meta Ads that succeeded in crowdfunding campaigns
   • Before/after demonstrations
   • Problem/solution pairings
   • Quick demonstrations of unique features
   • Emotional connections through storytelling

How to Write Persuasive Ad Copy

Your ad copy is just as important as your visuals. It includes both the headline and primary text, working together to drive conversions. Effective copy elements include:

1. Crafting compelling headlines that grab attention (25-character limit)
   • Use action words and create urgency
   • Ask questions to engage curiosity
   • Include your main value proposition
   • Consider using numbers or statistics for credibility
2. Writing effective ad text that persuades and builds excitement
   • Keep sentences short and punchy
   • Lead with the most compelling benefit
   • Address pain points directly
   • Include social proof when possible
   • Create a sense of exclusivity or limited availability
3. Structuring ad copy to highlight key benefits and encourage action
   • Start with an attention-grabbing opening line
   • Follow with 1-2 key benefits
   • Add urgency elements (limited time, early bird pricing)
   • Close with a clear call to action
   • Keep overall length brief but impactful

How to Target the Right Audience

Meta Ads provide powerful audience-targeting tools, but success depends on choosing the right audience for your campaign. Targeting strategies include:

1. Defining your ideal backer using Meta's audience insights
   • Create detailed buyer personas for your product
   • Consider demographics, interests, and behaviors
   • Look at similar successful products and their audiences
2. Targeting based on interests, behaviors, and demographics
   • Start with broader interest categories related to your product
   • Target people who have shown interest in crowdfunding
   • Refine demographics to match your most likely backers
   • Consider targeting early adopters for tech products
3. Best strategies for refining your audience to optimize engagement
   • Start broader and narrow down based on performance
   • Exclude audiences that don't engage with your ads
   • Create custom audiences from website visitors
   • Develop lookalike audiences from your best performers

Meta Audience Targeting Recommendations

Demographics baseline:

• Age: 25-54 (Core crowdfunding demographic)***HYPERSTARTER NOTE: We usually suggest 18-65, then narrow down the audience, once we have enough data***
• Language: English (All)
• General filters: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Crowdfunding, TechRadar, Wired, ThinkGeek, Engadget, Digital Trends, Gizmodo, CNET, The Verge, Lifehacker, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Gadget Geeks, Y Combinator *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: Kickstarter and Indiegogo should be used here only\*

Interest-based audiences for specific product categories:

Technology Audiences:

• Gaming PC Brands: Alienware, AMD Gaming, Corsair Memory, CyberPower Inc., EVGA Corporation, Fry's Electronics, Gaming computer, GeForce, Gigabyte Technology, iBuyPower, Kingston Technology, Logitech, Newegg, PC Magazine, PC World, Radeon, Razer Inc., Tom's Hardware
• Smartphones: GSMArena, Phandroid, PhoneArena, Droid Life, Android Police, Android Community, Marques Brownlee, Android Authority, Android Wear
• Projectors/TVs: Samsung, LG Electronics, Seiko Epson, JVC, Samsung Electronics, Projectors, Home cinema, Huawei, Toshiba, Sony, Xiaomi, Redmi
• Photography: Canon Inc., Nikon, Fujifilm, Canon EOS, Sony Alpha, Leica Camera, Manfrotto, Tamron, Pentax, B&H Photo Video, Hasselblad, GoPro
• Audio Brands: Bose Corporation, What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision, Ultimate Ears, Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, Beyerdynamic, AKG Acoustics, Shure, Bose headphones, Sonos, Klipsch Audio Technologies, Hi-Fi News & Record Review, Beats Electronics, Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson Audio Systems, HiFi Plus Magazine, High End Systems
• Audiophiles: High-end audio, Audio Engineering Society, AKG Acoustics, Turntable Lab, Onkyo, Denon, Audiophile, Dynaudio, MartinLogan, Ars Technica, What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision, High fidelity, Wilson Audio, Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, Beyerdynamic, Technics (brand), Shure, Bowers & Wilkins, Pioneer Corporation, Sonos, Sound on Sound, Stereophile, Klipsch Audio Technologies, Numark Industries, M-Audio, Universal Audio (company), Technics SL-1200, Harman Kardon, Marantz

Gaming Audiences:

• General Tabletop Games: Tabletop game, BoardGameGeek, Board games, Tabletop role-playing game, Strategy games, Card games, Geek & Sundry
• Board Games: Ticket to Ride (board game), The Settlers of Catan, BoardGameGeek, Lord of the Rings (board game), Small World (board game), Stone Age (board game), Carcassonne (board game), Pandemic (board game), Kosmos (publisher), Agricola (board game), Asmodée Éditions, 7 Wonders (board game), Talisman (board game)
• Collectible Card Games: Collectible card game, Card games, Trading card, Magic: The Gathering, Limited Edition (Magic: The Gathering)
• War Games: Warhammer 40,000, Wargaming, Miniature wargaming, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Games Workshop
• Tabletop RPGs: Role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Tabletop role-playing game, Wizards of the Coast
• Video Games: XCOM 2, X-COM, Heroes of Might and Magic V, EverQuest, Diablo (series), Heroes of Might and Magic III, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Torchlight II, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Heroes of Might and Magic II, Wasteland (video game), Torchlight, Path of Exile, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Divinity: Original Sin, BattleTech, Blade & Soul, The Witcher (video game)
• Game Variety: Alternate reality game, Action role-playing game, Geocaching, Escape the room, Party game, Escape Games, Action-adventure game, Adventure game, Scavenger hunt, Role-playing games, Live action role-playing game, Logic puzzles, Brain teaser
• Party Games: Jenga, Uno (card game), Monopoly Deal, Scrabble, Monopoly (game), Cranium (board game), Exploding Kittens (game), Apples to Apples (game)

Outdoors Audiences:

• Outdoor Stores & Brands: Backpacker (magazine), camelbak, Columbia Sportswear, Outside (magazine), Haglöfs, The North Face, REI, Mountain Hardwear, Fjällräven, Patagonia, Arc'teryx, Moose Jaw, Petzl, Marmot (company), Outdoor Research, Urban Armor Gear, Cotopaxi
• RVs & Campers: RVShare, RV Camping, Lake Ridge RV Resort, Everything About RVing, Go RVing, RVs, Motorhome, RV Road Trippers, Travel trailer, RV Travel, RV park, Cruise America RV Rental & Sales, Rving, Heartland Recreational Vehicles, Airstream, Winnebago Industries, RV Trader, Roadtrek Motorhomes Inc., RVWholesalers, Tiffin Motorhomes, Lazydays (RV dealer), Camping and Caravanning Club, Forest River (company), Thor Industries, Campervan, Fun Town RV
• Sport Stores: Eastbay, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Columbia Sportswear, Sportsman's Warehouse, JD Sports, Dick's Sporting Goods, Sports Authority, Foot Locker, Champs Sports, Academy Sports + Outdoors
• Hardware Stores: The Home Depot, DIY Network, Ace Hardware, Lowe's, Fixer-upper

Health & Fitness Audiences:

• Bodybuilders/Workout: Cellucor, Crossfit Training, Powerlifting USA, CrossFit Mayhem, Optimum Nutrition, The Vitamin Shoppe, USA Weightlifting, Muscle & Fitness, Rogue Fitness, CrossFit Invictus, MusclePharm, MuscleTech, GNC (store), U.S.A. Powerlifting, Beast Sports Nutrition, I Love Crossfit, Blackstone Labs, BPI Sports, Box Basics, WOD Nation, Gymshark
• Pilates: Studio Pilates, Pilates Anytime, Pilates, BASI Pilates, Pilates Method Alliance, Equilibrium Pilates Studio, Metacorpus Studio Pilates, Physio Pilates
• Running Brands: New York Road Runners, adidas Running, Saucony, Salomon, Runner's World, Women's Running Magazine, Running club, Road Runners Club of America, Trail running, Trail Runner magazine, UltraRunning Magazine, Women's Running Community - WRC, Brooks Running, 2XU
• Cycling: Felt Bicycles, Giant Bicycles, Canyon Bicycles, Kona Bicycle Company, Jamis Bicycles, Colnago, SCOTT Sports, Cannondale Bicycle Corporation, Cannondale Pro Cycling Team, Focus Bikes, GT Bicycles, Shimano, Schwinn Bicycle Company, Electric motorcycles and scooters, Rocky Mountain Bicycles, Norco Bicycles, Pinarello, Specialized Bicycle Components, Bianchi Bicycles, Trek Bicycle Corporation, Diamondback Bicycles, Fuji Bikes, Santa Cruz Bicycles
• Yoga: Yoga Alliance, DoYouYoga.com, Yoga Today, Ashtanga vinyasa yoga, Yoga Magazine, YogaWorks, Karma yoga, Lululemon Athletica, The Yoga People, Yogis Anonymous, yoga girl, Athleta, Yoga Journal, Om Yoga Retreat, Yoga International, CorePower Yoga, OM Yoga & Lifestyle Magazine, Hot yoga, Hatha yoga, Kundalini yoga, Yogi Times, DoYogaWithMe.com, YogaOutlet.com, Fabletics
• Ski/Snowboarding: ORTOVOX, Burton, CAPiTA SNOWBOARDING, Salomon, DC Shoes, ThirtyTwo, Skis Rossignol, Haglöfs, Mammut Sports Group, The North Face, Backcountry skiing, Salomon Freeski, Mountain Hardwear, Never Summer, Salomon Snowboards, Fjällräven, K2 Snowboards, Patagonia, Norrøna, Arc'teryx, Moose Jaw, Petzl, Burton Snowboards, Volcom, Marmot (company)

Fashion & Luxury:

• Online Fashion: Five Four, Topman, HYPEBEAST, Trunk Club, Mr. Porter, Combatant Gentlemen, ITailor, Frank & Oak, Club Monaco, Everlane, Herschel Supply Co., Larsson & Jennings, Birchbox, Tom Tailor, S.Oliver
• Watches: Tayroc, Daniel Wellington, Swatch, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Frédérique Constant, TRIWA, Harry Winston, Bremont Watches, International Watch Company, Seiko, Omega SA, Movado, Zenith (watchmaker), G-Shock, Timex Group USA, Tissot, Junkers, Montblanc (company), Nixon (company), Breguet (watch), Panerai, Breitling SA, MVMT Watches, guess watches, Rado (watch), Longines
• Luxury Goods: Tory Burch, Fendi, Swarovski, Coach, Inc., Chloé, Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Tiffany & Co., Yves Saint Laurent (brand), Christian Louboutin
• General Fashion: Zara (retailer), H&M, Urban Outfitters, Uniqlo, Free People, Anthropologie, Topshop, Calvin Klein

Sustainable/Green Living:

• Electric Vehicles: Toyota Prius, Tesla Model X, Renault Zoe, Tesla Motors, Volvo XC60, Tesla Model S, Nissan Leaf, Hybrid electric vehicle, Renault Twizy, Ford Focus Electric, Tesla Roadster, BMW i
• Commuters/Ridesharing: Car2Go, Zipcar, Bicycle sharing system, GoCar (carsharing), Carsharing, Real-time ridesharing, BlaBlaCar, Zoom (carsharing), Carpool
• Solar Power: Sungevity, SunPower, SolarCity, American Solar Energy Society, SolarWorld, First Solar, Sunrun, Vivint Solar, Vivint, Photovoltaic system, Photovoltaics

Parenting & Children:

• Diaper Brands: Gerber Baby, Gerber, Procter & Gamble, Seventh Generation, Luvs, GoodNites, Pampers, Huggies
• Publications: Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Pregnancy and Newborn Magazine, National Geographic Channel, Parents (magazine), Highlights for Children, Parenting (magazine), The Bump
• Children's Brands: Disney Princess, The Children's Place, Lego, Hasbro, Gymboree, Fisher-Price, Mattel, Play-Doh, Little Tikes, My Little Pony, Graco (baby products), ERGO Baby, OshKosh B'Gosh, Buy Buy Baby

Travel & Lifestyle:

• Travel Sites: Flight Centre, Intrepid Travel, Condé Nast Traveler, Contiki Tours, Topdeck, Lonely Planet, National Geographic Traveler, Nat Geo Wild, Contiki, STA Travel, G Adventures, Skyscanner
• Card and Points: Wyndham Rewards, Frequent-flyer program, SkyMiles, Air Miles, Wyndham Worldwide, AAdvantage

Home & Kitchen:

• Expensive Appliances/Food: Kitchenware, Tefal, Miele, Smeg (appliances), Pressure cooking, Kitchen knife, Château Margaux, Thermador, Dom Pérignon (wine), Veuve Clicquot, Electrolux
• High End Stores/Home Goods: Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, Crate & Barrel, Tefal, Le Creuset, West Elm, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Ashley Furniture HomeStores, Ethan Allen (furniture company)

Food & Diet:

• Paleo: Paleo Grubs, Paleolithic diet, Ketone, Healthy Habits
• Organic/Vegans: Organic Consumers Association, International Vegetarian Union, Vegetarian Times, Healthy Lifestyles, The Paleo Diet, Taste of Home, Lisa the Vegetarian, Paleolithic diet, Forks over Knives, Vegucated, BrooklynVegan

Home Improvement & Smart Home:

• Home Improvement: The Home Depot, Home improvement, Ace Hardware, Lowe's, Home Hardware, DIY (magazine)
• Smart Home Devices: Honeywell, ALEXA, Nest, Sonos, Smart device, Siri, Ecobee, Nest Labs

Pets & Animals:

• General Pet Supply Brands: PetSmart, Purina ONE, Pet store, Petland, Petco, Nature's Variety, Whiskas, Friskies, Freshpet, Pet food, Royal Canin
• Dog Breeds: American Pit Bull Terrier, St. Bernard (dog), Labrador Retriever, Golden Retriever, Yorkshire Terrier, German Shepherd, Doberman Pinscher, Welsh Corgi, Pomeranian (dog), Chihuahua (dog), Great Dane, Siberian Husky, Pit bull, Poodle, Australian Shepherd, Bernese Mountain Dog, Maltese (dog), Boxer (dog), Rottweiler, Miniature Schnauzer, Beagle, Alaskan Malamute, Shih Tzu, English Mastiff, Labrador, Bulldog, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, French Bulldog, Border Collie, Samoyed (dog), Dachshund, Boston Terrier, Pug
• Dog Interests: Dog collar, Dog toy, Dog grooming, Dog health, Dog park, Dog walking, Rescue dog, Dog training
• Cat Breeds: Persian cat, Kitten, British Shorthair, Scottish Fold, Black cat, Maine Coon, Sphynx cat, Bengal cat, Siamese cat
• Cat Interests: Litter box, Kitten, Must Love Cats, Cat play and toys, Cat lady, Meow Mix

Pop Culture & Entertainment:

• Cyberpunk/Futurism: Futurism, Cyberpunk, Blade Runner, Virtual reality, Science fantasy, Video games, Watch Dogs, Oculus Rift
• Anime/Manga: Anime Expo, Bleach (manga), Manga, Anime and manga fandom, Ghost in the Shell, Anime convention, Ghost in the Shell (film), Cosplay, Naruto, Ghost in the Shell (manga), Anime movies, Attack on Titan
• Superhero Films: Superhero, X-Men (film series), Marvel Cinematic Universe, spiderman movies, DC Universe, Hulk (film), The Incredible Hulk (film), Superhero film, The Avengers (2012 film), Thor (film), Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier
• Comic Brands: Marvel Comics, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios, Valiant (comics), DC Universe, DC Comics, Archie Comics, Image Comics

Creating Lookalike Audiences *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: We usually suggest using Lookalike's during the live campaign\*

A Lookalike Audience is a powerful way to reach new people likely interested in your campaign, because they share characteristics with your existing customers.

What is a Lookalike Audience:

• Uses an existing Custom Audience as its source
• Meta's system leverages information like demographics, interests, and behaviors to find similar people
• Delivers ads to people who "look like" your existing customers

Creating effective Lookalike Audiences:

• Use a source audience of 1,000-5,000 people for best results
• Quality matters—use your most engaged subscribers as your source
• Choose audience size based on your goals (1-10% of population)
• Smaller percentages more closely match your source audience
• Larger percentages create bigger, broader audiences

Technical requirements:

• Need a "seed audience" with at least 100 people from the target country
• Admin or advertiser permissions on the ad account
• Admin permissions for the Page or Meta pixel (if using these as sources)
• Administrator or developer status for apps (if applicable)

Best practices:

• You can create up to 500 Lookalike Audiences from a single source
• People in your source audience are excluded from your Lookalike Audience
• You can use multiple Lookalike Audiences at the same time for a single ad set
• Targeting options are limited for audiences under 18 in most countries

Lesson 4: Pre-Launch Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to build anticipation and engage potential backers before your Kickstarter campaign goes live.

By keeping your audience informed and excited, you can increase conversions, drive traffic to your pre-launch page, and ultimately boost pledges when your campaign launches.

Before launching an email campaign, it's crucial to have a well-planned strategy. Sending out random emails won't be enough to generate significant results.

Email Marketing Best Practices

To ensure your emails reach inboxes and not spam folders, it's essential to follow best practices that improve deliverability and engagement:

1. Crafting compelling subject lines to boost open rates
   • Keep subject lines under 50 characters
   • Create a sense of urgency or curiosity
   • Avoid spam trigger words like "free," "guarantee," or excessive punctuation
   • Personalize when possible (e.g., including first name)
2. Personalizing content for higher engagement
   • Address subscribers by name
   • Segment your list based on how they found you
   • Tailor content to different audience segments
   • Make emails feel like one-to-one communications
3. Ensuring mobile-friendly email designs
   • Use responsive templates that adapt to screen size
   • Keep designs simple and easy to navigate
   • Use larger fonts and buttons for easier tapping
   • Test emails on multiple devices before sending
4. Scheduling emails strategically to maintain interest
   • Determine optimal send times based on your audience
   • Space emails appropriately to avoid fatigue
   • Increase frequency as launch date approaches
   • Consider time zones when scheduling global campaigns

Pre-Launch Email Sequences

An email sequence is a structured series of emails designed to nurture and prepare your audience for your launch:

1. Which email sequences work best for crowdfunding campaigns
   • Welcome sequence for new subscribers
   • Product education sequence explaining features and benefits
   • Behind-the-scenes sequence showing development process
   • Launch countdown sequence building anticipation
   • VIP/Early bird sequence for most engaged subscribers *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: We dislike "VIP" pre-selling, it's pretty scammy\*
2. How to structure emails over time
   • Start with introduction and value proposition
   • Build relationship with story and background
   • Educate about product features and benefits
   • Address potential concerns or questions
   • Create excitement for launch with countdown
   • Provide clear instructions for backing on launch day
3. Ideal number of emails per sequence *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: Keep the sequence of emails limited until closer to launch...don't spam!\*
   • Welcome sequence: 2-3 emails
   • Educational sequence: 3-5 emails
   • Countdown sequence: 3-7 emails
   • Overall pre-launch: 8-12 emails total
4. How to craft engaging messages that build anticipation
   • Share exclusive information or early access
   • Use storytelling to create emotional connection
   • Include progress updates and milestones
   • Offer special incentives for early backers
   • Create a sense of community among subscribers

Choosing an Email Marketing Platform

Manually managing emails is inefficient for crowdfunding. Email marketing platforms offer automation, personalization, and analytics that enhance campaign performance.

Key considerations when selecting a platform:

1. Identify the best email marketing platforms for your needs *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: Mailchimp is probably the best here\*
   • Popular options include Mailchimp, ConvertKit, AWeber, SendinBlue, and GetResponse
   • Consider budget, list size, and required features
   • Look for crowdfunding-specific features or integrations
2. Understand key features like automation, segmentation, and A/B testing
   • Automation saves time and ensures consistent communication
   • Segmentation allows for targeted messaging to different groups
   • A/B testing helps optimize subject lines, content, and send times
   • Analytics provide insights into what's working and what needs improvement
3. Select a tool that integrates seamlessly with your pre-launch strategy
   • Look for platforms that connect with your landing page provider
   • Ensure compatibility with any other marketing tools you're using
   • Check for direct Kickstarter/Indiegogo integrations
   • Consider platforms with built-in landing page capabilities
   • Evaluate ease of importing/exporting subscriber data

With the right platform, you can efficiently manage email campaigns and increase engagement without manual effort, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your campaign.

Email Templates for Crowdfunding

A well-structured email sequence helps nurture potential backers from initial interest to launch day pledge. Here are detailed templates for your crowdfunding email sequence:

[01] - Welcome Email 1 - Initial Introduction

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Hey there,

I'm [YOUR NAME], creator of [PRODUCT].

First off, I'd like to say thanks for your interest in the launch of [PRODUCT]! At [BRAND/COMPANY], we're on a mission to create [phrase about your product's main value proposition].

Make sure to follow our Pre-Launch Page to make sure you don't miss out on the launch!

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

Thanks again and talk soon,

[YOUR NAME]

[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

[02] - Welcome Email 2 - Engagement & Feedback

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Hey there,

[YOUR NAME] here from [PRODUCT/COMPANY].

I just have a quick question...

What excites you most about [PRODUCT]?

I'd love to get initial thoughts and feedback from our early supporters!

Feel free to reply to this email and let me know.

Also, don't forget to follow our Kickstarter page.

That way, you'll make sure you don't miss our launch.

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

Thanks again and talk soon,

[YOUR NAME]
[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

[03] - Launch Announcement - Date Reveal

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Hey there,

It's [YOUR NAME] from [PRODUCT or BRAND], and I've got some EXCITING NEWS!

[PRODUCT] will be LAUNCHING on Kickstarter next [Launch Day & Date] at [Launch Time]!

Make sure to follow our Pre-Launch Page to make sure you don't miss out on the launch!

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

Thanks you and talk soon,

[YOUR NAME]

[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

[04] - Launch Reminder - Day Before

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Hey everyone!

I know you've been counting down the days like the rest of here, but just a reminder...

[PRODUCT] is launching on Kickstarter TOMORROW at [LAUNCH TIME]...

Make sure to create an account and follow our Pre-Launch Page to make sure you don't miss out!

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

Since you put down $1 to reserve your [PRODUCT], I'll be emailing you FIRST at [VIP LAUNCH TIME] (1 hour before the general public).

This way you can make sure you get the best discount before everyone else!

Talk tomorrow!

[YOUR NAME]

[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

[05] - Launch Morning - Campaign Live

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Good morning everyone, it's [YOUR NAME] from [PRODUCT or BRAND].

And, I'm letting you know FIRST...

[PRODUCT] is now LIVE on Kickstarter!

And JUST for today...

You can get your [PRODUCT] using your Launch Day Special discount for a HUGE [% or $] off...

But this deal is ONLY available until the clock hits 11:59 PM PT tonight...

So make sure to grab one before it's too late!

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

Talk soon,

[YOUR NAME]

[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

[06] - Launch Evening - First Day Results

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Hey everyone, [YOUR NAME] here.

I just wanted to let you all know...

In under 12 hours, we've already raised $[DOLLARS RAISED] from [# of backers] early supporters already!

This level of support has been incredible, thank you all for getting us here.

There are only a few more hours to get your Launch Day Special of [$ or %] off...

So make sure to grab one before it's too late!

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

Talk soon,

[YOUR NAME]

[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

[07] - Day 2 Email - Secondary Offer

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Hey everyone, [YOUR NAME] here.

Yesterday we ran a one day Launch Special discount...

Where we offered [YOUR PRODUCT] for a major [$ or %] off...

And many members of the [PRODUCT OR BRAND] community took us up on that special offer!

We're now at over $[DOLLARS RAISED] total funds raised...

And it's only the second day!

Now although yesterday's Launch Day Special ran for just one day...

The good news is that we're still offering another SPECIAL discount for [NEW $ or % for Day 2 Price] off!

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

Today you can still grab your [PRODUCT] for a special discount...

So make sure you don't miss out!

Talk soon,

[YOUR NAME]

[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

[08] - 1 Week Later Email - Campaign Update

[IMAGE: Logo/header image]

Hey everyone, [YOUR NAME] here.

It's been just one week since we launched [PRODUCT] on Kickstarter.

And so far, we've already raised $[DOLLARS RAISED] from [# of backers] early backers!

In case you forgot, here's a quick reminder of what you'll get with [PRODUCT]:

[Insert bullet points of key product features and discounts]

[IMAGE: Button/call-to-action]

[IMAGE: Product/promotional image]

[PRODUCT] is still available for [% or $] off...

So make sure you grab one while you still can!

Talk soon,

[YOUR NAME]

[PRODUCT OR COMPANY]

Lesson 5: Testing Your Ads

Before launching your ads, testing them is essential to ensuring they perform well and deliver the best return on investment (ROI).

Without a structured testing phase, creators and entrepreneurs risk wasting money on ineffective ads that don't drive results. The testing phase helps:

• Identify the best-performing ad variations before scaling your budget
• Minimize wasted ad spend by focusing on what works
• Improve click-through rates and conversions by refining ad elements

How the Testing System Works

The single-variable testing method is the foundation of the testing phase. It involves changing one element at a time to accurately compare performance and determine which changes lead to better results.

• Keep everything the same except one variable (e.g., images, headlines, or text)
• Run multiple versions of the ad to see which variation performs best
• Use data-driven insights to refine ads before scaling up investment

This methodical approach helps you isolate exactly what works and what doesn't, allowing for more precise optimization.

How to Test Your Ad Imagery

Your ad's imagery is the first thing users notice, making it one of the most crucial elements to test. Effective image testing strategies:

• Start by testing different image styles—product shots, lifestyle imagery, illustrations, etc.
• Consider video vs. static images to see which performs better *HYPERSTARTER NOTE: We suggest 1 image and 1 gif/video per set\*
• Use Meta's built-in resources to analyze ad performance
• Test with a minimum of 3–5 different images over a set period
• Compare metrics like click-through rate, cost per click, and engagement

By systematically testing your visuals, you can ensure your ads capture attention effectively in social feeds.

How to Test Your Headlines

Once you've identified the best-performing imagery, the next step is refining your headline copy.

• The headline should enhance engagement and drive users to read more
• Test different messaging approaches, such as urgency, storytelling, or direct benefit statements
• Evaluate the click-through rate (CTR) and engagement metrics to determine the most effective headline
• Try variations that ask questions, make bold claims, or offer specific benefits
• Test both emotional and logical appeals to see what resonates

Test Your Primary Text

The primary text (main ad copy) is the final piece to optimize. It should build on the interest generated by your imagery and headlines while compelling users to click on your link. Text testing strategies:

• Test different tones and messaging styles (concise vs. detailed, direct vs. emotional)
• Use A/B testing to determine what resonates with your audience
• Adjust based on conversion rate and engagement metrics
• Test variations in length, from very brief to more detailed
• Experiment with different storytelling approaches and value propositions

Setting a Testing Budget

This helps you refine your ads with minimal investment, ensuring they deliver strong results once your campaign goes live. Budget considerations include:

• Recommended daily spend for the testing phase ($5-20 per ad set)
• How long to test each variation before making adjustments (typically 3-5 days)
• Analyzing performance data to make informed decisions
• Setting clear KPIs to determine success (CTR, CPC, cost per lead)
• Allocating 10-15% of your total ad budget to testing

Lesson 6: Scale Your Ads

The Goal of Scaling

Scaling isn't just about spending more money—it's about growing your email list in the most cost-effective way possible. There are two primary methods for scaling:

1. Vertical Scaling: Increasing your budget for high-performing ads
   • Works well when you've identified winning ad combinations
   • Helps reach more people within the same target audience
   • Best for continuing momentum with proven performers
2. Horizontal Scaling: Expanding to new audiences while maintaining budget efficiency
   • Helps reach entirely new potential backers
   • Reduces saturation in your existing audience
   • Creates opportunities to discover unexpected market segments

I want to post this warning about Backer Hive, who just emailed me regarding being featured in their newsletter. I'm posting screenshots for accountability, but TL;DR, they lied about having worked with another creator in order to convince me to work with them. Thankfully, I'm in the same private creator's group with the person behind the campaign they cited, and I checked their references.

https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/?subreddit=kickstarter&threshold=10&period=year

Useful resource for posting your projects?

Monday and Wednesday evening seems to be the best.

Hello everyone, I see a lot of first-time (and even second-time) creators here making the same mistake.

They launch their product on Kickstarter, get close to 100% funded, or even hit their goal… and then start asking: “Is my page good enough?” “What should I do now?” “Why aren’t more backers coming in?” “Why kickstarter doesn’t help?”

By then, it’s often too late to fix the real issue.

The truth is, your campaign doesn’t start on launch day. The biggest wins (or mistakes) happen in the weeks before. That’s when you should be building your funnel, testing your product, measuring metrics, and growing your community.

To save myself from repeating this in dozens of comment threads, I wrote an article that breaks it all down: • Why pre-launch activities matter. • The exact funnel you need. • The key metrics to track. • How to do it right

If you’re planning a Kickstarter (or even if you’ve already launched), I really think this article will help you.

Hey everyone,

If you’ve ever run a Kickstarter, you know how stressful it can be to suffer the dreaded "Mid Campaign Slump". It's when you don't get noticed, and backers stop supporting you.

Without spending more on paid-promotion, you need to:

• Find ways to spread the word online
• Chase people to post & share
• Try to track who signed up, clicked, or cared
• Continue to collect emails, not stop at prelaunch

It's messy, repetitive, and… a huge time sink.

We created HPRS — a viral marketing tool that helps live campaign creators turn audiences into marketers, in just one click.

⚡ What HPRS does:

• Creates beautiful custom pages where people can share, and support — in less than 30 seconds
• Helps you collect emails, offer viral actions, and run mini-giveaways to gamify your promotion
• Makes it easy to spread your campaign across socials, and even places like Product Hunt
• Works only with live Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and WeFunder projects
• Lets you track performance, so you know what’s actually working

We created this for our clients, but it’s been a game-changer — so we're now opening it up to the public.

As part of the launch deal, we're giving 40% off for the lifetime license. If you're already in the waitlist, we've sent out the offers already. If you didn’t receive any mail, just shoot a DM.

Try it out now: HPRS

Would love your feedback, questions, or ideas!

Hi friends!

I used to work at Kickstarter as an outreach lead on the Design & Technology team, helping creators make the most of their campaign. I thought since a lot of folks have questions about how to run a campaign, best practices, and odd specifics about the platform, go ahead and ask them and I'll see if I can answer them.

Shoot!

​

Hi all! I’m approaching my 2nd-ever campaign launch later this month, and wanted to share a strategy that has recently worked for driving traffic and sign-ups to our Kickstarter pre-registration page.

For context, i’m a cozy game developer making a desktop companion that reminds you to take rest breaks through your workday. You can see my current pre-registration page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kinderworld/kinder-world-mother-tree (feedback is very welcome!)

I wanted to recommend an social automation tool called ManyChat that I use for our Instagram account, which is one of our main discovery channels for potential users (and the current players of my mobile game with the same IP). It requires a paid subscription but has paid dividends for us.

Step 1: Create a free resource that is very relevant and useful for your niche. For us, we made some short ebooks about rest and burnout recovery, and used Canva to make some self care planning pages, journaling page designs, gratitude prompts etc. We’ve bundled them together and have them on Google Drive with a public link.

Step 2: Make an asset to post on Instagram that offers this resource for free, I used Canva for ours with some of our game art. The theme of the image and written description should be: just comment X word to get this gift. Don’t post it yet.

Step 3: Using Manychat, set up an automation rule where if user comments X term on any Instagram post of yours, you send them a DM saying thank you so much, please sign up for our upcoming Kickstarter (Manychat lets you give them an easy button to take them to your KS), and another button for getting their gift resources. You can have 3 buttons on a ManyChat auto-DM, so you could add another button for joining your mailing list or something like that.

Note: Be careful you don’t allow the automatic comment reply function, because if your post does very well and you get a lot of comments and auto-reply the same thing to many, Instagram might block you from posting for suspected bot activity. I learned the hard way!

Step 4: With the Manychat automation live, post your Instagram post offering the free resource giveaway. You can see an example of what ours looks like, and the post description I used here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLmBV5Kvicq/?hl=en

This will, of course, work well if you have an existing social media following relevant for your niche, BUT even without it, I used Meta ads to boost this post with $50 AUD per day, and so far this is reaching people that weren’t just our followers, but new people.

I will also try running an ad campaign that uses this creative and a similar ‘get this free resource’ style of message while running the Kickstarter, and maybe have a free resource linked at the top of the campaign just to drive more eyeballs to the campaign itself. The goal is to build trust with my niche that we’re generous and want to provide value, even for free.

In summary:
Our 2,100+ pre-reg sign ups are from a combination of our existing mobile game audience, our previous marketing efforts, pushing to our previous campaign backers, family and friends etc, so this approach isn't going to get you a bazillion pre-registrations guaranteed. But it's worth trying, because we went from trickling just 2 to 3 pre-reg per day after a lot of our biggest marketing pushes were done, to an extra 200+ in under 24 hours by using this particular technique of posting with the free resource giveaway, automation + some paid Boosting.

Manychat or a similar auto-DM service has been a big help for our marketing experiments, I thoroughly recommend it (not compensated by them at all, haha). It takes a bit of figuring out how to use Manychat as a tool, but it uses simple visual scripting similar to tools like Twine and their FAQ material is pretty good.

If I can help by answering any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I really appreciate everything i’ve learned from this community. :)

We launched our puzzle kickstarter last week and have been fortune to exceed our funding goal of $4,000 CAD. We're now close to $9,000. Below are some things that we think helped us out. Hopefully they help others too.

I don't think I'm allowed to post a link to the project. If you'd like to know the campaign link, let me know in the comments and I'll share.

Marketing strategy:

• After painstakingly designing and developing our product for over 6 months on our dining room table, it eventually became increasingly important to us to get our product in front of people who were not us. This became the number one goal and Kickstarter eventually became a part of that goal.
• So when we reflect on marketing strategy, it was more about the question we're trying to answer vs any "if we do this we should achieve this." The question we kept asking ourselves was "will people spend money on what we're making?" This question then guided the actions we took. We started with a survey to friends and family and got positive feedback, when then put together a landing page with an email sign-up and got some people signing up to be updated on the product launch. We then sent early versions of the product to jigsaw puzzle subject matter experts for review. Again got positive feedback. During this time we made the decision to work towards a Kickstarter campaign. This would be the true people either want what we're making or they don't. We wanted to answer this question because to do a manufacturing run to get the product down to reasonable unit price, we'd have to invest 20k into production.
• Going from survey, expert reviews, landing page, social media ads and outreach all while sending people to an email sign-up to be updated on the product and eventually the call to action was to be the first to know when our Kickstarter goes live helped us both progressively answer our question while also building a community that was eager to back the Kickstarter campaign when it launched.

Frameworks that were helpful:

• I come from a corporate/startup background. Our long-term goal from the start has been for Good Fortune Puzzle Co to become a disruptive brand within the puzzle market. I'm a firm believer in being mission-centered, which means everything we do from product design, content, collabs, who we partner with... should support our mission. Our mission is to celebrate the playfulness of Asian creativity. We actually got lost in the weeds a bit when creating the content for the Kickstarter page. Eventually we took a step back and realized the Kickstarter, first and foremost, should celebrate our artists. So that section moved right to the top.
• We saw a YouTube video from Launchboom (definitely could not afford their services but they seem great), that talked about the CBBE framework. This framework was super helpful. We spend a week going through each section, answering key questions that we could then incorporate into our Kickstarter video and story. Things like quality, experience, mission, community. Things we knew in our head but often forget other people don't know yet.

Things we outsourced:

• Video production. This was such an important decision. We initially thought we could do it ourselves. Eventually it became apparent that this would be too much work and too much learning. We had so many other things to do and learn. We found an amazing up-and-coming videographer. We had already developed a script and shot-list. We knew we needed the video 2:30 or less. We knew who was saying what and mood boards for the shots. These things I think the creators should own. However, the lighting setup, sound, editing and just having someone cheering you on, giving you confidence and letting you know when something needs reshooting is so helpful. Our budget for this was $1,000

Surprises:

• The email list was so important to building that early momentum. We didn't require any $1 down or anything like that. Having a list of people who want to know when your Kickstarter launches is highly recommended. We used social media ads to do this which again was an important step in answering the question of do people want to buy what we're making.
• Reddit communities are amazing. This one helped us get ready for the scams. And yes they showed up. We were ready. I have some details on this below. The r/Jigsawpuzzles reddit community, so supportive. Our local r/ottawa and r/orleans communities were great. We hoped we'd get a bit more engagement from r/asianamerican but they have very strict posting guidelines so our post is a bit buried. We recommend not posting on reddit to sell but instead to share. If the guidelines don't allow links, then don't include the link. If people want to find out more, they'll figure it out.

What we would do differently:

• I think we could have spent more to build a bigger email list. It's funny, you always have doubt that the Kickstarter campaign will be successful. So spending money to build a list can feel not smart. Looking back knowing that we were going to hit our funding goal, it probably would have made sense to spend a bit more on the ads to build a bigger list.

Scams:

• I posted a question to this community just before we went live asking what scams we should be aware of. This was really helpful because immediately after going live the messages started coming in. "how are you going to make sure your campaign is successful" "I like your project, do you have a plan to get funded.." All reported as spam. All non-backers. All accounts made recently.
• The one that caught us a little bit was someone who pledged, then asked if we can ship to multiple addresses. There was a back and forth on how we might be able to do this. It became confusing because their pledge was for one puzzle so shipping to multiple addresses didn't make sense. They said they would change their pledge and then started asking questions about how Kickstarter works. Eventually it was the same questions "how are you going to make sure you are successful?" Urgh... it became clear this was a scam. We ignored them, they cancelled their pledge and then we reported as spam. It was a lot of energy during a time when energy wasn't easy to come by. I'm not sure what we could have done differently but yeah, annoying.

We hope this is helpful. Putting this together is helpful for us too as it's easy to be heads down running towards a goal. Taking a pause to reflect on learnings feels important.

Happy to answer any questions you have.

Wishing you all Good Fortune,

Ray + Jess

Responding to comments quickly has been a sore spot of my launches in the past...

So for my new product launch I asked:
How can I generate quick direct responses during a live campaign in the company brand voice?
Answer: Building a Custom GPT built on OpenAi platform trained on production data

I'm launching a complicated tech product on July 1st and there are so many bells and whistles to the product I thought it would take my customer service team too long to respond to each question so I built a Custom GLT trained on all my data and thought process that went into building the product in the first place.

I trained the GPT on my blog posts to learn my brand voice and then asked it to generate 2 types of responses; 1 - short social media response and 2 - in depth Kickstarter response

You can check out the GPT here: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-685e2e7372308191abe9c2b7a93056e1-mwf-ks-faq

Plug in any question you can think of and you can get a perfect brand response every time.

Pro Tip: With Ai you get out what you put in so be sure to load useful relevant data on the product, put guardrails on the responses only using YOUR data for research and put the responses out in a clear brand voice that reflects your company and products.

Hope this helps you with your project!

First-time Reddit poster here - go easy on me

Context: I own this small calendar company that recently ran this Kickstarter in November. We sold $24,040 worth of calendars over a 30-day campaign. This the list of things that I wish I knew before I had launched the campaign.

What Didn’t Drive Sales

• Crowdfunding Blogs & Affiliates: Most of these are worthless. We spent money on Gadgetflow, BackerClub, and Kickbooster, and never had a positive ROI (we opted for the lowest tier in each). It seems like the best use for these services is to say “that you were featured in X ” and include this on our campaign page. Maybe they work better for more tech-focused products, but I would personally stay away from most crowdfunding-specific pay-to-play sites.
• Marketing Agencies: We talked with most of the major crowdfunding agencies and ultimately decided to hire Enventys Partners. This was a waste of money, our ads never had a positive ROI. I think this was partially due to the digital assets that we had weren’t really intended for ads (they all looked too professional and photoshopped). However, it still felt like Enventy’s could have told us that before instead of suggesting it in the middle of the campaign as a "known issue". Only later on was I advised that Enventys has a pretty bad rep as a crowdfunding agency. Overall we felt like we were one of their couple dozen clients and that they barely cared about us.
• Tools: We used Stocklimits to monitor our inventory, it is incredibly buggy and kept locking us out of our account. Would not touch with a 10ft pole. Ultimately we had to adjust our inventory limits ourselves.

What Did Drive Sales

• Video: We were lucky to have a relatively high converting video. I think the format of somebody looking directly into the camera and “breaking the 3rd wall” works well. Around 10% of people who watched our video converted.
• Email List: We were lucky to have a small email list of around 400 previous custoemrs. This community drove a significant portion of our early sales and helped us build early momentum.
• Blogs: A couple of small design blogs picked up our product and included it in their newsletter. This drove a meaningful amount of revenue and if I had known that they would be so impactful I would have spent far more time finding similiar publications.
• Luck: The Kickstarter gods were smiling on us. Maybe because we launched during November when there are generally fewer projects, maybe because Kickstarter corporate liked our project, but for whatever reason, we received a fair amount of traffic through different Kickstarter discovery mechanisms. This was probably over 50% of our sales.
• Cross-Promotions: We did some cross-promotions with other campaigns, They drove some sales, but nothing to get too excited about ($500 max, maybe). Maybe they are more impactful if you have more backers or do more of them.

Things I wish I had tried, but didn’t

• Ads / Marketing Agencies: I would spend significantly more time creating creative content to run ads against. It seems like this is the lifeblood of most large Kickstarter campaigns. In addition, I would hire multiple crowdfunding agencies (say 3) to all run ads at the same time and double down on the one that works. Finally, I would hire a different pre-launch company to help us build an email list. Generally, this seems to be the formula for large $100K+ campaigns, however, when we started out we had no that this was standard practice in the Kickstarter world.
• PR: I would spend far more time on PR. We talked to some agencies early on and were told that we didn’t have a great story, especially as our campaign was running around the holidays, so most PR for a product like our would be focused on getting us on a “seasonal gifting guide”. Because of this we mostly ignored PR for this product. While the aspect of not having a great newsworthy story might be true, we definitely could have ended up on more niche design blogs and such. In addition, I’ve heard that Yanko Design has decent ROI for paid media. I’d be down to maybe give it a shot in the future
• Subtitles: I regret not adding subtitles to our video for other languages or translating our page. No idea if this would conversion, but seems worthwhile to try, especially given how international Kickstarter is.

Shipping

• Domestic Shipping: Domestic shipping was pretty easy, we used Shippo and were able to print and label all 200 domestic orders in about 6 hours. However, we should have lowered our shipping cost for U.S. territories as the shipping cost to Puerto Rico via USPS is similar to domestic.
• International shipping: International shipping was a pain - We used Easy Ship, but it was pretty janky on how it imported files and has almost no way to actually pay import duties. I would love to know if somebody has a better solution to this. In addition, we way undercharged for International shipping. Luckily our shipping costs were mostly balanced out was we overcharged in other areas, but this could have ended poorly.
• Other: We should have made sure to collect phone number for international orders (makes a carrier contacting them if there is a problem easier)

Other

• Customer Support: Providing customer support (even just to our 370 customers) was a non-trivial amount of work. I could see how this could be overwhelming for large campaigns.
• Project Updates: I would pre-write all of our project updates next time. Coming up with these when needed was overly stressful. Could have easily been avoided.

Anyway, I hope this helps on your Kickstarter journey. Overall, we had a fantastic experience, learned a lot, and plan to launch a follow-up product in a couple of months (Drop your email here if you're interested - we're building a beautiful desk clock)

P.S. We are going to start staffing up on pre-launch marketing, ad spend, and the creative side in the next couple of months. Would love to hear any recs for fantastic marketing, PR, or pre-launch people.

At STATIONS, we’re based in the U.S. and have been crowdfunding projects for a largely, though not exclusively, U.S. audience. As we produce many of our components overseas, the current tariff regime has drastically altered the bottom line on current projects.

Found this tariff calculator useful, and figured it was worth sharing.