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My Kickstarter campaign has slowed to a crawl.
Pharl
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I realize I suck at marketing, so I've been trying to figure out what I can do to create some more awareness. But no matter what I do,people just click the little Facebook "Like"-button and think they've done their part.
How can I reach out to a bigger audience? What can I do to make more people interested?
Any advice would be welcomed with thanks!
-Pharl
How can I reach out to a bigger audience? What can I do to make more people interested?
Any advice would be welcomed with thanks!
-Pharl
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Did you make a good video to introduce the product or service?
Lastly, is there a fanbase out there already set to purchase said good or service, because if not, you missed the point of kickstarter. It's basically a way to get venture capital for something your people already want to buy, but you're not ready to drop the (x) investment on it, so you crowdsource it to them to cover the upfront costs as a pre order.
From what I know of Kickstarter, it's probably a matter of your reward tiers being bogus in some way. Maybe you're providing very little incentive to donate anything at all. Maybe it's just your low-level rewards that are unattractive, and the people who are clicking like would be willing to donate small amounts if they got something.
Or maybe your whole pitch just isn't very good. It's hard to say without seeing it (and I'm not sure if you can link it here without breaking the sitewhoring rules).
So I'm kind of curious if the reward tiers weren't as good as they could have been, or if maybe myself and my collaborator just don't understand marketing at all.
I think the main problem has been a lack of spreading the word around, but I'm clueless how to go about such things. And I want to be polite about it, so I'm not up in people's faces spamming the link and hoping for people more famous than I to do the heavy lifting.
-Pharl
Guess I should've thought of that a couple of years ago
Is there any legal way I could post the link on this forum, though? If nothing else it'd let people see what I'm talking about and let them give me more feedback towards what needs to be fixed.
-Pharl
But if you'd like to PM me the link, I'd be happy to take a look.
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Is this a finished product and you are going for distribution/production/publishing dollars?
Generally for a good kickstarter to work you want some good minor-small increment things like product price+1 dollar to +3 dollars to +5 dollars. If you have any rewards in the low dollar donation amounts make sure you wont kill yourself handing them out (digital only is a good option).
Plus as a general rule as you pointed out forum communities hate site whoring. But if you have been a member of a specific community for a long time you can probably get away with linking your project (yymv).
Also have you had your product reviewed?
No, this is not a finished product. I will not see a cent of the raised funds. It will all go towards the artist creating 150 pages.
And I appreciate all the help you guys are putting forth here, really!
edit: Oh, and I completely forgot to answer - There are no finished pages yet. The cover art is all that exists so far.
Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Last.fm | Pandora | LibraryThing | formspring | Blue Moon over Seattle (MCFC)
So thank you! It's not easy asking for help for something like this without people expecting me to try and spam the project at them.
edit: PS: You can post an ad with a link to your project in your signature and be a part of this community. People do click on those links here, so it's a good way to make people here at least aware of what you're doing.
If they like you and they like your work they'll be more likely to want to help you out.
...Yes, because that is spamming. Not only is it annoying, but it's ineffective.
The networking part of marketing (the the part that will ultimately drive traffic to your website / product / store / whatever) is all about the bolded statement: being part of communities first, and then offering whatever you've made as a service to those communities. Real, effective networks take time to build-up (months to years), and if you don't have any online presence, you'll need to talk with / hire someone who does so that they can market your product for you.
I host a podcast about movies.
There were a few things I saw that made me not want to back the project.
1. JohnnyCache is right, 25k is a pretty obscene amount for getting a comic printed up, though from your posts it sounds like this is to pay the artist.
2. You mention in the kickstarter that this is a passion project for the both of you, however it seems your artist is unwilling to do more then the cover unless he is paid? If he really was passionate about doing this, you think he could at least do a couple pages in his free time.
3. The biggest thing for me is the price/reward tiers. You are charging $75 just to get 6 22 page issues of the comic. I don't read a lot of comics, but I've bought the last 6 issues of The Walking Dead for $2.99 a pop. You are charging me $12.50 per 22 page issue, requiring me to buy 6 issues up front, without even being able to see a single page. You're also telling me that I won't receive this for a year and a half. This seems like insanity to me, and I honestly don't see why anyone would pay for that. I think you need to set much more realistic rewards if you're serious about getting this funded. Maybe the focus is more on getting people to simply pay for the online version? $5 is a lot more reasonable for that, but I'm used to looking at comics on the web for free, so even that can be a difficult sell, certainly without seeing more then the cover.
I recommend you rethink the pricing rewards tier, and get some sample pages finished to display.
Actually you get the previous tiers as well, as it says on the kickstarter page, so for 75$ you also get a T-Shirt, Poster, online season pass, and mention on the website. It is after 100$ that things get pretty ridiculous. 50$ extra for a trade paperback?
I think the big problem is that you are a writer/artist team that is new to the field and noone can guarantee that your comic won't be rubbish. Even well known comic artists put out crap every now and then.
It's not enough to just say in a couple of lines what your story is going to be about, if people do not know if you can actually write.
Who wants to fund something that might be awful created by someone they never heard about?
Best idea is to try to make a name for yourself first by actually getting the first issue of the comic done and out for free on your website. You need something to convince people and in this case you need more than a sales pitch.
It does seem like your artist is getting the bulk of that cash, and that's commendable, but if he's that mercenary about it (which isn't a bad thing at all, he should be) you can't really say it's his "passion project" as well. It also seems like you're paying him about $100 a page (x150 pages, 15K leaving you with 10K to print and you collect most of the profits) while that's a good deal, that's a HELL of a good deal. That's the kind of deal that most guys working for Marvel and DC get per page. ($100 a page, usually split between penciler, inker, etc)
Your artist is VERY talented, but relatively unknown. I saw his blog and he does cons and has a few other books but he's not a big name draw, so that's a lot of money to be tossing his way, especially since you have no real guarantee that the crowdsource community can see that this project will actually complete on schedule.
What I said in the PM was that you should consider getting him to work for less if he's willing to, or consider another artist, and release this book online for free. Release it over the next three years and put it out weekly and really build a community of five to ten thousand dedicated readers that would be willing to fund books and merchandise down the road.
I also recommended you look at what Mark Waid is doing over at Thrillbent, and for that matter, seeing as how the art quality and story seems to be very professional and on a higher level than other stuff I've seen, see if Mark or the Thrillbent team would be interested in hosting your comic. They're just starting out and right now they're DYING for some content I'm sure.
If this guy really wants to get famous for drawing comics, he should be willing to work out a better tier. You told me that he's the one running the campaign, and it looks like he's running it specifically to get his money up front. That's never going to work out. Lower the tier prices and make it so that you can get the trade for about $40, or you can buy single issues for $5 a piece, you can get the whole thing digitally for $10, and save the $50 and up tiers for the t-shirts and original art, also sketch cards, personalized books, etc. The Hardcover should not be more than $80 either.
Lastly, and I didn't say this in the PM. If the artist is running this, then let him put it on himself to gather the community to support him. Put the minimum backing amount at like five thousand instead of twenty five thousand, so you can ensure it gets backed, and that way anyone that wants a book can get one.
Seems like you should update more often, with samples of the the art and writing. It's a creative project, so show off your style - honestly that description put me off, like you just threw every 'hip' word into a blender, where samples would go a lot farther. For example, take G&T's Automata; trying to describe it sounds ridiculous, but they did an incredible job with the inking and story and I would buy the hell out of a novel.
So I guess I'd recommend more updates, more pieces up, and maybe consider changing your bios. Like I said, I haven't seen a lot of these, but they sounds more like dating profiles than a business biography.
Sadly we're not allowed to change reward tiers around as long as people have backed them, but we did add a bunch of new ones, including an all-digital tier which quite a few of you suggested. We also managed to get a video update up. Even though I sincerely hate being on the wrong side of a camera! Haha! So... Thank you again! From both of us. You've really helped out a lot!
So I guess it's happening after all!
Thanks, everyone!