How to create a successful Kickstarter campaign

Meet Amber Rix, a 14 year old girl from Tucson, Arizona.  On December 6, 2012, she launched her own Kickstarter campaign.  Her project consisted on the creation of metal, sharp-cornered dices to be produced at a local manufacturing facility.  While there are are many dice out there, Amber approached her project with a deliberate intention to offer high-precision dice for serious gamers.

With little press coverage, Amber’s project was averaging $4,259 in pledges per day.  The $3K goal was reached on December 7 (the second day after her project launched), and the project eventually closed with $153,328 in “funding”.

There are several variables that affect the monetary outcome of a project.  Some of them are specifically linked to the quality of the following:

• Video
  
• Audio
  
• Picture
  
• Copy (the text with the project descriptions)
  
• Project creator (is he/she trustworthy?)
  
• Marketing (e.g. how many of your target market are being exposed to your work?)
  
  

While Amber did an outstanding job at some of the variables mentioned previously, we (respectively) give Amber a 1/10 on video quality.

After researching this case, we have come to the conclusion that the best indicator of success and the variable with the most financial impact is: Do people want what you are offering?  The most successful crowdfunding projects consistently have “yes” as an answer to that question.  Although Kickstarter is a project funding platform, psychologically, many pledgers see Kickstarter as a pre-selling platform. Therefore, we propose that the most important element of your campaign is simply your product.

But how would you know if there is demand unless you get a lot of eyes (the right ones) to your project page?