Kickstarting Cobypic & what I learned (in comments)(kickstarter.com)

Kickstarting Cobypic & what I learned (in comments)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/benwtnb/cobypic-color-by-picture/dashboard

1 comments

Cobypic's Kickstarter is probably not going to reach funding in 24 hours, so I wanted to share a few things that I learned through the process…

2) Do keep the video light - Don't weigh it down with fine print or details. Your goal should be to entertain with your project so people want to share and gain belief. Cover the (majority) of the rewards in the text and probably the funding reasons too. Maybe 3 minutes max, a long play time will scare viewers away. Leave reason for them to read and for now just shake their hand.

3) Leave a longer timeline - We launched with a 11 day timeline, since we needed to have the funds (14 day wait) and hopefully release close to the next iPhone's release date. Most potential backers probably don't look at the launched date, and when they see your in a single digit days left and have single digit % of backing they might be scared off. (>21 days?)

1) Don't do only $1 rewards - This one may sound obvious, but we launched for the first week with backing levels of $1. This was an experiment to see if we could show the casual backer that they were important too, and because as much as the money a community was our goal.

I'm pretty sure this hurt our chances of getting support from Kickstarter content managers too, which can be vital to success. Once you're off the front page of "Recently Launched" it's difficult to be discovered within the site without their support. We did have coverage of our project on some great blogs and review sites, but convincing a non-kickstarter to become one is much harder than gaining a current Kickstarter.

Overall though the Kickstarter was great, and helped push Cobypic closer to shipping, by creating real world deadlines and having us create a support network of press for release. (some are waiting on promo codes though… it would be great if Apple had some built in TestFlight feature, as many won't take the plunge)

Hopefully that helps anyone that is thinking about Kickstarting in the future.

One Last Thing) A Kickstarter url is great for emails and a place new contacts are comfortable visiting.

edit: formatting