How do you build a successful Kickstarter campaign? Today, I'm going to
talk about 3 things that I think everybody needs to do prior to launching
a Kickstarter. These things will almost guarantee your success, if you follow
through with them. If you like this sort of information, I wrote a book called - Unnatural Talent -
Here. And it's in the show notes below. Let's get started. So I launched my first Kickstarter campaign
about six or eight months after Kickstarter started. At that time about
$3,000 was about the maximum amount that comics could get on the platform. So I
put that as my goal. Sure enough I made $12,600 and it really changed my
opinion of this whole crowd funding thing. Couple years later I finished my
second graphic novel, reMIND 2, and to my surprise it raised a whopping
$107,000. I attributed a lot of the success of this to the fact
that: Kickstarter just hit its first million dollar campaign around that same
time. So a lot of hype was in on Kickstarter at that time.
Couple years later: I made a brand new book, a new series, and I raised another
$51,000 on it. I'm about ready to launch my next campaign for Volume 2 of
Sithrah. So.That is me. Where do we start with Kickstarter? Well look at these two
comics, what do they have in common? They're both amazing! Right? They're
amazing content, and you have to start with good content. A lot of people have
good ideas, and they think they're amazing ideas, and these ideas are all in
their brain, and they try to present their ideas to everyone and pitch it and say:
"Give me money from my idea. I promise it's going to be amazing." But if people can't
see that it's amazing for themselves, then they probably won't back it. The only way
that someone will raise a lot of money for amazing idea that hasn't been
finished is, if they've already built that trust with their audience. They've
already proven that they have amazing ideas in the past and they followed
through with those amazing ideas. If people don't want to share it, then it's
not going to have
very much luck. This is a quote from an ancient Roman philosopher "Luck is what
happens when preparation meets opportunity." Now people say I've had a
lucky career, but I think it's just because I've been working in it for so
long, that I had finished things. I'd made books, and comics, and animation. And every
time I would finish something, an opportunity would present itself because
it had saw the work that I had done. Kickstarter was the same thing.
Kickstarter came along after I had finished - reMIND - and so that opportunity
presented itself. And I was able to jump on it because I was prepared. So then the
question is: How do you get prepared for Kickstarter? You gotta start by building
a tribe of thousand true fans as Kevin Kelly's says. He said: "Anyone producing
works of art needs to acquire only 1,000 true fans to make a living." And
true fans, the definition, is a little unclear. I mean people can have different
ways of looking at it. But ideas that these people will buy everything you
make. You don't need a million fans in order to make a living from art anymore,
especially because of the internet and being able to cut out a lot of these middlemen.
Now don't worry, we'll get to Kickstarter. We'll get there. This is just how you have to
prepare before you go to Kickstarter. So how do you build your tribe? Eh?
1. Give away everything for free.
Put your best work online for free. Everyone likes to try stuff before they buy it.
You'll sell to your tribe that you've built on Kickstarter later. But you have to
build that tribe. 2. Spend months or years to finish your book. Make it count.
This is my first book, I put a lot of time and energy into it. Because of that people
actually wanted to spend money on it. But again, I didn't try to convince people
with some imaginary idea I had. I had about 80% or 90% of the pages done when I
launched my Kickstarter campaign, and there was a bunch of people who are
waiting for me to print a book. The third thing you gotta do before you start a
Kickstarter, when you're trying to build your tribe is, 3. to start a mailing list.
And do this as soon as you can.
Start a mailing list the first time you go on the internet if you can.
First time you launch your website. Cause these are people who you're gathering their
information, their emails from, who are waiting to buy from you. So you put a
little banner up on your website says, "join my mailing list, and I'll let you
know when my book is out." Your mailing list is one of your most important
assets because these are repeat customers. Our repeat customers are the
best customers too. They're people waiting to buy from you. And just so you know:
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat YouTube - these are Not mailing lists. A
mailing list is a group of people who have given you their confidential
information.
Their emails, because they want to know when you have something new for them. I
use the software Aweber. MailChimp is also a great one. MailChimp is actually
free for the first so many emails that you have collected. AWeber you have to
pay $10 a month from the start. But they're both very robust of really good
systems.You don't want to send out emails to a mailing list from your
personal email because it will start getting blocked. And then your personal
email will start getting blocked by spam filters, so you need to use some sort of
mailing list software. So when do we get to Kickstarter right? I mean... Yeah. That's what
we're talking about - Kickstarter. So why am I talking about
not Kickstarter? Well, okay. All this stuff is in preparation to Kickstarter. You
need to do all this stuff before you even come to Kickstarter, otherwise
you'll have a hard time with Kickstarter. So we've built our fan base, built a
mailing list, we've finished a book.
Now can we go to Kickstarter? Yes! In the next video, in the series, I'll
talk about the four ingredients, that I think every successful Kickstarter needs. And then
after that, we'll talk about the 20 Kickstarter strategies. Subscribe if you like this
sort of thing. I'll talk to you later.