Kickstarter Campaign

Hi, I am going to start a Kickstarter campaign in an attempt to fund a website related to pyrography (the art of burning wood) where people will send their own photos or images and receive them burned in wood. The whole process will be hand-made. The reason I am trying to build this business is because in our "digital world" this art is dying.
I have never launched a Kickstarter campaign before and I would like some advice from some people who have attempted it or people who have backed (or not) another campaign.
To get a view about what is pyrography I am uploading an image (sorry for the quality I have just taken it!). Thank you for your time.

 

Hi Grecko,

sounds like a very nice and unique idea. I'd back it. What is key for any kind of fundraising nowadays in my opinion is a believable, honest introduction-part and a video explaining your desire. Making a short video about the process, outcome, what it takes and why it's awesome (just show some nice examples) would be a good way to go. I don't have exact statistics to support my arguments, but I'd say a proper done kickstarter-campaign with a video and nice pictures is far more likely to succeed. I can totally see it succeeding btw, since it fits a special art niche.

 

Agree with the poster above. Make sure the pictures of your art work are clear / of high quality. No excuses. Your introduction and your pictures will make or kill your campaign.

 

I can imagine this being a costly and lengthy process, so make an effort to elaborate your situation and what you would need in order to achieve it. I would recommend finding local filmmakers, maybe you pay them $100-$200 for a nice little interview-setup, some documentation on the overall process, so that it already looks professional. Nowadays a legit presentation can be achieved by filming on DSLR cameras, so that is definitely something you should be aiming for.

 

Thank you both for your feedback.
I totally agree with your advice about video and I thought that it would be a nice feature to show a fast-forward video of the process from a piece of wood to the final artwork. Also, each customer will receive a video of the process to ensure that it is hand-made.

 

can you please contact me Grecko? would love to talk to you about my marketing / advertising company

 

Very neat idea!

It is similar to one I am helping out with now. I have been helping one of my colleagues are running a Kickstarter for a new type of shirts based on sublimation with a new infusion technology into the inks. I won't post the Kickstarter project link here to avoid self promotion. We're at the point where we want to boost our press coverage and I found this video which we are in the middle of creating our press release to send to the media.

Long story short, here are some of my tips:
- Make your sales pitch phenomenal -- without an incredible sales pitch, there isn't much point to promoting the Kickstarter because it won't convert (meaning they will not be sold, and will not donate)
- Make your pitch video phenomenal (if you do not have one, you're at a massive disadvantage)
- Get press coverage (which the video I found helps with)
- Add the press coverage to your sales pitch
- Get social buzz, and I mean tons of it because ultimately crowdfunding is a social thing so you need to be all over social. As a sidebar, one of the previous Kickstarter projects I helped with, we used the media outlets to post on social media so they are a) different sites than your Kickstarter and your own website b) people are much more willing to click on a link to open a site on ABC, FOX, etc. than your own

Hope this helps!

 

Im interested in your project. I often am on pintrest looking at various woodworking projects. I am curious, what sort of rewards did you have in mind? What sort of funding were you after? Have you got an idea of what it costs to build your site, or had quotes done for themes or anything?

I did launch a kickstarter campaign in the past to see if there was any interest in just one of my software ideas.
The software product already exists, and is in use by a multi-million dollar company, the funds were needed simply to add in more features, (integrated phone app) and make it a more polished product.
I know there is a market for it, and I thought kickstarter could connect me to people interested in what my software could do, and will be able to do in the future. However, the ONLY people who came to my campaign were spammers.

Thats right, ZERO people came interested in backing the idea. ALL the people who saw it were spammers. All promising great success and stuff IF I pay them $xxx to promote and advertise the campaign. I probly had 10 people in the first day selling me their crappy services, ranging in price from low hundreds to around $1k.
In the end, I did not hire anyone. These were random people that I did not know, and did not trust, who were simply saying whatever they felt they had to to try to make a sale. Not one of them was interested in taking a payment IF successful, all wanting up front cash. (at least one had done a copy/paste of a "oh your idea for [someone elses product] is soo good", and that shitted me no end.

I would LOVE to know the success rate of kickstarter campaigns that were NOT promoted. But, such is life.
IF you want to be successful, you will need to make sure you have $xxx so you can pay people to promote for you. I advise hiring more then one person, so that you have heaps of "buzz" about your product.

It also means you need to increase the costs of your rewards so that you can recover the money spent on promotion.

DO not use images by themselves. Best way to be successful is to have a video. Last I checked 2/3 of successful campaigns had videos, so aim for that. If you cannot do a good presentation video, look at hiring someone. Might cost you $100, for something such as a white board presentation highlighting why your product is good. All up, to be successful, expect to spend $1000 or more on videos, and promotions.

On another note, get a site started using wordpress using free subdomain, or start a facebook page for your idea. Promote your site (or facebook page) itself as much as you can, this way when you launch your kickstarter campaign, you ALREADY have an audience that you can tap into that is interested.