Welcome Back
I am, by no means, an expert when it comes to Kickstarter.
I still have quite a bit to learn, but I think with my 9th campaign coming up very soon, I have a good sense of what I need to do to get a page together.
There's more to it all than just the page itself, but it’s the most critical part of any Kickstarter campaign. You can do everything right, but if you get your page wrong, you’ve wasted your energy (and possibly money). The Kickstarter page is your best opportunity to prove you’ll actually deliver on what you’re promising.
The best way to learn: launch a campaign yourself.
The second best way is to learn from those that have done it before. I had a lot of help before I got started. Between
ComixLaunch program, Matt Garvey's YouTube channel, Dave Cook’s ebook and direct feedback from creators like Pat Shand, I've been able to cobble together a process that I have been iterating and improving on with each subsequent campaign.I've already shared quite a bit with the presentations I've done both at TCAF and Thought Bubble last year. That was more of a holistic view of getting your comics off the ground and how crowdfunding might help get you there.
Today, I want to take a focused look at building the page. There are some tricks that I use to get everything together relatively quickly that I think might help those of you who are thinking about launching a campaign.
If you’re not, you might find it interesting to see what goes into building the page.
Before we go behind the paywall, let's talk about why I use Kickstarter:
Why Kickstarter?
There's a bit of a fallacy that Kickstarter is “direct sales”.
It technically is, but much like Amazon, you don't actually own any of the information that you get from backers. All of it is retained by Kickstarter itself. This is even more true when you're collecting pre-launch followers, like I've been asking for From Parts Unknown #4.
Yes, you get to speak to backers directly through Messaging and Project Updates, but it's still up to Kickstarter, and its algorithm, as to whether you'll ever find those backers - or even convert followers to backers. There’s also no guarantee they’ll follow you off of Kickstarter either, though you can ask via surveys. (Thanks to those of you that found your way here that way!)
Like any platform that isn’t outright owned by you, there's a game to it. The good news is: it's a game that seems to be tilted towards comic creators.
There's a big community that's been fostered and has a reputation built for quality indie comics on Kickstarter that you won't be able to find anywhere else. (Comixology may have been the closest version of this before Amazon imploded it.)
Since it's such a well-trotten path, there's more than enough information for you to get started without having to do it completely blind. Even better, many of the creators on Kickstarter, including myself, are more than happy to help you get started. A rising tide lifts all boats and that couldn’t be more true than in the comics industry. The barrier to entry is low, platform-wise, and the support is high. That's more than you could ask for from any creative endeavor.
There's a certain way to do things to make sure that you're going to get attention from the Kickstarter algorithm, and more importantly, from backers. There's a set of unwritten rules that I'm going to do my best to write out today.
If that's of any interest to you, join us behind the paywall.
If not, we'll be back again on Wednesday with a look into the Pesto Comics Release Calendar and how I'm making some big changes in how we do business.
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