Why do you use Kickstarter? (KS VS IGG)

[ryanteck]

I notice that quite a few sellers on here use kickstarter and haven't seen one Indiegogo campaign on the fundraisers page.

My question to you is why Kick starter?

Here's my pro views on IndieGoGo and Kickstarter as I've fund-raised a successful campaign on both.

Indiegogo

• Better Analytics than Kickstarter, IGGs built in analytics were better AND you even could use Google Analytics!
• Payment as soon as the goal is reached allowing you to order the day it finishes.
• While people do allowing multiple units are against Kickstarters rules. IGG have no rules against this.
• IGG embed youtube video's instead of uploading to them. The benefit is that all shares contribute to the same video total.
• IGG has a dedicated gallery for more videos and pictures of your product in action.
• I can't seem to format text colours in kickstarter where as I can on IGG
• Frequently asked questions can be already on the page ready for launch.

Kickstarter

• Just because its called kickstarter.
• Risks and challenges are their own dedicated area
• Frequently Asked Questions are a separate block.
• Can set the finish date instead of X days until finish

So what do you like about kickstarter?

[emilepetrone]

To even back up further, why crowdfunding? Coming at this from the Tindie side, I'm still a bit perplexed about crowdfunding and would love to hear why so many makers like it over just making X units and selling them, scaling up the old fashioned way..

[ryanteck]

I think its the fact it helps reduce the gamble I make. I need to get high enough order QTY to get the price right. Otherwise I have to invest a few thousand with a product that may not be successful.

[emilepetrone]

Right - so really it is get orders before mfg to ensure you aren't sitting on inventory?

The confusing part to me is that the risk assumed by the maker is basically just passed on to the consumer. The consumer never knows if/when their order will ship - even though they have paid. Maybe I'm looking into it too much, but it just seems like we're replacing one problem for another - not actually making the process any better or more secure.

One idea is if a maker has shown the ability to sell product in the past, they get funding (an advance) from a 3rd party towards their next project (like the record industry in a way). That would solve the issue of upfront capital while pushing the risk to one company vs distributing it amongst customers. It's just an idea I'm kicking around that Tindie could do. What do you think?

[ryanteck]

Partially its also a promotion technique. No kickstarter = less hype = less promotion = less sales.

I mean the money is and it isn't an issue in some ways its the fact that I have to gamble it. I'd have to sell 300 units to break even with this product so I'd have to sell 300 units in the first month of it being on sale. I'd be sitting on around 700 units after so that's not an issue.

I've done 3 successful fundraisers in total and all have succeeded. I worry if I launch the next product myself I wouldn't break even as theirs not as much of the back it to support the product cause.

Tl;dr, Fundraising is overrated but is what makes sellers want to fundraise.

[ryanteck]

I have to say I forgot to put in my response from the other way.

Why not crowdfund?

• Less risk. Only loose the prototyping cost (or even fund all of the prototyping)
• Not subject to the usual SOGA in the UK.
• Big publicity

There's a lot more too.

Thanks

[emilepetrone]

Thats true as well...but where do you get the promotion for the crowdfunding? Are you saying sites will promote you more with a crowdfunding campaign? I guess the real question is if it's hype, who/what is causing the hype that makes crowdfunding drive more sale?

Also not sure what this means - "I worry if I launch the next product myself I wouldn't break even as theirs not as much of the back it to support the product cause."

[ryanteck]

I'm not sure it just happens with crowdfunding but if you don't crowdfund would the blogs and publicity all direct to you or not bother to cover?

Reward of the second part:
If I fund the next product myself I don't know if I would break even. There's no drive to buy one where with a crowdfunding campaign theirs a drive.

[emilepetrone]

I'm not sure it just happens with crowdfunding but if you don't crowdfund would the blogs and publicity all direct to you or not bother to cover?

Right so with your analytics from the past projects, what sites drove the most traffic/hype? What would cause a site to promote a campaign over a product going on sale?

[ryanteck]

It was a mix of social media and direct traffic. Here's the stats I got for IGG and KS.

The first fundraiser you have the stats to

[emilepetrone]

Ok cool so let me see if I'm reading this properly:

On IGG

• Almost 50% of IGG came from your own email list
• 2/3 came in the first week

On Kickstarter

• Again close to 50% from driving your own traffic

My questions on the people that came from IGG & Kickstarter directly

• Did they hear about the project before they went looking on those platforms?

Higher level take aways

• It doesn't appear outside press drives much sales
• Email seems to be the king maker - without that, and it would be a big problem
• Within the first week, you basically know how well it will do
• Hype dies quickly

One more question

• What % of sales in the first few days came from email? All?
• My guess emailing your mailing list drives most initial orders, and gets you over the goal
• I don't think your data is very different from the norm (with most people driving most of their crowdfunding success in the first 24 hrs to get over the goal quickly)

What do you think?

[emilepetrone]

(As an aside, I really appreciate you taking the time in this thread. It's incredibly interesting to dig into this. Many thanks!)

[emilepetrone]

Add more crowdfunders to this thread... Interested to hear what you all think too...

@arachnidlabs @femtoduino @digistump @arcbotics @tinycircuits @ozzmaker @jkicklighter @SolderingSunday

[ryanteck]

Direct traffic is partially email but for the TurtlTeck I did have the local newspaper feature it. The strange thing is that emails actually show as referred from Gmail, Yahoo or Mailchimp.

One of the reasons I preferred Indiegogo as you can see is due to the amount of analytics it has compared to KS.

the benefit is that it also uses Google Analytics. Since the end around 4,000 hits have been from Google searches of the robot kit. Part of me does wonder if my day to day sales would be higher as most link to the IGG more.

Forgot to include the other graph.

I found with Kickstarter the hype actually was bigger at the end. Possibly due to their 48 hour notification reminder?

[emilepetrone]

Hmm what happened on Sept 9? Looks like something happened.

48 hr email - who would they email? People watching the campaign?

Also that is odd about breaking out the email like that - for the simple reason we know that people aren't typing in the url manually. My guess is that some sort of string was appended to the URL in some cases which they could track?

Do you have any data on the hype? Like # of tweets / fb posts etc? Anything to measure that? Based off sheer pounds spent, it would seem like the IGG campaign was more successful? Maybe total page views?

[ryanteck]

The IGG raised around £1k more in total, as you can see the breakdown of stats are better.

Kickstarter sends the email to everyone who stars the project 48 hours before it finished which was the 9th if IRC.

But the KS was also a cheaper product. The next product I'm funding is £6 + PNP (£1UK or £4 INT)

Not sure about number of tweets. Can get a graph for the IGG for the social stats.

I also forgot to say the benefit of the first fundraiser.

Tindie Fundraiser
Where it all began (just over a year ago).
I really loved the fact it was done on the QTY and not the money. For my next project this is more important to me.
Also found it the easiest system to use. No issues with addresses or surveys (which only KS has. IGG does this right).

Just going to get the other graph.

[ryanteck]

Here's the other graph. Seems like it was an awful lot of Twitter.

[emilepetrone]

Got it - so the tweets generated 22 contributions out of 1171 sessions. 1.8% conversion rate on Twitter. Just looked on Twitter, it looks like your initial tweet was the most popular one.

~2/3 contributions were from email/twitter + more that went to Indiegogo first (have to believe some of those knew about you and went that root).

Digging deeper-

Total Contributions: 106
Total Visits: 9,070
Referrals: 2,785

Twitter: 22 contributions (20.7% of orders)
Twitter Sessions: 1,171 sessions (12.9% of traffic)

Guessing then email has the highest conversion rate, with the other referrals having a much, much lower conversion rate.

[ryanteck]

Yeah I'd say so. For that I used Rastrack the first time and I think maybe for the Turtlteck.

Now I have an list of customers who have signed up to my mailchimp instead. Its got a lot less but they sign up to it so hopefully a Higher converstion rate (And I can track it more).

Very interested in what the other sellers have to say and about the original IGG vs KS

[digistump]

Thanks for the invite to this thread Emile - very interesting to see some views and numbers on IGG.

As you can see in my numbers below I've had a bit of a different KS experience - and it points to why I've stuck with KS (among other reasons).

• (plus) Most of my pledges come from people on KS, not from my updates on
  past projects/direct emails (though those sometimes are more when
  combined) - regardless lots of traffic from KS directly and that is
  where I get most of my new customers.
• (minus) as KS has grown blog and media coverage is less of a given and I've had to work a lot harder to get it. The Digispark I did nothing for media coverage and got lots of it. The other two I tried hard to get it and didn't get a ton.
• (major plus to me) KS has only fixed funding and has at least a reputation of more reliable projects. I browse IGG frequently and see a lot more projects that are impossible/improbable/only showing CG renders and almost always they have flex funding - I think that scares away a lot of first time users/browsers - which are a big part of my KS backers. KS's very clean style also lends to its professional feel (not saying it is professional, just that it has that feel vs IGG).

A few responses to KS issues:
- The no funds for 14 days is only if you are new to Amazon payments - all of my funds are available immediately as I've used Amazon payments even before my first KS. Just setting up an account before hand and getting one payment and then making a withdrawal will get rid of the 14 day wait later on.
- I find the single units only policy silly - but I've asked KS directly for and been granted exemptions for up to 3 units (on the Pro) as long as I had a good reason someone might need 3 units (mesh networking was my example).

All that said, I haven't tried IGG and certainly can't say I won't - I consider often. I've also considered crowdfunding on my own site now that I feel I have a reputable enough business for people to trust me.

Why crowdfunding? If I made a small batch and ramped up from their my prices would be much higher (due to econ of scale) - and its an adventure - and people love to be part of the whole process. But most of all I want to keep my prices low, quality high, and my workers well paid - to do all that I need scale from the start.

In the interest of open source-ness - here are the numbers from all three of my KS campaigns:

DIGISPARK:

DIGIX:

DIGISPARK PRO: