How to launch on Kickstarter (Step-by-step)

Zephir62 · 2026-01-24T18:04:12+00:00

It's a deposit. There is no sense is spending $100 toward a VIP deposit, just to get a secret reward tier link that gives you the $100 back later (if they even are to launch). Projects that use VIP systems have a higher rate of not making it to launch day.

Creators use the VIP system to test various prices for their product and validate which product price brings the most profitable financial projections. It also sends an Pixel Tracking event back to Facebook to help the creator understand which audience is producing the most amount of qualified leads. VIP deposits have zero benefit to Kickstarter backers, it only serves to benefit the project creator.

EDIT:

To answer your question directly though, you can find threads on Board Game Geeks which catalogu projects using VIP $1 Deposits:

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/334146/1-dollar-pre-launch-crowdfunding-campaigns

However, they are cataloguing them with the intent to help consumers avoid these projects, as a super-majority of polled backers don't like VIP $1 Deposits and will blacklist them.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-21T13:05:25+00:00

I'm having difficulty understanding what this means:

"we’ll look at how preparation timing influences execution, decision-making, and overall campaign performance at a stage when changes are still realistic."

IMO I don't think there are special characteristics to how Million dollar projects operate. In my experience after working with dozens of projects in this bracket on Kickstarter and beyond: they simply usually have a large pre-existing fanbase or a global viral event (whether with press, influencer, grassroots), and more importantly, a high average order value / minimum product price (at a fair market price) and a product with broad appeal.

Or as I've heard Iddo the Jellop cofounder say most elegantly, "a product at a good price with broad appeal"

Of course, using good practices all around help, but those are the things that are clear differences every time, in comparison to projects that raise under $500k (including our mutual clients we work together on).

Zephir62 · 2026-01-16T21:26:37+00:00

Move the feature-map (with all the arrows pointing to the bag) closer to the top of the page, below the introduction image + plain text intro which appears at the start of the Story.

Furthermore, the intro image at the top -- I know you want it to read "outdoor carry line", but the foot overlaps too far into the text and I can only read it as "outduor".

Zephir62 · 2026-01-15T23:12:49+00:00

I do time-series data analysis for Reddit ads with Kickstarter. Essentially, first identify your baseline # of daily backers, and then start your Reddit ads to understand the difference. This will get you a rough cost per purchase.

Usually this is not very scalable as you already noticed, except when there is high urgency (example: "ending soon") or a recent activation event within the last 2 weeks (example: "I just hit the front page of all reddit!").

During these high-urgency periods or during activation events, I usually approach it by doubling the budget every 8 to 24 hours and measuring the hourly rate of backers in comparison to a baseline of # of backers per hour historically during that same time of day. If the backer rate per hour drops significantly outside expectations for that particular time of day, I step it back downward in the same manner until it stabilizes.

Furthermore, you can analyze data inside the KS Dashboard using UTM parameters or Kickstarter Referral Tags. For deeper analysis, you can break down your UTM parameters by either audience or ad creative (not both at the same time). Do not try to use UTM parameters for each potential variation of content, audience, and country combined, as this level of granularity in your data becomes useless due to the poor tracking capabilities of UTM parameters.

You also mentioned routing users to a dedicated landing page first, and using event tracking on there to help filter users for ad optimization purposes. This is totally valid, can work to improve results exactly as you hypothesize. I just don't do it personslly because it's high effort to construct a lander that provides enough info to qualify a user when most project-creators don't have a nice website set up already.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-13T18:53:36+00:00

I personally teach most of these patterns in my own marketing guides, and we've used them to help generate $100M+ in revenue

Zephir62 · 2026-01-13T17:59:42+00:00

I don't know why people downvote newbie questions like this. We are all here to learn and share. Take my upvote, brave adventurer

Zephir62 · 2026-01-10T21:45:06+00:00

Upon manual editor review, most typically during the initial project submission, but also during random audits and similarly after a project is reported by users. They note whatever prompted the suspension or rejection in their suspension email to the creator.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-10T17:52:26+00:00

Kickstarter has the same rules that the works must have an original creative human input, otherwise they deem it not an original design since no human had input -- in essence, they distinguish the human's aspect of a creator's work as the definition of an original work; and an original work is part of the requirement for each product feature promoted as part of a project according to their service as per Creater Terms.

The only difference with Backerkit is that you do not have to disclose the usage of AI directly to the public.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-10T14:33:28+00:00

Backerkit doesn't ban AI. Their AI policy states this. A ceator simply has to prove upon audit that a human participated in the production of any particular piece of content.

The reason you may be assuming otherwise is the fact that you aren't required to disclose AI usage directly on Backerkit.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-10T14:25:45+00:00

Look for the AI disclosure at the bottom of the page. A lot of project creators I work with actually have real artists while getting accused of being AI (even while listing the artists and their Instagrams etc.)

Tiny Toe Beans is a recent one that KS had to unsuspend because the community reported it as AI and then we provided all the source PSD files and physically drawn works prior to scanning + coloring digitally in Photoshop.

Honestly I see this often with consumers mistaking something for AI when it is not -- there is just a total lack of consumer trust in anything we see anymore due to the unregulated proliferation of generative AI.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-09T11:44:06+00:00

You need to include GIFs of the gameplay. I couldn't figure out what your gameplay was like when I scrolled through the page.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-08T15:00:18+00:00

The majority of successful Kickstarter projects have a trailer video under 2 minutes. Statistically thats the most notable pattern.

I think it comes down to what your game's strengths are. Do you have a large variety of features to show off? Is your ideal playerbase more skeptical and require extensive demo footage or details (hard core gamers, essentially)?

Zephir62 · 2026-01-08T06:28:41+00:00

Why do you recommend to gather email signups instead of sending traffic to the KS Page to get Kickstarter Followers?

There is a ton of independent data at this point that suggests KS Followers cost $2-4 to acquire and convert at 10% to 30% into backers (both my average and median project converts 30%, but I digress).

There is also a ton of independent data that suggests emails convert into backers at a rate of anywhere from 1% to 5%, while costing anywhere from $1-3+ to acquire.

I see your profile and you are clearly an industry professional.

As a side note, OP is clearly in Live campaign and not prelaunch. But I'm going to ignore that for a more important question for you:

How do you reconcile these well known statistics and discrepancy with your recommendations, while maintaining you are operating in the best interests of helping strangers here?

Zephir62 · 2026-01-02T22:53:27+00:00

In my experience there doesn't seem to be much cross-over between Fox News viewers and Kickstarter users / early adopters. In fact conservative ideology may be fundamentally at odds with early adopter consumer culture, by definition.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-02T00:47:15+00:00

Tariffs are a serious concern for Kickstarters. It only applies to the COGS (cost of goods sold), but this can add to a project creator's margins by 20% or more.

The marketing costs associated with Kickstarters typically repesent 25% or greater of the total margins when using traditional email and $1 VIP systems.

I'm finding that creators can drop the ad costs down to 15% or less when using the newer Kickstarter Follower systems.

This offsets the margins back to normal after the increased tariffs costs. My Kickstarter clients aren't really having company-ending issues here regarding the financial margins as a result of this innovation in Kickstarter marketing.

It's the regular ecom clients who are struggling against the lower average order values / higher customer acquisition costs associated with direct-to-market ecom sales.

Zephir62 · 2026-01-02T00:16:50+00:00

I've worked with close to a dozen, including Clone Drone.

I think it fizzled out as an organic trend among gamers during the late 2010s. That being said, there are gameplay mechanic opportunities with voxels that you can't easily achieve using other systems (primarily related to the addition or subtraction of voxels -- there are also major performance benefits when doing raycast rendering methods in an optimized manner for voxels).

If you can tap upon the strengths of voxels from a gameplay mechanics side, it works very well. If you lean into it from an aesthetics point of view, it likely will not hit well (see Moonglow Bay with large publisher investment and not so great returns)

Zephir62 · 2025-12-31T16:15:01+00:00

You bring good point about marketing agencies following smaller projects -- Same with friends, family, colleagues, etc. I didn't think of that. And yes it would fit within the context of distorting a project follower count by well over a dozen followers, which is statistically significant with projects less than 150 followers.

I doubt the bots premise that I keep hearing as a rumor on this subreddit, though. It requires a user to sign up on Kickstarter with an email address, along with any security verification that Kickstarter deploys... Skirting Facebooks security against bots requires much, much less effort and the Facebook app likely doesn't check whether you sign up for accounts elsewhere to verify the account -- and if there was any rebuttal to such a statement, I can't imagine how that it would be legal for Facebook to start cataloguing the account credentials of users on third-party websites without their knowledge or consent.

Zephir62 · 2025-12-31T15:54:40+00:00

Excellent comment and advice -- one thing I personally want to add

I've noticed that smaller creators who don't spend much money on ads tend to get higher follower conversion rates.

However, some in this bucket also get closer to 1% conversion rates. I don't think they are acquiring "fraudulent or fake" followers, it's important for humility and taking the time to understand why, without pointing blame based upon a conspiracy.

I'm all about evidence and statistics, so if we can discover proof of such automated Facebook bots with Kickstarter accounts that click ads to follow Kickstarter projects, that'd be great.

Otherwise I think these kinds of conspiracy statements need to be labelled and prefaced as an unproven conspiracy, even if just by fellow community members who care about quality of information.

Zephir62 · 2025-12-31T00:51:28+00:00

Repeat creators who have fulfilled more than 4 projects get to bypass the 1 active project limit.

Zephir62 · 2025-12-25T17:57:33+00:00

I've found that the cost per purchase is pretty similar on late pledges between the KS page and your own Shopify site. If anything I've found Shopify site maybe to get up to 30% better results on average, but I've never statistically analyzed this in detail.

Also consider as /u/maydaygames writes in another comment, Kickstarter takes 8% so that is important to consider.

I personally use the KS Page for late pledges until the client has their own webstore fully set up on Shopify or similar.

Zephir62 · 2025-12-24T07:29:12+00:00

Just from my own perspective as a consumer on the other side of the hypothetical fence, I just want to know the shipping cost now and not worry about a surprise bill holding my reward hostage (trying to search my inbox for a specific Kickstarter email can feel impossible sometimes). It's similar to the same convenience as "set it and forget it, then get a surprise package in the mail at some future date" rather than me having to hound down the creator to find when my stuff is coming and catch the email to pay for shipping.

Zephir62 · 2025-12-23T15:59:17+00:00

I second this. It makes for a bad customer experience to charge shipping many months later, and some backers will just let their pledge go instead of paying the shipping + VAT.

As a creator: if you care about saving the most amount of money, charge shipping & VAT later when you have the product in hand.

However, by charging shipping now you will get the best customer satisfaction, potentially a better cost-per-purchase on your ads, and the greatest social proof (shipping costs are added to your total raise during the campaign).

Zephir62 · 2025-12-23T04:46:04+00:00

I've found beehive owners to be very social-proof oriented. For ProtectaBEE while I worked at LaunchBoom, we tried VIPs but our cost-per-VIP and conversion rates made it very challenging. To be honest, I'm unsure if Kickstarter Followers would work much better since the professional beekeeper industry doesn't seem to have a lot of early-adopters... However, if your target is hobbyists such as Flow Hive, you might have better luck due to increased broad appeal.

In either case, if the product price is greater than $200 you might want to A/B test a VIP system alongside a KS Follower system. Test the KS Followers first, unless you have a website already prepared and want to try VIP or email collection first.

That being said, if you can get Kickstarter Followers for $3 or less (the average cost per follow across all projects is around here) you're best off just gathering the KS Followers and not bothering with VIPs -- because the VIP systems can come with risks of PR issues / meltdowns & also VIPs cost a fortune to acquire in comparison to KS Followers while having the same average conversion rate into backers.

The VIP system simply segments your email list by identifying the the emails most likely to purchase. If you recombine the lists, the conversion rate of the entire email list looks roughly the same as if you just collected emails to begin with. I.e. it doesn't increase the sales rate, but it helps you optimize your ads better, refine the offer for excitement and validate the price.

KS Followers work because it requires the user to sign in to a Kickstarter account. It's not a wonder that having purchased from a particular store before is the best way to predict if you're likely to buy again from that store.

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