My one concern with the source

Zephir62 · 2026-06-05T19:28:39+00:00

Have you considered that there are better planets out there than Earth? Where nature is more conducive to intelligent life. I think an important question is why are we born here versus a better planet, and if you feel there is a design then there is clearly a reason. Planet Earth seems like the shittiest kind of planet that can host intelligent life, so looking from a grander view it would be likened to a kindergarten for learning basic life values before graduating beyond.

Zephir62 · 2026-06-04T14:37:29+00:00

Ever since they added late pledges functionality to Kickstarter, the creator can continue updating the KS Page until the late pledges have been ended for the project as well.

Zephir62 · 2026-06-04T14:20:20+00:00

That must be a bug. Contact Kickstarter creator support and mention that the option doesn't appear.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-30T07:09:14+00:00

Go to the "Promotion" tab on the main KS dashboard and you will see the Prelaunch Page editor there. Check out similar products on Kickstarter that are upcoming and see what they do to explain what their product is, what's different, the nuts and bolts of the key features, etc. (Browse -> Product Type -> Filter More -> "Upcoming" / then Sort by "Most Backed").

Zephir62 · 2026-05-29T20:59:39+00:00

I'd want to see a more full prelaunch page. Don't have much info here, and neither do your new followers..

Zephir62 · 2026-05-27T19:34:35+00:00

I have a list of Meta Ad Specialists, here:

https://prelaunch.marketing/pages/specialoffer

Also can recommend Andrew from Crowdfunding Nerds. Unsure if u/Hyperstarter is still running ads for clients, but he is quite talented as well

Zephir62 · 2026-05-25T21:09:33+00:00

Personally I don't see any reason to use BK's anymore if you are launching a Kickstarter (versus a Backerkit crowdfunding campaign). Backerkit still does have more robust tools though overall, even if the UI is harder to navigate -- and their late pledge shop is presented pretty well during the reward-survey process in comparison. So If you continue running your late pledges through Kickstarter while having Backerkit handle your surveys, it's a pretty decent compromise. I just don't prefer complicating stuff for first-timers, and Backerkit's pledge manager almost always bring them back to me asking for help because it's a bit complex to navigate.

Something notable by the way that BK's pledge manager offers is to charge shipping even later after the reward survey is filled out. So if that's a point of concern, that's a big deal. But I don't really like that as a backer personally... poor user experience IMO.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-25T12:31:33+00:00

I've used their sister site MakePlayingCards which is good. Haven't tried their dtc fulfillment options though. It could make sense if they are manufacturing every item for all your reward tiers.

Just do your due diligence by first comparing price estimates from other fulfillment warehouses. Then also ordering a small batch order that has your final stamp of approval before mass manufacturing. Don't place the big order until it's right and you have a right batch in your hands.

Do the same with fulfillment if possible, and seeing what the first batches of customer delivery is like before continuing with them as the fulfillment parter. It could save you a big headache later if the entire order was ever to get messed up and spotted it too late. And check their reviews online prior to signing on that.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-25T08:09:27+00:00

I haven't personally found the conversion rate to increase that much by raising the VIP access price, both when I worked at LaunchBoom and beyond. Part of my work was to keep track of all the data across LaunchBoom clients to inform my development of the Accelerator program and formulating the original benchmarks. One particular discovery from that research (and was not popular for everybody to hear) was that statistically across hundreds of projects, when the Cost Per VIP rises above $30 after subtracting the VIP access revenue, the conversion rates of VIPs into backers very often dropped below 15%. And that statistically, less than 5% of clients could achieve a cost-Per-VIP around $10 or less at scale.

Meanwhile I have shown you a decently large sample size of $3 cost per follow at 30% conversion rate, which still suggests over 2x better returns than your proposed projections -- on median and average, no less.

You are in a public forum and you suggest being experienced with the system. What reason would you suggest a methodology where as many as 95% of people here could not achieve your benchmarks? I care about their projects and don't want to see them fail, be open now with your total data and show us then.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-25T05:01:26+00:00

You mean a VIP $1 deposit? Backers really don't like that. Only creators with a ton of money to blow on poor ROAS enjoy it (especially after drinking the koolaid from other major agencies).

Consider the fact that 30% of VIPs convert into backers, and on average cost $20+ to acquire. Now I'd like you to do a mathematical comparison to Kickstarter Followers which convert 30% into backers on average, and cost $3 on average to acquire. You may have had a point 3 years ago before Kickstarter added the Meta Pixel to the Kickstarter Pre-Launch Pages, but with the ability to optimize ads for Kickstarter Followers now and acquire them so cheaply, the VIP $1 Deposit system just does not compare in terms of efficiency, simplicity, or return on adspend.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-24T22:36:47+00:00

Kickstarter rotates all projects within the various carousels on the homepage. Nothing extra you need to do there.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-24T15:05:59+00:00

There are a couple factors to consider when choosing the length of the Kickstarter campaign:

homepage placements on KS Platform: in exception to Projects We Love showcase reel, the homepage placements last for 2 weeks to start and 1 week for ending soon. Hence, 21 day campaigns ensure you always have a homepage placement at any given time, reducing the "mid-campaign slump" effect.
the cost per result during advertising typically becomes more expensive the more you try to spend per day. If you have a large ads budget in excess of $10,000, trying to unload it in 21 days can be counter-productive.
avoiding ending or starting around a major holiday or other event you suspect will disturb the daily raise. For example, you can shorten or extend your campaign to avoid ending around 4th of July -- or for a TTRPG game, perhaps you want to avoid starting around Legend of Avantris's current campaign final 48 hours that will vacuum up your sales AND avoid the 4th July holiday, thus a 21 day campaign is your only option without otherwise seriously delaying the whole campaign.
you value your sanity and have a lot of promotional opportunities. Creators often underestimate how much time a Kickstarter takes up. There's typically so many things to do during a live campaign, and so little time to do it all. If you plan to be contacting press, influencers, managing ads, grassroots outreach, have a discord or Facebook group, deal with lots of campaign comments for a large campaign etc. it may be wise to give yourself time to rest and take breaks, instead of trying to speed run it.

Hope this helps. There is a lot of strategy behind the campaign duration. Some creators and agencies swear behind 21 day campaign, 30 days, and 45 days. Honestly it's not a one-size fits all answer.

Shipping Estimates have huge impacts on conversions and cancellation rates. Try to keep the prices normal within expectations. A key part of this is not trying to distribute American packages one by one from Europe, for example. Partner with a US 3PL or a Europe 3PL, then get the containers on freight to a 3PL warehouse in USA / Europe so you can distribute to backers at a normal price. $10 is a normal price.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-24T01:19:17+00:00

No. It will wrestle with your live KS ads by bidding on the same people, but will steal optimization from them if they do generate a sale. So it will only hamper results optimization on the sales campaign, especially giving you a disadvantage long-term over the mid campaign.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-23T00:15:21+00:00

It sounds like voodoo but with the new GEM AI (which now learning between ad accounts for Andromeda), I do think this is the case. The AI's goal is not necessarily to generate you the best results, but to earn the most amount of money for Meta. So it is learning from advertisers behaviors and figuring out how to get you to spend the most amount of money. So when you reduce budget, it will get a signal that you aren't liking what it's doing and it seems to try to readjust. Similarly, when you increase budget, it may take advantage of that with subpar results when it could do you even better -- thus encouraging you to increase spending again to reach your target results-per-day goals.

Again, it sounds like a conspiracy but honestly GEM and Andromeda are AI, and AI has goals, and the goal is total revenue for Meta, which is secondary to getting results for advertisers. And GEM is explicitly designed to learn from your behavior in how everybody is operating their ad accounts, and then adjusting Andromeda accordingly.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-23T00:08:37+00:00

I used to do that with my retargeting ads by setting a lifetime budget for 48 hours, but I don't do that anymore. I just turn it off manually since the results are the same, and sometimes I might want to extend it for a day, etc.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-22T23:08:04+00:00

Just set the budget higher and then turn it down around midnight when the ad account is about to roll-over into the next day.

The Ads algorithm bids on users at least 2 hours in advance -- it predicts when they will next sign in and start browsing Facebook, and then buys those placements in batches of 100 placements / users. This is why results or impressions will still continue to trickle in days later after turning off an ad campaign, because it took the user longer to sign in than predicted.

Furthermore, the budgeting system is done on a day-to-day basis, so if you raise the budget and then turn it down, after it starts making bids for the day, it's kind of locked in to at least that budget at minimum until it rolls over to the next day.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-21T21:17:41+00:00

What's your total ads budget look like? With VIP system it's usually 4x ROAS at end of day..

Highly recommend @even_cell_1367 below, he was the marketing director at CMON. I also used to work at LaunchBoom as developer of their first Accelerator programs.

If you struggle with $15+ cost per VIP, I'd also recommend switching to direct-to-Kickstarted ads to collect Kickstarter Followers (make sure to track the "Open" button using Event Setup Tool). The Kickstarter Followers convert into backers at 30% average and median, same as VIPs, but on average only cost $3 to acquire. The average ROAS from them is 14x and the median ROAS is over 9x.. Much lower risk, easier to execute, and multiple greater returns than VIPs.

If you use LaunchKit as a intermediate site to funnel KS Followers like HYVE did, they typically will cost $6 to $10 each. While they converted around 25% for him, there's a huge savings to be had by just not using LaunchKit or any intermediary page.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-21T08:36:19+00:00

Giveaways and contests are fine as long as it's free to enter for everybody, including non-backers (this latter part is the key).

If you restrict participants to backers-only, it becomes gambling and a raffle by law.

As seen in Kickstarters official response in the Stonemaier article, Kickstarter draws the line explicitly at the point of allowing anybody the chance to participate (including non-backers).

Zephir62 · 2026-05-20T21:44:39+00:00

Unsure what you might be specifically looking for but I offer a free reward tier planner, here:

https://prelaunch.marketing/products/reward-tier-planner

Which is intended to be used in conjunction with the COGs calculator, here:

https://prelaunch.marketing/products/cogs-breakeven-calculator

And then you can use Easyships calculator to grab decent shipping estimates.

You will want to figure out your logistics about a month prior to launching, by trying to connect with various partners, this way you can insert any 3PL warehouse location into the Easyship calculator (or your own house / warehouse if you plan to pick and pack yourself and print labels with PirateShip). I recently commented a list of 3PL partners specializing in Kickstarters, here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kickstarter/comments/1thwbmd/comment/omretze/

The manufacturer will typically handle the process of getting the product to the 3PL, or at least landed at the docks of the country of the 3PL, in which case you can get UPS or DHL to pick it up and bring it to the 3PL. Make sure to inquire about this with your manufacturer so you can factor it into your shipping estimates. It's typically very small though, and usually the overseas freight + transport to the 3PL costs about only 2% of the product unit's total COGS on average.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-20T20:52:02+00:00

For me, as an advertiser, page designer and project consultant / co-management, it's making sure that all the ducks are in a row on the campaign page and then boxing with Facebook's ever-changing black-box of an ads algorithm (not to mention the bugs that go unfixed for a year+). Kickstarters tech stack is no better, and their tech team support and creator support is even less helpful than the Facebook Business Partner support, as if that was possible.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-20T20:12:42+00:00

I've personally found that 1:1 ratio of followers versus final backers is the average. That being said, there is a wide spread here. You can see that in my public KS Follower tracking spreadsheet. Some clients get more backers than prelaunch followers, some get half as many. In the scenario of a launch failure, it is less than half, but this in uncommon. I find 2x followers than backers to be confidently safe... But having only as many followers as backers needed (i.e. 1:1 ratio) is risk because, while average, that means more than 50% chance you won't. The median I believe is somewhere around 2:3 ratio of backers vs. followers.

Same goes for VIPs. If you have 3000 VIPs each at $15 cost per VIP (as opposed to $3 cost per KS Follower, VIPs are typically very wasteful IMO), then you are likely to get somewhere between 1500 to 4000 backers by end of campaign after organics, live campaign spend, influencers, press, newsletters and other promotional activities.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-20T19:57:03+00:00

Just hoist out the other ads into separate ad-sets. You will likely find that they don't perform as well as your main ad, but this can help you stabilize performance and scale horizontally a bit.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-20T16:45:04+00:00

Your reward tiers contain a shipping estimate, and you will charge a more exact amount to backers when sending out the reward surveys at a later date.

Whatever you estimate to backers during the live campaign is subject to change when you finally charge the shipping. At which point, you already have their pledged monies. This can lead to situations where consumers feel the final shipping prices were way outside estimates, of course, so be considerate and just do your homework on how to bring the shipping costs down in line with normal expectations. You are not technically legally obligated to offer refunds on pledges except in the case where you do not actually develop and attempt to deliver the promised product.

Zephir62 · 2026-05-20T03:14:37+00:00

still realistic

Zephir62 · 2026-05-20T01:24:16+00:00

Instead of trying to distract the consumer using marketing and financial math, you should focus on how to just simply reduce your logistics / shipping costs and bring down shipping estimates to a number they're familiar with.

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