Visit My Kickstarter Project Page! http://kck/st/1qc7cuE

Visit My Etsy Store To Order My Greeting Cards! HardShellSlimySnail.etsy.com

What is Kickstarter?

• Kickstarter is a company that helps you get financial backing for a project by means of a fundraiser.
• For me, I used it to help raise enough money for my Greeting Card Project. My goal was to cover the cost of printing and shipping material.
• You must set a goal time frame, and a goal amount. If you don’t get enough pledges to reach the goal amount within the time frame you do not get any funding, nor do the pledgers get charged.
• With each pledge your customers get to pick a reward that you send to them.

Does Kickstarter Cost Money?

• It doesn’t cost anything to start an account or project. If your project meets it’s goal then Kickstarter will charge a percentage for each pledge.
• When you set up a project, you must choose a goal amount. Since this was my first time ever doing a project like this, I was really nervous to set the full amount of $600 that I needed to cover all my cost. I checked out other Kickstarter projects that were similar to mine to get an idea of their goal amounts and success rates. After reviewing all of this, I decided to set my goal to $300. The way Kickstarter works, if you don’t reach your goal, you don’t get any of the money, nor do your pledgers get charged. There are no fees if you don’t meet your goal. You basically just lose! Boo! I didn’t want that!!
• Since I set my goal for $300, but I really needed $600. I wrote down different tiers that I would like to reach, to help my audience see what my goals were and what they would pay for.

Preparation is Key!

• Kickstarter has a wonderful source of information to help you get started. I also checked out as many blogs as I could before I started my project.
• Before launching it is really important to have a video, some project images and a community or network to reach out to.
•  Click here to see my video

Your Community or Network of Fans

• For me promotion is the hardest thing about running a business. I loath tooting my own horn to get attention to my products. Blowing up social media with a constant barrage of self promotion is annoying to your friends and time consuming. But, I had to face the fact that it was the only way to get myself out there. I tried keeping my post to a minimum of two a week per media outlet.
• The majority of my donations came from my friends and family. The only way they knew to help me with my fundraising is by the post I made on the various social media. It was very consistent, with every post I did, I got at least one donation. So although it was burdensome, it was effective.

Ruthless Self Promotion

• I tried being creative with the social media post I did. Here are various post I did…

• Once a week I would post a picture of one of the Greeting Cards I wanted to get printed. I would write a description of the card and why I was inspired to make it.
• A couple times throughout the month I posted a picture of a thermometer showing where I was percentage wise in relation to my goal.
• I made a ridiculous video of me dancing like MC Hammer! Showing how happy I was to get support from my family.

• One the last day we also made another ridiculous video lip syncing to ‘The Final Count Down’.

I Reached My Goal! Now What??

• I was so thankful and overwhelmed with love to have reached my goal.
• On my last day I had all my rewards ready to ship I was so excited to check my bank balance and have it all done and over with… then the email, Congratulations! Now you have to wait 2 more weeks for us to process the funds. Blah!
• Now the question, do I send my rewards on the faith that all the transactions are going to go through? Do I make my pledgers wait another 2 weeks for Kickstarter to process the funds? I decided to send out my rewards right away on good faith that Kickstarter would deposit the funds as promised.

Results

• Kickstarter said it would take 2 weeks to deposit funds. Reality: it took 17 days.
• Kickstarter said they would take a Kickstarter’s 5% fee, and payment processing fees (between 3% and 5%). Reality total taken was 8.588%.