Hey everyone! I'm currently running the pre-launch phase for my Kickstarter campaign and planning to keep it going for another 3 weeks. Right now, I'm looking to grow my email sign-ups (and followers on the pre-launch page). I've got a small budget of around $20/day to work with for marketing, so I'm looking for the most efficient ways to make it count.

So far, I’ve reached out to influencers and sent them prototypes of the final product to generate some buzz - they have been shipped out to them. I’ve also launched organic accounts on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to get my videos out there. I’m debating whether to invest in paid ads, but with a limited budget, I need to ensure it’s worthwhile. Are there any specific platforms, strategies, or tools you’ve found highly effective for boosting pre-launch visibility and conversions? I've heard Meta ads preform the best, but others I've asked disagree.

Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks in advance for any advice you can share!

So far I have not had any luck securing a marketing agency to help with our mobile game Kickstarter. Does anyone know of a business that would take on my project?

Background: I'm a software developer / artist and I created a volunteering app for Northeast NJ, USA. The app has been live for a few years. The Kickstarter campaign is an expansion pack that adds regular "battles" between communities to get them to volunteer / donate to charity more. Current email list is just shy of 10K.

From what I can tell, the marketing agencies that have shot me down purely work with tangible items (journals, stoves, tabletop games) so they haven't really taken a long look at the project. Just immediate rejection!

Anyone with a successful mobile game Kickstarter out there? If you have an agency you want to refer me to, please let me know! Our campaign launches on March 4th so I really want to lay the foundation for a good KS now.

It is a 5e Adventure. The final chapter in a series.

You can learn about it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darkeaglegames/the-lawful-good-the-chaotic-evil-and-the-meow

There are only 70 hours left to back The Holmwood Foundation, which is 90% of the way to its goal! A found-footage, modern sequel to Dracula. Not self-promotion, I'm not affiliated with them, just a fan who wants to see it funded.

You can listen to the pilot here: https://www.theholmwoodfoundation.com/listen-to-the-podcast

Back it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/georgiacook/the-holmwood-foundation

What they say:

The Holmwood Foundation is a Found Footage Horror Fiction Podcast created by Fio Trethewey (Big Finish: Gallifrey War Room, 18th Wall Productions) and Georgia Cook (Big Finish: The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles, Gallifrey War Room, BBC Books, The Dracula Daily Sketch Collection).

It is a modern day sequel to the novel Dracula.

In the show, we follow Maddie Townsend (Rebecca Root) and Jeremy Larkin (Sean Carlsen), two co-workers at the Holmwood Foundation, a secretive organisation that has been maintaining and studying the remains of Count Dracula over the last 130 years, as they are possessed by the ghosts of Jonathan and Mina Harker and sent on a journey across the UK to end a battle that began over a century ago.

This is a story about identity and self discovery, family loyalty and devotion, wrapped around a nightmare of a road trip with a rejuvenating severed head, incredibly sincere Victorian ghosts, and an analogue recorder.

It looks to have a big fan base crossover with The Magnus Archives/The Magnus Protocol, Malevolent, the SCP Wiki, and Dracula Daily/Re:Dracula.

Hi everyone! I'm planning to launch a tarot deck on Kickstarter and am currently looking into printing options. I've been researching both in Europe and China, but the costs are surprisingly high across the board. Has anyone here gone through this process or faced similar challenges? Any recommendations on affordable, quality printers or tips to reduce costs would be super helpful! Thanks in advance for any insights 😊

I want to buy an add on for my 3d printer and it’s only available on kickstarter as a donation reward. When I get to the “checkout” it doesn’t ask for my address.

How would the creator know where to ship the product?

Tbh I wouldn’t want to get scammed.

Thank you.

Our RIMU project have 75 followers now, some backers subscribe the project on our website.

One person told us that they learned about our project from an email they received from KS.

https://preview.redd.it/hhsvu742480e1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60f30bdd8973435ade2a915a19f39a9c8773bffb

Hi everyone, we are a group of three senior university students who began our start-up eight months ago in Tampa, Florida. Our goal is to enhance and redefine the home services marketplace in Tampa, Florida, and eventually expand.

I would greatly appreciate if you took 2-3 minutes out of your day to read our biography and learn more about us; even a donation of a penny would be greatly appreciated and of great help!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/assist-vendles-mission-for-affordable-home-services?modal=share&source=fundraiser+sidebar

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1657215734/lost-company-into-the-everneath/description

Like many other creators, we considered whether to use Jellop; we ultimately did, and as a service to this community, I wanted to write something I couldn't find when I was researching Jellop - a really comprehensive guide and review. Hope this is useful to you all.

What does Jellop do?
We used them just for during-campaign advertising, which is their bread and butter. You provide media of your product and Jellop's team makes a bunch of ads. They run these on Meta and Google ads (though primarily Meta) and you provide them your credit card details to pay for the ads.

Cost
Jellop charges based on the backers they bring to your campaign. This is tracked two ways - one is through Meta itself (using Meta Pixel) and the other is through the Kickstarter dashboard. I don't remember the specifics, but they charge something like 22% of each sale attributed per Kickstarter or 15% of each sale attributed to Meta every day, choosing the lesser of the two. That may sound good, but they are usually about the same.

What this means: Kickstarter uses something called first-touch attribution. This means that the first time someone visits your page, their referral is logged. So, if you send an e-mail to your e-mail list with a referral tag, they click it, and it's their first visit - that backer gets attributed to your e-mail in perpetuity. If they come back later to back (through another e-mail, an advertisement, or just directly visiting), this initial referral (the first e-mail they clicked) is still credited. In the case of the meta pixel, anybody who clicks an ad and visits within a certain window (usually 7 days if they viewed, 30 if they clicked), this gets credited to the ad.

What does THAT mean: If Jellop reported 15 backers on a day as credited via Meta, but only 7 as credited via Kickstarter, that means that only the seven got to your page for the first time via Jellop. The other 8 were people who had visited before, didn't purchase, maybe saw or clicked a Jellop ad, and happened to finally purchase that day. That means you are paying Jellop for a lot of people who had already found your campaign (perhaps they're from your mailing list, which you already worked and spent money to build!). You're getting double-dinged -- once for the effort you spent to get that backer to visit, and then again for Jellop to take credit for that.

In one sense, you can say: "Well, the Jellop ad ultimately is what got them to buy" - that might be true in some cases, but not true in others. Many folks come choose to return and purchase, and the ad just served as a reminder. They could very likely have returned irrespective of the ad.

How does Jellop talk about this? For us, Jellop never explained these intricacies, we found out ourselves. When discussing the Kickstarter vs. Meta attribution, they just claimed that the KS dashboard can be "innacurate" and so they use a blend, rather than transparently explaining that the KS dashboard uses first-touch attribution. So, there's already some dishonesty to start with.

How are the ads? We found that Jellop's ads were very low quality. They appeared very poorly slapped together, the creative was very poor, and if I had seen an ad like that, I certainly would not have bought it. To be forward, we were frankly embarassed that our band and product were being represented by such shoddy ads. Moreover, you are not shown or asked to approve the ads. When our campaign went live, they just sent us links to all the ads and said "here they are!". So you do not get any advance input or control over how your product is represented. There's radio silence for a few days, and suddenly a bunch of ads you've never seen, that you're already paying to run. They will certainly take down ads you don't like, but the point is - you're not included in this. Jellop does it all, take it or leave it.

Is the cost worth it? The overall fee ends up between 15%-22% of what they bring it. Pair that with the fact that you pay for the advertising, which can easily be around another 10-30% (depending on ROAS) and you could be out 50% per backer. For most people, you're likely losing money on your product at this point because of such an astronomical cut. We think it's taking advantage of people.

The survey: Another thing Jellop did was send an automatic survey to every backer who backed the project. This is sent FROM YOUR KS ACCOUNT as if it were coming from you. Even worse, the wording of the message says "To complete your order, fill out this survey" which gives backers the impression it is a mandatory survey to order your product (IT ISN'T). In this survey, Jellop gathers a bunch of information on your backers, including their e-mail, which they then will enroll in their own newsletters - essentially taking advantage of the backers who have trusted you and using them. It's a manipulative and opaque tactic. They do mention in onboarding that the survey is optional, but A) they strongly recommend you do it, and B) they do not explain the manner in which it's sent out - from you, and with wording that tricks backers into thinking it's mandatory. We had many backers worry, e-mail us, complain about it, think they were being scammed, etc.

Meta audience: One advantage we had expected of Jellop is that they have a large audience of people that frequently back KS projects in their Meta account as a result of having done so many projects. We never got a clear answer on this, but it does appear to be the case. Admittedly, you can often get decent results from Jellop just because of this. Consider this, however: you are spending thousands or more dollars in advertising spend to find backers - ALL OF THIS INFO is not given to you. When you run your own ads, your Meta account can learn who your audience is, setting you up for more success in the future. In this case, Jellop gets to spend all of your advertising dollars and gets to trawl backers information in THEIR meta account to profit more in the future.

Your own ads: You can run your own ads during the campaign, but if you want them to work even remotely well, you need to have your meta pixel installed on your KS page. Unfortunately, there's only space for one (and Jellop is using it), so you are effectively locked out of doing your own ads.

Communication: You get put in a slack channel with the Jellop team. You have to provide your credit card information, KS login, and other details in a way that feels very sketchy with no real re-assurance. Their response time is very poor (hours and hours).

Other requirements: You're also required to include their logo/banner on your KS page and a pre-written blurb in your first project update if you're funded. Maybe not a big deal, but again, just having stuff shoved down your throat that may not represent how you want to convey your project to the public.

Our thoughts: If you have no idea what you're doing and need an ad agency that will deliver results (and the pricing works for you), Jellop will probably do that. The pricing working is a big IF, and for most creators, I think it is not affordable - considering you will be spending around AT LEAST 40% of your sale on ad spend and commission. But, if it works for you and you have no idea how to do ads, they will make tolerable ones, and they have a huge Meta audience of previous KS backers which are more likely to convert. By contrast, running your own ads means you're going out on a limb and have to find those people, which can lead to lower ROAS.

Otherwise... Look, you're making something that you're putting a lot of time and energy into. You've spend a lot of your money and time bringing something to reality. You want to share it with people, you're genuinely hoping to find people who like what you're doing and want to support it. In comes Jellop, scalping ~20% of your revenue (astronomical), asking you to foot the bill for the ads, keeping all of the information on Meta about your backers (to later enrich their list and make more profit with other creators), tricking your backers with a "mandatory" survey (and logging their e-mails for their newsletters), and making pretty bad ads to represent you and your brand (which they don't preview to you at all).

We love KS because it's a place where creators can go to show the world their effort and ask for their support. Ultimately, it's a really community-based model where people support eachother. Jellop is one of many companies that have been built around capitalizing off the hard work of creators, and is perhaps one of the biggest offenders.

In short - if you really don't know what to do and just need someone to do it for you, Jellop will probably provide acceptable campaign advertising. But know that you're being taken for a ride.

I’d love to see one or two companies pop up in the comments more than others

My sister and I are working on a project that we're thinking of putting on Kickstarter in January. I've been researching the right ways to do it and a common thread that keeps coming up is that you need to have backed other projects. Is this necessary? It feels disingenuous to start trying to back random projects just because I'm trying to launch mine.

Hello community, I'm new here and I'm sure you've already solved this problem.

I'm from the Czech Republic and it's not one of the countries that supports kickstarter.

I have a project in progress but I don't know how to start it as I don't have representation in any supported country.

I am sure there are several possibilities to solve this problem.

I hope that you as a community will help me and I will finally be able to launch my project.

Thanks a lot.

🚀 We just wrapped up our FNAF Kickstarter, and we couldn’t be more grateful for your amazing support! 🎉 Now, we’re super excited to reveal our next project: the Smiling Critters Pawpsicle Pin Collection! 🍭✨ Inspired by Poppy Playtime’s cutest characters, this fan-made series brings a sweet, nostalgic twist to your favorite critters. 🧸🍦 With your help, we can unlock all 8 adorable enamel pins – and we’re ready to get started! 🌟 Follow our pre-launch page here to be the first to know when we go live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vintagedoggo/smiling-critters-inspired-pawpsicle-pins 🌟 Thank you for being part of this journey. Your enthusiasm means the world to us! 💖 Let’s make this collection a reality together! #EnamelPins #Kickstarter #SmilingCritters #PoppyPlaytime #FNAF #PinCollectors

I have a really niche product (toys in Spanish). We’ve built a good list on pre-launch and people in our community are excited about the product. My question is…how do you phrase things so they understand that they’re pre-ordering the product but it’s also different from a pre-order because they won’t get it until 5 months later? How do you keep them from running away if they’re not used to the KS world?

I have a timeline in my page. And I have a section where I briefly explain what a pledge is (I’m phrasing it as “how to pre-order” essentially). But I still worry about walking the line between being TOO forthcoming about the wait time vs. having people disappointed that they bought it and it’s not coming for months.

Greetings loyal subjects!

Me and a buddy of mine are doing a project for class and are looking to interview some backers and people who've had their projects funded on there!

If you're interested in answering a few questions, dm me and lets see what happens!

also here's a survey if anyone would like to give us a helping hand!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Q6X5YCC

I have this idea: ask backers to film an unboxing video. As a thank-you, I'd send a gift (small item <$10 value related to my project) to those whose videos I wanted to use publicly. I'd then post these unboxing videos as a project update. It would be announced only after the campaign has ended.

If this fair to everyone? Would it break any rules?

I typically have a little over 100 backers, so I don't expect I'd get a ton of videos, I might be able to send a thank-you to everyone who does one or the first 10, something like that. I might just ask for the videos without offering anything but a written thanks.

6x6 Tales is a solo fantasy game where you map, track stats, and battle in under an hour. Keep journals to record your adventures!

Go to the Kickstarter!

6x6 Tales by Jack Darwid

Hey friends, hopping on here to promote my new TTRPG, Pale Tides. It launched last week, we're already at 135% funded and starting to work through the stretch goals.

kickstarter.com/projects/paletides/pale-tides-a-game-of-folk-horror-and-witchcraft

It's a brand new RPG from me, an artist who has worked on stuff like Magic: the Gathering, D&D, Daggerheart, Silent Hill: Townfall, Destiny 2, Guild Wars 2 and more. Inspired by Hunt: Showdown, Bloodborne and The VVitch.

Original system, a mix of dice and tarot, and a fresh approach to RPG systems designed to work well for people who are totally new to RPGs and veterans. There's lots more info on the KS page.

Check it out and please let me know if you have any questions! It feels so good to finally share it here.

The Pale Tides teaser featuring music by Chelsea Wolfe

We have one week left in our campaign. Curious if there are any tips to close out strong? Also anything we should do to our pages before the campaign ends? Was wondering if we should have a little thank you message up and link to our website, can this be done after the campaign ends or does everything get locked in?

Thanks in advance for the tips.

I know I can’t change my goal, but anyone have experience canceling a campaign and starting a new one? Does Kickstarter even allow that? It’s still early in my campaign, but I just feel like an idiot for setting my goal so high. Thanks!