link to all the resources for launching a Kickstarter:

https://prelaunch.marketing/products/kickstarter-templates-bundle

As a disabled person on SSDI and no financial resources, it's been flooring that over a thousand guides and templates have been sold on my website and Discord in the last 16 months without spending a dime on ads.

While I've consulted about 300 launched campaigns during this time, I'm sure it's assisted many more that I will never know about -- including the free tutorial articles and youtube videos, which have organically garnered over 50,000 unique viewers in that timeframe.

Considering that there are less than 30,000 Kickstarters launched per year, I can only guess that the vast majority of projects launched since then had at least checked it out.

Quite frankly, the community support has been absolutely amazing.

That being said, it's just too difficult to defend rights or credits as a disabled person, and I am deciding to close shop until conditions change. I'd prefer to just have peace and respect in my life.

I've made everything free on the website, wishing you all a Merry Christmas:
https://prelaunch.marketing/products/kickstarter-templates-bundle

https://preview.redd.it/bat8j1vbj18e1.png?width=922&format=png&auto=webp&s=0d613996c5f837abb02d5abb01f9e39155aa1d15

Hello friends!
My Kickstarter campaign launched last week and fully funded within the first day! If you love scientific illustration, speculative evolution, creature design, and fantasy elements, this art book is for you!
It features over 30 original creature designs by me, and since we unlocked the first stretch goal, every backer will get a free mini print featuring my best boi BumbleBear!
Help us unlock the rest of the stretch goals and get cool exclusives!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ejscreations/the-mien-bestiary-an-ejs-creations-creature-art-book/

Hey everyone. My campaign ended yesterday successfully (yay!). I am 100% positive i had the “Late Pledges” option checked while the campaign was being built. However there is no “Back this Project” or “Late Pledge” button on my campaign anywhere. Am i missing something?

Hey guys,

I'm prepping my first launch in Early 2025 of a comic book series, that I want to steamroll with kickstarter. As we are based in Germany and probably the majority of the audience will be based in the US, I want to avoid huge shipping cost for the main audience.

Has anyone else solved such a challenge and if so: How? We're already in contact with BlackBox - a fulfillment provider, yet it seems a bit expensive as well and adding another cost block to the campaign.

Happy to discuss the pro and cons though!

Hello everyone! I'm making a DnD Wild West Module and I've been shopping around for printers. We're expecting about 1,000 copies to sell for the KS and I was wondering if our printer is pricing fairly. We have a 350 page book, and we want high mid-tier quality when it comes to page and cover quality.

On-Demand Printing says they can fulfill and ship for around 13.81 per book.

The Hong Kong-based company Qin Printing has quoted about 12.06 per book with the same qualities.

Does anyone with experience in this part of the industry with RPG Modules/Adventure Books know if these print prices are fair? To me they seem a little bit high versus what I was expecting. Would love some advice/guidance on this!

Many thanks to you all! I have really enjoyed engaging with this sub!

Designed a wicked card game. I have play tested it and it has been a success. I’m in aus and did up a spreadsheet of manufacturing costs, shipping cost, kickstarter fees and GST and basically worked out that I would have to sell my card game at minimum $70 to make just a 5% profit margin.

The game is 3-7 players and 166 cards and plays kind of like a board game in that it takes about 1 hr+ to play. There is no way to cut down on cards without destroying the game.

Edit: wow thank you all for such amazing advice and feedback! I completely agree with everyone about raising the hype before taking it to kickstarter. I guess I’m asking about manufacturing info now so I can get some more samples underway. I heard the resounding advice to take it overseas and will do that now. Thanks everyone for your time in responding and helping me out!

Edit 2: I should clarify I’m talking $70 aud so $43 usd. Also the actual manufacturing cost is $37.43 aud so $23.28 usd. I also included 14.95 aud shipping offset (to make aud shipping free, US 20 aud and UK 25 aud), GST @ 10% and kickstarter fees to get to a grand total manufacturing cost of $63.34 aud.

Hello Kickstarter community!

We’re thrilled to introduce our passion project: “Dear Brother - Beware of the Witch”, an FPS multiplayer extraction shooter that plunges you into a dark, witch-hunting world full of danger, strategy, and co-op excitement.

What makes “Dear Brother” special?

🧙 Unique Setting: Inspired by the eerie witch-hunting era and real locations from Vorarlberg, our game combines historical ambiance with mystical horror.

🎮 Engaging Gameplay: Team up to hunt witches, gather resources, and escape with your loot—but beware, the witch is cunning and powerful.

🏹 Immersive Features: With a minimalist interface and a central hub called “Grimmstone Alley,” we create an atmospheric experience where you’ll feel like a true witch hunter.

🎵 Music & Atmosphere: As musicians and storytellers, we’re crafting an epic soundscape to amplify every moment of the game.

Why Kickstarter?

Our team brings expertise in gaming, music, storytelling, and 3D design. With your support, we can give “Dear Brother” the polish it deserves and deliver a memorable gaming experience.

Thank you for your support—we can’t wait to hear your thoughts and see you join the hunt. 🔥🧙

Super proud and hype for my client! 'Fiefdom' is a new 50 vs. 50 player medieval battle simulator by land and sea.

Click the link below to learn more about the game on IndieDB, and consider giving them a vote - it doesn't require an account, all you have to do is simply click the big Vote banner near the top: https://www.indiedb.com/games/fiefdom

Feel free to ask questions about the game itself or marketing for video games in general, and I'll answer them as best I can.

---

If you love Action RPGs as much as I do, you can also follow their upcoming Kickstarter here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/whitetowergames/fiefdom

https://preview.redd.it/ggqlbavrvn7e1.png?width=2000&format=png&auto=webp&s=6e2bde7c463affe7d105cf98723fe90fa53cc238

We’re wrapping up our very first launch campaign, and we’d love to invite any last-minute backers to join us.

Our product, the Remo Brush, is the world’s first Miswak-infused toothbrush, combining centuries-old natural oral care with modern sustainability.

Created by a dentist and backed by recommendations from dentists and hygienists, the Remo Brush is designed to improve oral health while reducing plastic waste.

Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/remobrush/remo-brush-herbal-miswak-infused-bristles-toothbrush?ref=reddit

Thank you for your support!

Please help me and show me how to do it. I need to open a website that helps me get donations from outside viewers. Please help me. Thanks

Legends 2 Relics: a Bag of Dungeon SOLO game plus expansion

Includes: The Lost Dungeons – a standalone game, Paths of the Ancients – a new BOD adventure, PLUS new characters, items, and skills

https://preview.redd.it/szy0vqkfkk7e1.jpg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3260f683cc2d115225f486916f1030545494178e

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gunpowder/legends-2-relics-expansion-for-any-bag-of-dungeon-game

Hi,

I'm looking for a solution to the issue of costly shipping costs for Kickstarter rewards from the USA to Australia (and the surrounding area). We did a Kickstarter for an Australian author and had a couple dozen supporters from Australia. Unfortunately, postal rates are so high that most of our Aussie supporters had to pay $80 to $110 for shipping (we ship three to four books and other items).

I'm open to ideas to solve this problem.

Thanks in advance,

Richard

February 2025 will be our 6th year in business, and I’m hopeful this campaign will provide the capital we need to keep moving forward.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/veii/veii-apparel-activewear-for-the-culture?ref=3qbdfl&token=9c46849b

Hey everyone! I’m excited to introduce Typing Tycoon, a fast-paced and addictive typing-based idle game that’s now live on Kickstarter! 🎉

In Typing Tycoon, you’ll type words to earn money, which you can use to upgrade your abilities and unlock even more powerful words. The more you type, the more your empire grows — it's the perfect mix of casual gameplay and exciting progression!

Key Features:

• Fast-Paced Typing Fun: Type your way to success and level up your abilities with every word!
• Idle Progression: Earn while you're away — upgrades work even when you’re not playing!
• Challenging Gameplay: Unlock more complex words and increase your earnings as you improve your typing skills.
• Engaging Upgrades: Choose from a variety of upgrades to customize your playstyle and dominate the game!

Check out our Kickstarter page for more details and help bring Typing Tycoon to life! Typing Tycoon Kickstarter

Thanks for your support — I can't wait for you all to play! 🖥️🚀

#TypingGame #IdleGame #GameDev #Kickstarter #TypingTycoon #CasualGaming

I have been meaning to write this up for some time now but honestly needed a bit of a break since we wrapped up the Kickstarter. Overall I wanted to share our plan of action (both for pre-launch and the live campaign), the results, what we learned, and what we would have done differently. I hope that other creators can read this and maybe find some of it useful.  It is quite long so I am going to break it out into 2 parts.  The first focusing on the pre-launch stuff. 

Please note that this was my very first Kickstarter and I did a TON of research, especially on this subreddit so I wanted to say thank you to everyone who contributes! 

Kickstarter: SoloQ: An RPG Weekly Planner 

Marketing Foundations

Marketing Assets

I knew this product was going to be particularly hard to market.  Planners aren’t the most eye-catching products and the rpg elements are a lot of text which is also not great for ads.  It was also (to the best of my knowledge) a brand new idea, so we also had to do a good job explaining what exactly it was.  Some investments I made early on to solve some of this and to add more value to the planner was hiring a great artist to create an epic piece of key art/ cover art. This Key Art/ Cover Art would lay the groundwork for most of our ads, and really help us capture the interest of our target audiences.  

Even though I would consider myself an artist, I know my limits. I knew that I would not be able to create something to the caliber that I wanted so I commissioned someone. This had multiple benefits but the take-away here is - KNOW YOUR LIMITS. 

Marketing Language 

We also needed to develop a quick and snappy call to action (CTA) and description of the product.  In our first week when we announced we originally called it: SoloQ - The World’s First RPG Planner.  This led to a lot of confusion - many people thought this was a book that would help you plan out a DnD campaign and not an actual weekly planner.  We quickly pivoted to SoloQ - The World’s First RPG Weekly Planner.  We also wanted a call to action that doubled down on what the product was: A planner and a solo DnD campaign. After a lot of trial and error we landed on “Create a character, level up, crush goals, and slay dragons, all from your everyday planner!”  We also created shorter CTAs for alt text on meta ads and social posts, these included: “Join the Adventure!”, “Make Every Day a Quest!”, “Level Up Your Life!” and “Gamify Your Goals!”.  SoloQ is about adding a bit more fun and adventure to our daily lives and we felt that our CTAs captured that really well.  

Target Audience

With any marketing campaign it is mandatory to define your target audience.  We knew very early on that we wanted to mainly target DnD players and video gamers.  Both me and my marketing specialist have a background in the video game industry so we also knew that was where our strengths would really shine.  The Venn Diagram of video gamers and DnD players overlaps pretty significantly so we also felt good about that audience as well.  With our main target audiences defined we also knew what kind of assets would captivate them - this circles back to the Key Art/ Cover Art that showed off all the awesome characters and really enticed people to want to learn more about the story and the game element of SoloQ. 

Our last demographic was planner-people, we knew this would be hard because this community really thrives on people decking out their current planners with beautiful weekly spreads full of stickers and what not and we couldn’t afford a physical sample so we didn’t have much to show off.  We decided to use a planner subreddit to create a weekly blog about SoloQ - What was it, what were the planner elements, what were the rpg elements, how did it work, and we even asked for advice. With the help of photoshop we were able to create great lifestyle shots that also showed off everything we discussed week to week. Overall I think we did the best with what we had to connect with this audience and got a lot of great feedback. 

Understanding what images, language, and information your target audience gravitates towards is incredibly important - make sure to do a ton of research, find comparable products, and use that information to improve your marketing plans and assets.

Pre-Launch Campaign

Pre-launch, pre-launch, pre-launch!!  It is SO important and everyone on this sub tries to warn you but I still see posts asking if it’s necessary. NO ONE WILL BUY YOUR PRODUCT OR INVEST IN YOUR IDEA IF THEY DON’T KNOW IT EXISTS. You cannot rely on internet magic to make your Kickstarter go viral and blow up - you have to do the work.  Building an audience is the key factor in finding success and it's not going to happen in the 30 days your campaign is live (it will also almost guarantee you wont get any kind of “Projects We Love” badges or marketing support from Kickstarter)- that is why a minimum of 3 months for a pre-launch campaign is recommended.

Length 

While I had every intention of doing a full 3 month launch campaign - life events got in the way and turned 3 months into 2.5 months. For everyone reading this thinking “See I can get away with little to no pre-launch!” This was a huge set back and one of the biggest things I would change for my next Kickstarter. I’ll talk more about that later. 

What made me decide on 3 months (that actually ended up being 2.5)? Well there were a lot of factors.  One, actually doing the Kickstarter was a last minute decision.  I had been laid off from my job in March, had to make an international move back to the US in May, and I thought, “No better time than now to give this a try!”.  So once I was back I put in the work, gathered a few close friends to help with the campaign and we announced mid-July. In order to have any chance at being able to deliver the product this year we had to end our live campaign by mid to late October, and even then it was a slim chance.  So this meant starting the live campaign late September. Giving us roughly 2.5 months for prelaunch. This week I actually had to deliver the update that we will not be able to deliver before 2025.  This is super disappointing but we were upfront about the risks and we have a back up plan so all our backers won’t miss a day in 2025.  

The second reason for the short pre-launch was that I didn’t think my product needed a lengthy pre-launch.  It wasn’t a full blown board game or video game, projects that, imo, benefit the most from long pre-launch campaigns, so I thought it best to keep it short and sweet.  

The Plan

Three(.5) Pronged Approach 

Reddit 

I have read a lot that reddit ads are worthless so I saved my money but reddit is great for reaching very specific communities. I am not a fan of Facebook groups as Facebook can be a bit toxic so I focused on reddit and subreddits instead. As I mentioned earlier this was one of the only ways we found we successfully connected with planner-people. The weekly post about the planner on that subreddit was a great way to grow our audience and also a great place to direct our current community on socials to learn more about the product. Tapping into the other audiences like Dnd and RPG on reddit was probably the toughest. Those groups had extensive rules put in place about what you can and can’t post. Working around self-promotion rules was a bit exhausting but I totally understand why those rules exist. We still get comments on our reddit posts from people asking if they can still pre-order the planner so overall I feel like this was a success.  

Social 

We wanted to build a strong community for SoloQ and there is no better way to do that than through socials.  We had pages up on Instagram and Twitter.  Our goal was to post a minimum of 5 times a week, a few of those posts being very formulaic, to minimize to workload (i.e - Monday Motivational Quotes, Wednesday Deep Dives, Sunday Peak and Pit) The assets were very templated so extremely easy to create and change.  Socials also allow you to interact with your community which is invaluable at strengthening brand loyalty.  People want to know they are supporting real people! You can check out our socials here and here. 

Socials also meant we could effectively cross-collaborate with everyone involved with the project.  That great artist we commissioned for the key art/ cover art - he had a big following and was excited to share the project and his involvement.  Print Ninja, the printer we are using, also had a promotion that if we included their banner on the Kickstarter page they would promote on their socials. 

The other major reason socials were important to us is because we wanted to connect with influencers that could help spread the word about SoloQ.  Our socials gave these influencers a place to send their followers if they were interested.  Having our socials established also meant less overhead work for the influencers; All they had to do was share our posts instead of creating something bespoke. By tapping our personal and professional networks and also reaching out to a ton of people we didn’t know we were able to get the support of a lot of great influencers! 

Find influencers who are a big part of the community and audiences you are trying to connect with - they are the best people to help grow your audience on a more personal level. 

The key for all of this to really work is to have an active account.  People won’t follow an account that rarely posts - they are following to see more, so make sure to have a social plan ahead of time!

Paid Ads

Due to a small budget (my personal bank account :() we waited until August to start running meta ads.  Setting these up was insane - honestly it doesn’t surprise me that people are hired specifically to set these up correctly.  By some miracle I got ours set up and running and we saw a noticeable increase in followers week over week.  We had a very professional looking ad (extremely important) that captured the essence of our brand.  This one asset had 3 variations of a similar layout to fit the three top size formats ads run in on social.  So basically one ad that worked across both Facebook and Instagram seamlessly.  I budgeted $30 a day for the entire month of August. By the end of August we noticed a small drop in average followers we were gaining a week, which was expected.  

In September we created another asset, different but still a very similar look.  Still professional, still on brand, but this one showed off the inside of the planner (instead of focusing just on the cover art like the first one did). Same CTAs.  We ran both ads for a budget of $50 a day and the new ad crushed it.  We started gaining a lot more followers week over week. Roughly I would say we went from 100 followers a week to 100 followers every 2-3 days. 

Meta ads were the only paid ads we did as the consensus was that these worked the best. 

The most important thing to get right is your target audience! We focused on people who were interested in: Kickstarter, Crowdfunding, Dungeons & Dragons, and Video Games.

+Friends & Family

This is the .5 in the title but honestly so underrated.  Our friends and family showed up in a big way - so many people shared our announcement, our posts, commented for reach, and spread the word across their friend groups, work groups, and so on.  If you are running a Kickstarter about a project you are truly passionate about and believe in - tell everyone you know about it! I had people I haven’t talked to in years support the Kickstarter because I shared it across all my personal channels as often as possible. I’ll talk more about this in the live campaign but they are also the people most likely to show up day 1, hour 1, minute 1, to back your project - Don’t underestimate your personal network! 

Deviation from advice 

The biggest piece of advice that I see here, and that was also directly told to me by another Kickstarter creator, was to set up an external site to collect email addresses.  We opted not to do this. It is not lost on me as to why having an email list is important, vital even, but to be completely honest, I just had no mental bandwidth to figure this out and execute. I am sure there are a bunch of people that will tell me “It’s so easy to set up a site to collect emails” and maybe it is but it was just that one more thing I couldn’t muster up the energy to do.  I also felt like with such a short pre-launch campaign the Kickstarter emails and alerts would suffice - and if any one was on the fence they could follow our socials to get more info.  Knowing that I plan on doing another version of SoloQ I wish I had collected emails and I will cover this a lot more when I talk about what I would have done differently.  Ultimately though, it was a very stressful time in my life, and I don’t fault myself for putting this aside.  Overall, I don’t think it had a major impact on this Kickstarter.  

Goal vs Results 

My goal for pre-launch was to get over 1000 followers.  We needed roughly 150 (tier 1) backers to hit our funding goal. I knew the average conversion of followers was about 10-20% (20% being incredibly rare) so having over 1000 followers should have got us very close to 150 backers.  This meant most of our funding goal would be met with just our followers alone. Plus we knew some would back the higher-tiers which meant more money so 150 tier 1 backers was the absolute safest number. We were so excited to exceed that goal, going live with right around 1100 followers! 

Setting a realistic goal is critical. Make sure you run the numbers. If you need 200 backers and you are only able to get 100 followers - chances are you need to delay the Kickstarter and reassess your marketing/product materials. Always err on the side of caution - if the average conversion rate is 10-20% assume you will only get 10%.  Assume everyone will only back the lowest tier.  These safe assumptions will give you a solid target and a bit of wiggle room when the campaign is live. 

I'll be posting the part 2 soon which will cover the marketing we did while the campaign was live.

Thanks for reading!

I’ve been searching for about a week now. It’s not in account settings. I’ve tried pc and mobile, I’ve even emailed Kickstarter and haven’t gotten a response. Where do I find this?

I went back and looked at my past projects. They went up 10-19% in the last two days. Is this a typical growth number?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darkeaglegames/the-lawful-good-the-chaotic-evil-and-the-meow?ref=9aaw42

So I just reached out to about 3 of the newsletter promotion companies out there for Kickstarter focused leads. While I was waiting for their responses, 2 other ones reached out to an email that I haven't used anywhere else or entered into contact information other than these 3. The timing is highly suspicious.

Involved companies are:

reBackers
BackerHive
backerrock
Newbacker

I know what people will say about these places, but I have been seeing some really good results with a couple of the well known ones here and wanted to use some of the other ones. But I think one of these places are double dipping. Could it be possible??

Check our website for more info https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nearbymusic/album-for-nearby or https://gofund.me/26a65eb1
Thanks a lot for supporting us!

https://preview.redd.it/u05ljw07x97e1.jpg?width=2201&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77f584dbb3a28bfb169d7c37d10b5e5838457c69

Now that Kickstarter is allowing us to add basically anything to the prelaunch page, in a section similar to the project "story" builder, what are folks putting there? What has worked well for you? What hasn't?

Specifically for a board game project, what "reveals" should be saved for later? What helps people get excited now? Wouldn't want to just copy our actual project story, but then again, whatever works.

We have a very long lead time planned on our prelaunch page, so should we change it up over those months? Do a drip reveal, or save that kind of stuff for our newsletter subscribers? Include a newsletter subscription link on the prelaunch page? (Is that allowed?)

Please share your tips and experience, and thanks in advance!