Kickstarter

Eric Gonzaga.Howdy he wants to talkabout Kickstarter campaigns.Yes, I would lovefor you to talkabout Kickstarter campaigns.What do you want to know, man?How you Slay it and how youSlay it in 3x or 10x your goals?Yes and if you actually didcompare any of the, you know,the other GoFundMeand Indiegogo and anyof those other crowdfundingcrowdfunding platforms,I'm just going, this is likestory time with Will Smith.No, it's just me.Story time with crystal.I'm just going to tellyou what happened,and we can peel apartthe layers togetherand see what actionableinsight there is, if any.We debated internally becausewe wanted to publish the book,but we weren't sure ifanybody would buy it,and I don't want to gothrough an effort of writinga book just to have a hitand just fall with a thud.And we've been burnedbefore because peopleare very enthusiastic online andsay, we want this, we want itand we make it.And it's like 10%of the people say,we want it actually followthrough with buying it.Then we're takingourselves in the butt.So lesson learnedpre sell everything.And once you have proofthat people want itand it's been validated.Then go make the thing,and that's an awesome wayto try lots of ideas withoutburning yourself and makingyourself go bankrupt.Ok? anybody's got an ideaof pre-sell it first.So the debateinternally was we haveenough of an audience we couldsell at our own landing pageand people would gothere and buy it.But we wanted to test tosee the power of Kickstarterand what they can do ingenerating traffic and buzzand all that kind of stuff.So it was an experiment.So we set what I thought wasa pretty modest but realisticgoal in terms of yes, that willpay for the printing and someof our time to 25,000.And the thing took off.And it worked outreally well that weraised more than $75,000and it was pretty fantastic.What surprised me inthe process, Eric,is who supported it andthe way they support it.So at the very top end ofthe support tier to fundus is to pay $1,000 foressentially a $25 book.And you're thinkingto yourself, well,who the heck would do that?So we have tobundle in somethingthat's not 1,000 copiesof the book or whatever.So that's when we threw in,hey, if you buy the book,if you support us, thenwe'll throw in the consultingpart for free.So basically, you'regetting the consulting partand you get in the book.And the perks that come withit, the surprising thingwas to see somebody likeBlair n.s, who I look up toand have referenced many,many times to actually buy itand say, I'm going to donatemy one hour to anybodythat's ever boughtthe book and youcould draw whoever wins that.So that was anact of generosity.I felt like all ofa sudden we werelike KPCC doing aradio drive wherewe have Tom Hanksmatching dollarsand really fuelingthe campaign, but itwas nice to see somethinglike that happen.Some of the mistakesthat we had,we made was unlikeother projects thatmake you feel good when itcomes to something that's moretransactional, like a book.The tears could havebeen better designed,and I think we would haveeven raised more money, raisedeven more money.We should have designedthe tears to, like,support us at this level.Get the book and the next level,get two books, get five books,get 10 books andat a certain point,get your name in the bookand all that kind of stuff.But the mistake thatwe made was thinkingthat people just wantedto support us blindlyand will pay for amention or shout outon our channel, which,you know, honestyisn't worth all that much.So when it comesto product thingslike backpacks andbooks, tangible goods,I think it's better justto make better deals,so it's just a way for themto buy more at a lower price.I think we wouldhave done betterif we had two orthree of those tiersin there prior tothe thing ending.And we boxed ourselves in, Eric.We boxed ourselves in that.We can't put a sandwichdeal in between two dealsbecause the two deals, wecan't rip off either one.So it made us.It was very hard to squeezethe deal in between.And the gap was quite big.So let's say one dealwas at $25 to support us.The next deal was at 150.To sandwich somethingin between and stillmake sense between the twooffers was quite difficult. SoI think planning thatout a little bit better,what the tiers are,so if you're goingto launch somethingphysical, I stronglyencourage you to look at acouple of other Kickstartercampaigns that areselling goods and lookat how they structuretheir support tiersand model yourself after that.There's one otherthing that we couldhave done to reallyjuice sales, but wedidn't want to do it isthere's a lot of posts, supportcampaigns that you can run.So once the programhas been funded,there are servicesout there, quite a fewbecause it kept allattacking me via email.Is to create a postsupport campaign, whichallows them to upgrade thisor do something different,like would you like to supportus via hardcover editionor do you want aspecial bookmark designor something like that?And then they do a lot ofposts, fundraising, purchasesor sales.Does that make sense?Eric, yeah, it does is thatthose post support campaigns,is that unrelatedto kickstarter?I think there are these middletier like people that workin between Kickstarter and you.It's not officiallypart of kickstarter,but there's a whole subcommunity support servicesthat help peopleraise even more moneyafter the campaign is ended.And they reach out and you'llknow because you probablyhave seen it yourself.I'll give you an example.There were theseelastic shoelacesthat I bought because I'mlike tying my shoelaces.And I bought them.And then as soon asthe campaign ended,another campaign startedrunning and they asked me,would you like to purchasetwo extra or three extra lacesat this color or whatever atthis incredibly reduced price?And that's what happensthen you're like,oh, yeah, well, I bought two,I guess I want three more.I didn't pull thetrigger on that,but those thingsare available or doyou want a special carryingcase or something elseand that needs to be.It's something you take intoconsideration before you launchanything, because youhave to know what the postcampaign looks like as well.OK and there are companiesthat are set up to do this,you can do it yourself becauseyou have everybody's emailand you have to follow upwith everybody anyways,because you have to then gettheir information, like wheredo you want to ship to?What colors do youwant, et cetera?So in that campaign,you can thensend him to anothershopping cartand allow them tobuy or upgrade.OK all right, I haveone follow up question,so when you wentthrough the campaign,what was there something?What would you say was themost difficult part of it?I've heard people talkabout obviously stayingengaged with the communityand that even for peoplewho are supporting on, youknow, like the $1 or $5 tier whojust want updatesthat it can becomea lot of work kind of respondingto everything because obviouslythere's so many peopleyou have to deal with.So was there anything thatdidn't go as smoothly for youthat you would have, youknow, you would have changed?A lot of people are asking fora hardcover editions, whichwasn't really part of our planbecause printing those books,they're heavier.They cost a lotmore to make, and weweren't quite sure howmany people actuallywanted a hardcover edition.And so those questionskept coming up.Now the good news is, whileyour campaign is live,as you see thosequestions pop up,I believe you can edit andanswer those questions.So that people don't keepasking the same question.Now we're a little bit ofan anomaly in that we'rekind of a known entityand have our own topof the funnel awareness,which we didn't reallyrely solely on the Kickstartermachine to fund us.And a lot of people don'thave that advantage.So if you don't have a giantapparatus to let peopleknow about what itis that you're doing.You're going to have towork a little bit harder,you might have to run ads,and I've seen this too.So people run adsand they build thatinto the budgetof their campaign,so you should set aside so ifyou're trying to raise 90,000and you anticipate sendingspending 9,000 in adcampaigns, which is alot in Facebook terms,then raise $99,000 sothat it's all coveredand be very transparentabout it. $9,000or 10% of this budget willbe spent on marketing.30% will use outon manufacturing.25% will be on design andfulfillment and et cetera,and just create thatpie so that everybodyis aware of what's going on.So when you get yournumbers in orderand you share verytransparently,I think it allowspeople to be veryclear about whatthey're trying to doand how they wantto support you.Now, luckily for us,we are on home pagea couple of times onkickstarters page,and that helpedus a lot because Ithink it's probably an anomaly.I'm just guessinghere that authorsproduce books that areactually successfully funded.So it was kind of ananomaly like we're doing it.And we have a lotof traffic and we'regenerating people to go to it.We're mentioning on Instagram,on YouTube, all over the place,on Twitter, onmultiple channels.So we're drivinga lot of trafficdirectly to the Kickstartercampaign and we're happyin this instance to pay thema percentage of setting uptheir page.So if anything, ifthose questions come upand you can'tanticipate them allbe quick in creating a fakepart so that they don'tkeep asking you that question.The other challengewas making the video.It's always weird to figureout what the heck your pitch isand why people should care.Some people do a muchbetter job than us.I just literally justcame on the cameraslike, hey, you guyswant this to me?I'm going to do it if you wantme to do it, and that's it.Right, so I wouldput more effortinto writing that script if youdon't have the organic audiencethat we have.Now, what are youlooking to launch, man?No, it's not actually for me.I've had several clientscome to me and, you know,ask my opinion.They're like rather than doinga pre-sale on their own page,is this something thatwe should consider?And some of them are, youknow, from digital productsto real products toproducts that don't exist.So I was just curiousfor, you know,I'm trying to reachout to as many peoplethat I know who havelaunched campaigns.And yeah, there'sa lot of opinionsin terms of how you shouldgo about doing this.Yeah, there are, I think,good resources availableonline on how you shouldstructure your Kickstartercampaign and people whoare much better at itthan we who are doing it.The way that you're supposedto do it in the sensethat they don'thave an audience,they don't have a following,so they do it the right way.Maybe we're lazy.Maybe we're taking ouraudience for granted,but we feel like enoughpeople have asked us for thisand we're going to do itand it should just happen.We weren't lookingto raise 75,000.We were just looking to fulfillthe orders so that we're notstuck with a warehouse fullof books that nobody wants.That would be like adouble insult, the factthat I worked onit and then now Igot to like, where did Iput these stupid things?Right, right, so Iwould take everythingI say with a grain ofsalt, because we'reapproaching it in a verystrange and unusual way.Atypical, ok?