I can imagine that Kickstarter is a pretty intimidating place for first-time creators these days. You’re entering an environment where thousands of projects are launched every day, many of them by veteran creators who seem to overfund with ease. Not to mention projects launched by companies that appear to have a huge team working on them (hint: […]
Let’s talk about The Great Shipping Debacle of 2016. The story starts with my original post about the special pre-order campaign for Moor Visitors, an expansion to Viticulture. During the last week of February, we accepted pre-orders for Moor Visitors and a few other incoming/in-stock products from retailers, and those retailers sold to their customers […]
Consider this scenario: You’ve successfully funded your crowdfunding campaign to make a new product. The survey data indicates that backers pledged to receive a total of 1000 units of the product. How many units should you make? There are lots of different answers to this question, and it may vary by industry. What I can […]
If you’ve looked to my blog for various options for fulfilling a crowdfunding campaign, you’ve probably started with this page before making your way over to the Google Doc to compare prices and services. It’s there that you’ll see that I’ve personally used only some of the services on that document–I can’t vouch for the others. […]
Today I launched a pre-order campaign through our website for a new set of realistic resource tokens called the Token Trilogy and reprints of the metal coins featured in Tuscany Prima and Scythe. You’re reading that correctly: I’m using the term “pre-order campaign.” It’s not a Kickstarter project (though it’s intended to feel similar to […]
In this series, I highlight some of the interesting choices current crowdfunders have made regarding their project’s reward levels, stretch goals, and overall campaign design (the projects themselves, not the content or product). This isn’t meant as an endorsement of these projects (these creators did not ask for me to promote their work–I disregard all such requests); rather, […]
I love watching Shark Tank, the television show where entrepreneurs seek to raise funds for their business from 5 very wealthy people. A common theme I’ve seen over the past several seasons is that a number of people go on the show having already successfully run a crowdfunding project, but I’ve never had the opportunity […]
In late February, I ran an experimental 1-week campaign through my website and Celery (a pre-order e-commerce platform). The details and motivations for doing so are described on this post, but the basic idea was that only retailers would place orders with Stonemaier Games, and I would connect customers directly to those retailers. Shipping for […]
Airbnb and Kickstarter have something big in common: They both rely heavily on trust. Airbnb hosts trust that their guests are going to respect their space, and their guests trust that their hosts aren’t going to endanger them. Similarly, Kickstarter backers trust–by paying for something months before it will be created–that creators are going to […]
A few years ago, a backer paid $10,000 to get a speaking part in the Kickstartered Veronica Mars movie. Around the same time, five backers paid $1,150 each to have Seth Godin include their stories told in his book, The Icarus Deception. Last year, two backers paid $5,000 to spend a week hanging out with […]
