Kickstarter Lesson #19: The Daily Dashboard Screenshot – Stonemaier Games

Kickstarter Lesson #19: The Daily Dashboard Screenshot

10-8-12On every web browser, there is a plugin or extension that lets you capture what your computer screen looks like (a “screenshot”). I primarily use Google Chrome–if you do too, you’ll find the extension here.

During your Kickstarter campaign, set a nightly reminder to take a screenshot of your project dashboard. Here you can see a sample of Viticulture’s dashboard the day after the campaign ended. As you can see, there’s some invaluable data here.

The primary reason I’d recommend the daily screenshot is for the middle section of the page that breaks down referrals to your project. This section changes all the time, and if you don’t take the screenshots, you’ll find yourself wanting to go back in time to see what caused a particular jump in backers. The only way you can isolate that data is to compared today’s dashboard to yesterday’s dashboard…which you can’t do unless you took a screenshot of yesterday’s dashboard.

Also, don’t be fooled by the sheer number of backers who appear to come from Kickstarter. Yes, many people discover projects by skimming through Kickstarter. But if you promote your project well, many backers will come from external sites, but after a few clicks on Kickstarter, Kickstarter reports that backer as having originated from their site. James Mathe of Minion Games explains it better than I can here.

Anyway, take the daily screenshot. The worst that can happen is you waste 60 seconds a day. Much more likely, there will be key points in your project when you’ll really want to compare one day to the other, and your screenshots will enable you to do so.

Up Next: Kickstarter Lesson #20: Flexibility, Filtering, and Responding to Feedback

5 Comments on “Kickstarter Lesson #19: The Daily Dashboard Screenshot

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  1. Oh survey sounds like a great idea! Yeah I know what you mean by too many things. The original intent is to dilute the bookishness of poetry with everyday things… Maybe that’s not a valid intent…Thanks Jamey!

  2. Karen: Thanks for your note, and I’m sorry about your campaign’s early struggles. The good news, though, is that you’ve already raised $560 out of an $85 goal–that’s great!

    I think you’re right to be confused by a 1% conversion rate, though there is a big different between signing up for a mailing list and actually paying money for something. I think a 5-10% conversion rate is more to be expected.

    While I can’t fully analyze your campaign, I can make three suggestions:

    1. You’re trying to do a lot of different things instead of focusing on one specific thing. Your campaign is offering poetry books, all natural hair care, brownie mix, garden seed, and a card game. That’s a lot of completely different things! :) Read this to see why that’s a problem: https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-63-stay-focused-or-lose-backers/

    2. While you have videos on the page, you don’t have a main project video. Studies have shown that projects with primary videos are significantly more likely to succeed than others. Read my posts about how to make an effective video.

    3. I would highly suggest that you send a survey to your 900 subscribers asking why they aren’t backing the campaign. Learn directly from your audience. If you want to increase the chances they reply, offer a prize to one random person who answers the survey. You’ll get some blunt answers, but it’ll be the most accurate feedback you can get.

    Good luck!

  3. Hi Jamey,

    I’ve been reading your KS blog for a while now, and just launched my poetry project yesterday on KS. I set a very modest goal of $85, because A, I have no idea how much to set as the goal, B, this is not a get rich quick scheme for me. However, I am somewhat baffled as to the turnout. As of now, the second day of the campaign, I have 9 backers, $560 pledged. Not bad, really, but I have 900 people on the distribution list, which I built over the past three years since I started posting my poetry on Twitter three years ago. I sent my FFs DM asking if they’d be interested in backing my KS, and got their email from there.

    My confusion is, out of these 900, only 9 people pledged? Yes it’s only the second day, but I’m still just very confused. Meanwhile, I have been diligently trying to contact poetry bloggers and such, reaching out to them on Twitter. I know poetry is a hard genre, but this hard?

    Anyway, just wonder if I can get some of your insight. I admire greatly what you’ve put together on your blog regarding KS campaigns, and want to sincerely thank you anyway.

    Have a great day.
    Karen

  4. Another option for a screen shot is to hit your “print screen” button and then open a Powerpoint file, right click and hit paste. You can then right click the pasted picture and on click save as and then save the screen shot. This is a nice cheat option if you don’t have a screen shot tool.

  5. […] Up Next: Kickstarter Lesson #19: The Daily Dashboard Screenshot […]

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