Crowdfunding Tip # 13 - Your ace in the hole

It's possible to launch a crowdfunding project with minimal effort put into it, and succeed. However, what is possible and what is likely are two different things, entirely.

The problem that a lot of Kickstarter projects face is that their creators often enter their respective crowdfunding undertakings, without really having a clue of what they are doing. They simply see Kickstarter as a place of possibilities - which it is, but many of them just plain don't have a clue as to where to start, how to proceed, or how to gain advantage, as far as getting their pet project funded successfully by the public masses through Kickstarter.

No matter who you are, and no matter what kind of crowdfunding project that you have, there is one ace in the hole that is always at your disposal - provided that you're prepared to grab hold of it and not let go.

That ace in the hole is something called enthusiasm!

Enthusiasm, you see, is contagious. But, if you don't have enthusiasm for your own project, then who will? Most likely, no one, that's who.

Which is why it is all the more important that YOU have enthusiasm for your own project.

It should be plain. It should be clear. It should be as obvious as the nose on your face - even more so, in fact.

What is enthusiasm? In layman's terms, as it applies to a crowdfunding project, enthusiasm is the very essence of the power of persuasion.

With faith, you can move mountains. With enthusiasm, you can conquer the world. You do want to be on top of the world, at the end of your crowd funding campaign, don't you? Well, what do you think the rocket fuel is that is most likely to get you there? It's enthusiasm!

As I browse the fertile fields of the Kickstarter website, I encounter all kinds of different crowdfunding projects. Some really have a way of twisting your head and grabbing your eye. Others, however, often appear to be bone dry of enthusiasm. Basically, they are crowdfunding projects in name only. They're just sort of drifting along, hoping like Hell that a crowd will materialize out of thin air and miraculously save them from failing.

Some projects just ooze enthusiasm. These are the ones that scream at you, in some way, shape, or form. They don't just get your attention - they command it! These are the ones that you not only want to succeed, but which move you to help them succeed. These are the ones that leave no real room for doubt, as to whether they will succeed or not. They have success written all over them, and all because somebody bothered to bring along a little enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is a lot like the splitting or the fusing of atoms. It's power, and it's power in spades! Enthusiasm is the exact opposite of "a little." By its very nature, it is a driving force, and it is a force that can be harnessed for the good of your crowdfunding campaign.

How much does it cost? Nothing, nothing at all. It's free for the taking. It's free for the having. It's free to use. It's possible to have an unlimited amount of it.

Be forewarned, however, that if you grab hold of enthusiasm, your crowdfunding project will never be the same, again.

You've been warned!

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Crowdfunding Tip # 12 - Transform comments into dialogue

Everything on your Kickstarter project page has a function. A lot of thought went into the design of the project page template by the Kickstarter staff. Their basic design has proven to be successful for thousands upon tens of thousands of project creators. The Kickstarter staff knows what they are doing.

The real question, though, is: Do you?

The proverbial red-headed step child of the Kickstarter project page is, I believe, the Comments section. While many project creators "get it," an awful lot still don't seem to grasp the most basic and fundamental role of that project page section - as it relates to the role of the creator.

Yes, backers will use the Comments section to post all kinds of different comments. Praise, criticism, observations, and general verbal meanderings. Some Kickstarter projects get lots of comments on their project page, whereas many projects receive none. If you're trying to crowd fund a project, which do you think is the better of those two situations to be in?

Comments indicate interest. Now, whether it is exactly the kind of interest that a project creator envisioned, prior to launching their project or not, may well be another matter, altogether.

Project creators vary widely, in their chosen approach to responding to comments left in the Comments section of their project page. Some creators respond to comments there, while others prefer to communicate via e-mail, and some creators don't even bother to respond, at all.

Running a crowdfunding campaign can be a very time consuming exercise. Project creators will often look for every advantage possible, both imaginable or unimaginable. At times, they get so wrapped up in trying to promote their projects that they will often overlook a gift horse in the mouth.

What comments are, if you haven't figured it out by now, are opportunities. More specifically, comments left in the Comments section of your Kickstarter project page are opportunities to craft and engage in dialogue with backers. Communication, you see, doesn't have to be a one way street. In your search to acquire backers for your project, one bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. One person who is already interested in your project enough to actually pause long enough to leave a comment can easily be worth multiple potential backers who are yet to materialize.

If you're too busy working on promoting the Kickstarter project that you already launched to bother with responding to comments in the Comments section of your project page, then perhaps it is high time that you reconsidered your chosen approach to running a crowdfunding campaign.

As of the moment in time that I write this blog posting, my profile page on the Kickstarter website informs me that I have left a total of two hundred and forty-six comments on various project creators' Kickstarter pages. Do you suppose that my purpose in doing so all those times was to waste my time trying to talk to the wind?

Did you know that it is possible for actual conversations to take place in the Comments section of project pages? Do you grasp that conversations between backers can take place there. The whole point of nurturing comments is to generate and to grow interest in your project. You do want people to become more interested in your project, don't you? Sometimes, a sense of community can sprout in even the most unlikely of places. Just because you're the project creator, don't assume that the way that you've chose to try and generate a sense of community (and the dialogue that comes along with it) is the way that backers of your project will gravitate towards. The best laid plans of mice and men go astray. That doesn't mean, however, that just because the way that you want to build a sense of community may not be working like you want it to, that you should not be flexible and embrace a sense of community that sprouts from dialogue in the Comments section of your Kickstarter project page.

As a backer of Kickstarter projects, one that some might describe as a serial backer (152 Kickstarter projects backed, as of the writing of this article), I never cease to be amazed at just how many project creators just plain don't "get it." In their search for interest on the part of others in their projects, project creators often turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to conversation starting points that comments by backers constitute.

If a backer leaves a comment, but you as a project creator fail to respond, what does that tend to do to the conversation that was started? Can you say, "Killed it?"

So, let me ask you this, is killing a conversation one of the better ways of getting people to talk about your project? If you won't talk to those that leave comments on your project page, then why should they bother with referring others to your project? After all, it's not as though you're interested in talking about it, you know.

How do you get people who are already backers to increase the amount of their pledges? Did you realize that responding to their comments, and carrying on a conversation with them in the Comments section, is one sure fire way to accomplish that? I've increased the amount of some of my pledges to Kickstarter projects due to that, before. Do you reckon that I am the only person that falls into that category? Hardly.

Do you believe that not responding to comments generates enthusiasm? Yet, isn't enthusiasm at the very core of what every Kickstarter project needs?

Maybe you just don't have time to respond. Then again, maybe people just don't have time to back your project.

When you were doing the preliminary footwork for your crowdfunding campaign, at around the same time that you set the funding goal for your campaign, did you also bother to set a comments goal for your campaign?

If your answer was no, then as your project enters the proverbial Dead Zone, as it most likely will, then perhaps you'll have some time at that point to think about why you didn't.

Maybe no one told you to. Then again, maybe no one should have to tell you to respond to Comments in your project page Comments section, either.

If you're ignoring the Comments section of your project page, whether intentionally or unintentionally, then how are you communicating effectively with your backers?

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Opportunity, opportunity, everywhere, but nary any comments responded to.

If your crowdfunding campaign feels like a trek through the bush, then maybe you should ask yourself why you spend so much time looking for birds in the bush, and so little time paying attention to the woodpecker that is pecking your project in the head.

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Crowdfunding Tip # 11 - Share rhymes with care

Take a good, long, and hard look at the flowers in the image that accompanies this posting. They're either dead or dying, and this is as good of a way, as any, of visualizing what your Kickstarter may end up looking like, if you fail to grasp a core fundamental that Rose Spinelli of The CrowdFundamentals drives home in her succinctly titled advice article, "Make Sure Backers Know You Give A S#*&," over on the Crowdsourcing.Org website.

People often create crowdfunding projects, and launch their respective project pages, only to then fall into a deep well of silence. They hit the launch button, and then they head off to parts unknown, and their crowdfunding campaigns turn out to be campaigns in name only.

With little in the way of time, effort, or energy invested into the crafting of their project page, it's actually pretty easy, I think, to grasp why projects that fall into this category ultimately fail. By and large, crowdfunding projects are not self-executing. In other words, they don't tend to get the job done all by themselves. Something - or more specifically, someone - is needed, in order to breathe life into a crowdfunding campaign.

The title of Rose Spinelli's article that I link to, here, is tactfully stated. I will dispense with such formalities here, in the hope of better driving home the point - a point that is well worth repeating, both loudly and often.

People not giving a shit about their own crowdfunding project is a scenario that plays out all too frequently. It's not a problem that is unique to Kickstarter, but Kickstarter certainly has its fair share of such projects in a spiral of self-inflicted doom. I run into them all of the time, while browsing Kickstarter projects.

Of course, who am I to talk, right? Take this blog, for example. It is a site that purports to try and give advice to crowdfunding project creators, and yet, how very few pages populate its pages. Touché!

Then again, I do this as a hobby, of sorts, whereas crowdfunding projects are launched under the auspices of trying to raise funding for something that project creators are interested in and care about. Yet, in many instances, such interests are fleeting, and some of the crowdfunding projects that I encounter along the way, I can't help but to think, "Why even bother?"

The heavy hitting of crowdfunding advice, I am quite content to leave to the likes of the Salvador Briggmans and Rose Spinellis of the world. Suffice it to say that my own crowdfunding ambitions, if you even want to call it that, are considerably less bold and less grand. I mainly try to help some sole individual, here or there, that I encounter along the way down this yellow brick road of crowdfunding confusion.

Which brings me to a comparison that I had not intended to make, when I sat down this morning to begin writing this article. Running a crowdfunding campaign reminds me of The Wizard of Oz. It helps if you have three things: a brain, a heart, and some courage.

Crowdfunding campaigns run the gamut of human interest. Some fall well beyond the pale of zany. Where crowdfunding projects are concerned, many are they which are a horse of a different color.

A lot about crowdfunding requires the use of your brain. The vast bulk of it is plain old common sense, if you get right down to it. But, if you fail to use the brain that God gave you, then the odds are pretty darned good that when your project's campaign cycle ends, your project won't make it to the Emerald City of Funding Success.

I was up well into the wee early morning hours, last night, nosing my way around Salvador Briggman's Crowd Crux website, which is about the closest thing to a Fort Knox of Crowdfunding Advice that you are likely to ever encounter. It was while watching a podcast, there, Crowdfunding Consultant Rose Spinelli Shares Best Practices, that I gained my introduction to this Rose Spinelli person.

As Sal and Rose discussed things in that podcast, they touched upon the importance of humanizing your crowdfunding campaign. In other words, it helps to have a heart. After all, how will you be able to pour your heart into your crowdfunding project, if you don't have a heart? The Tin Man had a heart - he had one all along. He just didn't understand what a real heart actually was.

If you don't pour your heart into your project and its campaign, then how can you expect potential backer passers-by to get swept away by - and caught up in - your passion for your crowdfunding story? You do have passion, don't you? If not, then you are the Tin Man in your own story - the one that is just standing there, rusting away.

Rose and Salvador are what most people would likely call "experts" on crowdfunding. I can hear Sal Briggman groaning now, because anyone can call them self an expert, and anyone can be labeled an expert, at any time and for any reason - or for no reason, at all.

When it comes to crowdfunding, there is no one, single way to success. Did you hear me when I said that? Success can be had many different ways, but if you choose to ignore (or to remain willfully oblivious to) certain fundamental truths about human behavior, then rest assured, you place your crowdfunding campaign on a trajectory of failure.

Projects like the by-now-infamous Potato Salad Kickstarter, and others like it that enjoy a degree of success that properly qualifies as being nothing short of stupendous, shine likes stars in the crowdfunding firmament. Average, ordinary people like you or I look at projects like those, and we can't help but to scratch our heads at how they go viral, in the first instance, or how they raise funds in tsunami like style, in the second instance?

Sometimes in life, it can be helpful to keep your feet planted firmly on the ground of everyday reality. The fact is, most crowdfunding campaigns are never going to go viral. Most of them will never rake in millions of dollars in cash. If they make it, at all, most crowdfunding projects will be fortunate to beat their funding goals by just a little bit. But, if you stop and think about it, the goal is the goal. More is always better, when it comes to pledges received, but as long as you meet the funding goal that you, yourself, have set, then life on Kickstarter Lane is good, is it not?

Granted, there can always be complications, such as miscalculating on rewards offered, and problems can be encountered after the fact (life as a human being is fraught with unforeseen complications), but as long as your project reaches its funding goal, then your project will manage to achieve a degree of real success.

A lot of people starting out as first-time crowdfunding project creators suffer from either a lack of knowledge, a lack of experience, or a lack of courage. This is where the lion in you comes in at.

In the forest of your own life, it falls to you to play the role of the lion. Life can be a jungle, at times, but the lion didn't earn the title of King of the Jungle for no reason, at all, you know.

Life is an excellent adventure through adversity. By the time that most people get around to launching their first Kickstarter, then they should already be well acquainted with the fact that life, like crowdfunding campaigns, can throw you a curve.

Adversity can be approached one of two ways - with courage or without it. The choice, as always, remains with you.

In The Wizard of Oz, the cowardly lion stands out like a thumb in the eye. An actual lion, of course, is anything but cowardly. Thus, to be the lion of your own crowdfunding project, you must not allow yourself to become the prey to your own misgivings. You set the funding goal. You set the tone. You know better than anyone else - better than even Salvador Briggman and Rose Spinelli - why your crowdfunding project matters.

There are so many crowdfunding projects going at any given moment that Sal and Rose would run themselves ragged, trying to lead each and every last one of those project creators, individually, by the hand and out of the woods of danger.

Make no mistake about it, to launch a crowdfunding campaign is to risk an encounter with many different dangers. Once you hit that launch button on your project, the clock is ticking.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

But, far more dangerous to a crowdfunding project than that eternal foe - time, itself - is a project creator who is too scared or too sheepish to stand up for their own project. It's your idea. It's your concept. It's your baby.

The cowardly lion of Oz fame actually did possess courage. He just had to find it, that's all. Honestly, he had it all along. He just didn't know it. He allowed himself to become distracted by - and obsessed with - things that were never really a threat to him, at all. He allowed his fears to run rampant. He became - and remains - synonymous with cowardice.

But, lest I remind you, at some point along the way, he found himself - and in the process, he saved the day. I know, I know. He didn't save the day, alone - but then again, that's why you're trying to build a crowd in the first place, isn't it?

Doubt is something that many crowdfunding project creators allow to become dominant in their perspective towards their own project. Doubt, itself, becomes fear, incarnate.

Yet, even doubt, itself, is a gift from God. When people's lives are filled with doubt, it is then that they often turn to God for advice, for guidance, for hope, and for delivering them out of their place of dire straits.

If your crowdfunding project only had a Salvador Briggman or a Rose Spinelli to aid it, then sure, it would prevail, right? To ordinary people who seek to launch crowdfunding campaigns, Sal and Rose take on the appearance of crowdfunding immortals. They possess a pantheonic degree of knowledge about crowdfunding. They are intimately well versed in the subject. To the common man or woman on the street who plunges head first into launching a crowdfunding project for the very first time, individuals like these two keep company at a crowdfunding level that you or I have trouble conceiving.

Even still, even they started somewhere. Both Sal and Rose started somewhere, and what they learned along the way was, in many instance, knowledge acquired after much trial and effort. Neither, to my knowledge, claim to have become so knowledgeable about crowdfunding by way of conversing with a burning bush. Some of what they know was given to them by others, but it is no less equally true that a lot of what they both know, they have shared with others that they have encountered along the way.

Where your crowdfunding project is concerned, though, it is you who should roar the loudest about your own campaign. It is you who should be the lion of your own project. It is you who has to overcome your fears and your doubts and your misgivings.

When my wife and I named our son, after he was born, one of the names that I considered naming him was Oz. That way, when he started school, later in life, and as the kids in his class took turns introducing themselves, after all of the, "Hi, I'm Tommy," and "Hello, I'm Lisa," and "My name is Steve" subsided and it got to his turn, he would have been able to say, "I am Oz, the great and powerful!"

Of course, things didn't turn out quite that way. We ended up naming him Titan, instead.

The titans of mythology fought with the gods, themselves. In other words, they contended with the powers that be. As my son ages and goes through life, he faces adversity. Though I love him enormously and without end, it ultimately falls to him to face - and to overcome - whatever adversity that life throws at him.

Crowdfunding projects, much like life, itself, tend to be exercises in trial and error. Mistakes are made, and corrections need to ensue in the aftermath, thereof. When your crowdfunding project has no backers, no funding, and basks in a dark veil of silence on the part of the rest of the world, one's confidence can be tested.

Even still, it remains possible to summon one's courage, and to face up to the reality of the crowdfunding situation, no matter how harsh that reality might be. When I give advice or feedback to others about their respective crowdfunding campaigns, my words might very well fall harsh upon ears, and especially if they are ears of a crowdfunding project creator whose ears have already adjusted to the silence of a world that seems all too disinterested in what they have to say.

When your crowdfunding project is seemingly lost in a world of silence, all the more important it becomes, then, for you to roar like a lion - that somebody, somewhere might hear you. If you're trying to raise money from potential backers, it helps if they can hear you and if they know that you're there.

Don't you dare let the world forget you, but even more importantly, don't you dare let the world not know that you - and by extension, your crowdfunding project - exist in the here and now.

If you want people to care about your crowdfunding project, enough to share it with others, then you would be well served to care about it, first and foremost, yourself. The less that you care, the less that they will want to share. If it isn't obvious to others  that you care about your own project, then how on Earth or in the Land of Oz do you plan on succeeding?

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Crowd Funding Tip # 4 - Avoid Ambulance Chasers Disguised As Marketers

What's the difference between a crowd funding ambulance chaser and a genuine marketer?

Real Results!

When you create a crowd funding project, you also signal the arrival of potential fresh meat to the dens of wolves disguising themselves as sheep of the marketing profession.

In any system of free enterprise, the range of services offered will typically run the gamut from one extreme to the other, with many who offer their "services" lying somewhere in between.

We live in a world where junk mail and spam are commonplace occurrences. Word spin and clever packaging do not alter the core nature of what is being sent to you, whether by postal mail, e-mail, or any other means.

Generally speaking, being informed is the best defense against falling prey to scams and marketing ploys.

What people who are new to crowd funding project creation are after are tangible results, plain and simple. They are new to the game of raising funding via crowd funding mechanisms. Thus, they lack the advantages which experience naturally conveys.

So, in a nutshell, let me try to simplify this for you, in case you happen to come into contact with this article BEFORE you come into contact with people who are after your money, to help you with making your crowd funding project a success. Are you ready for it? Here it comes!

There are people out there who will take advantage of you!

They will make all kinds of claims. They will push all the right buttons. But, let me ask you this - what do they actually guarantee?

All promise and no guarantees make for an awkward recipe for success, and especially when what is being presented to you is a one-sided marketing scheme. Namely, they get money from you, and they want it upfront, but you get no actual, concrete guarantees in return.

Numbers are close kin of statistics. Numbers can be manipulated all kinds of different ways, as can statistics. If you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, then why be so quick to judge a marketing scheme by its cover? That's how people fall victim to scams. It's how people become prey of other people who are out to take advantage.

How do they take advantage of you?

(1) By preying on your inexperience. You're new, and THEY are BANKING on it!

(2) By preying upon your ignorance (which is simply a lack of knowledge and understanding of something).

(3) By preying upon your desire to succeed.

(4) By preying upon the natural disposition of human nature to take advantage of what seems to be a good offer.

(5) By offering limited time offers, offers designed to get you to rush in responding to them, so that you don't take sufficient time to explore and to investigate the claims that they are making. Don't let them use the ticking of the clock against you! If you rush yourself, then you become more prone to making a mistake.

(6) By surprising you, generally by appearing in some form of message from right out of the blue. You didn't initiate contact - They contacted you, first. In layman's parlance, it's known as springing a trap.

(7) By holding up the potential for your project to fail, whether directly or indirectly. In essence, they hold the keys to success, which is nonsense, of course, since there typically tends to be many different keys to success, no matter what the undertaking is.

(8) Through guile - by way of clever use of words to make you think that you're getting a great deal, when in fact, you're not. You just don't know it at the time, and they already full well know that. Snake oil is snake oil, though, whether in liquid form or in verbal or written form. Snake oil is no miracle cure for a project just freshly launched, nor for one about to be launched.

(9) By manipulation of numbers. What a particular number means, no matter how big or how small that it is, always depends upon the context that it is presented in. Fifty thousand may be a lot - but, here's the clincher - fifty thousand of what? Five thousand of what?

(10) By playing visual shell games. Numbers are not always interchangeable. High numbers in one area do not necessarily translate into high numbers in another area. Numbers are used to distract, as much as they are used to inform, if the person or company claiming to be interested in making your project become a success is simply seeking to take advantage of you.

I call them ambulance chasers, not because there's been a wreck, just because you've launched your crowd funding project. Your intentions are good. It's not YOUR INTENTIONS that are the concern. Rather, it's THEIR INTENTIONS that can be cause for alarm! The wreck happens, when you trust them with your money, when quite clearly, you shouldn't. Taking a little time out, BEFORE you make a decision to send complete strangers your money, might just save you more than a few headaches.

What will always serve you well is by doing some research, first. People who are legitimate marketers, people who are committed to your well being, aren't going to have a problem with you taking your time to decide. In fact, any research by you should validate the claims of companies that seem to be promising you the proverbial moon.
 
You be the one to initiate contact. Follow that one simple rule, and you stand a much better chance of avoiding being scammed, right from the get-go.

The very moment that a company or individual contacts you out of the blue, becoming immediately suspicious of them serves to protect you from them. Your conscience is not your enemy, and neither is your suspicion, and particularly where your suspicion is flagged by someone or something appearing out of the blue, uninvited and unexpected.

Ask yourself this question - Why YOUR project? What about your project warranted such an immediate response from these companies and individuals? BAM!! You no sooner launch your project, than the offers to "assist" you with your project start raining from the sky like cats and dogs. If anything, that's a sure sign that somebody out there is looking for a sucker.


Don't be that sucker! Don't be the wolf's next meal!

Your wallet will thank you for it!

Squandering your project's budget (assuming that you're even fortunate enough to have a budget, to begin with) will not benefit your project. It's OK to be on guard. It's OK to be suspicious. It's more than OK to just say, "NO!"

If, after you tell them no, they want you to send them your e-mail address, don't do it! If their initial intentions weren't good, and if their marketing spiel is questionable, then why trust them with your e-mail address? Heed the warning signs and avoid them like the plague that they likely are!

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Crowd Funding Tip # 3 - Chase your dream, not rainbows!

Many people who launch Kickstarter projects think themselves to be guilty of but one thing - They are but chasing a dream. Namely, their dream.

The problem doesn't lie with people chasing their dreams, though. It doesn't even start with that. Rather, it's when they allow themselves to become distracted from chasing their dreams, that they then become susceptible to all kinds of distractions. In essence, the problem is when they allow other things - other pursuits - to distract them from chasing their dream.

To chase a dream is one thing. To realize one's dream is another matter, altogether. They are not one and the same thing. They never have been. They never will be.

I hang out at the forum over on KickstarterForum.Org quite a bit. Too much, in fact, but that's not your fault. It's not even Salvador Briggman's fault. In case you don't know Sal, he's the guy who founded the KickstarterForum.Org site (amongst other things). But, this isn't an article about Sal Briggman. Nope! This is supposed to be an article which offers a tip about how to better your chances of making your Kickstarter a success.

So, let me begin to connect a few dots, and we'll see if any of it makes sense. Fair enough?

Like I was saying, I hang out in that forum - a lot! I encounter many postings authored by many different people, there. Unfortunately, I also encounter a lot of people chasing rainbows.

Not chasing their dreams, but chasing rainbows - and they do this by allowing themselves to become distracted from the important task at hand. Namely, they should be building and growing a community of their very own, but because that can often turn out to be hard work - a struggle, even - they allow themselves to fall pray to all kinds of distractions.

Distractions - They're out there. They're everywhere!

If I told you that I could make your Kickstarter project successful, that I could make you reach your funding goal, simply by you giving me five dollars, and me then tweeting about your project on Twitter, would you believe me?

If I lined a bunch of people up in a circle, and told them all to back one another's projects, would you believe me if I then told you that this was the right way to go about building and growing a community of your very own?

Either of those examples would likely strike you as odd, or perhaps even a bit on the strange side, particularly if I insisted that you take me seriously, when I was suggesting them to you.

Yet, on a regular and recurring basis, this is just, exactly the kind of distractions that I see people who launch their own Kickstarter projects buy in to.

What about you? Yeah, YOU! Do you believe in the Five Dollar Fairy? Well, what if I told you that there wasn't just one Five Dollar Fairy, but a whole slew of them? What if I told you that for a measly five dollars, you could buy a whole bucket of Five Dollar Fairy Dust?

Line up, people! The line forms right over here, right behind YOU!

Five Dollar Fairy Dust is apparently a very widespread commodity. But, it comes in other increments, also. Need some ten dollars fairy dust? What about fifty, or even better, one hundred dollar fairy dust? How much do you want? How much does your Kickstarter campaign need? How much can you handle??

If I tweet you out to all of my Twitter followers, will you still buy my fairy dust?

Apparently, you will. If not you, then the next guy or the next gal. You are just a number. Your Kickstarter project is just a number. The number of Twitter followers that I have is just a number.

Yet, to some, it becomes a fixation.

Do this - Pick a card, any card. Go on, pick a card. Pick a number, any number. Go on, pick a number.

As an example to help me to illustrate a point, let's say that I have one hundred thousand Twitter followers. Oops! What was I thinking? It will look better, it will come across as more visually impressive, if I write that very same number in numerical form.

100,000

Yeah, baby! I'm cooking with Twitter Crisco, now. This is the big time. This is Twitter City. Look at that number. Focus on that number. Stare at that number. You're getting sleepy - very, very sleepy. You are under the sway of that big, fat, juicy, gorgeous number. You are under my command.

Send me your five dollars!

Ahem.

I am trying to make a point here. This is no sleight of hand. The sleight of hand is in the number that you're focused on. And, because you're focused on that number - on somebody else's Twitter number - then your focus isn't upon your project. It's not upon building and growing a community that is unique to your Kickstarter project.

Tell me this - if your Kickstarter project is truly unique, then why are you chasing rainbows in pursuit of a generic community?

Why are you spending your time and your money helping somebody else to realize their dream of making money off of the size of their so-called Twitter "following," instead of nurturing your own sense of community for your very own Kickstarter project?

Why are you chasing circles, pledging to supporting his campaign, if he will only support yours? Sure, that does technically qualify as trying to build a community, but is that actually the kind of community that you are wanting to build? Before you hit the launch button for your Kickstarter, was THAT the kind of community that you envisioned for YOUR project? A community of people pledging to support a project, if everyone else will only pledge to support a different project, turns the whole concept of "community" on its head.

What you end up with is a distortion. What you end up with is a freak.

Is that what you're after? A freakish version of community? If not, then why allow yourself to stoop to such nonsensical antics? Don't you have better things to do? Shouldn't you be out and about actually building and growing a vibrant, thriving community of people who actually give a damn about what it is that you are trying to do?

Or, are you after numbers, at any cost?

Is there any level to which you will not stoop? Is there any antic that you won't engage in? Is there any tomfoolery that you won't engage in?

So, you don't know what to do, huh? Is that it?

Well, I can - and do - understand what it's like to find yourself in that kind of a predicament. But, tell me this - just how, exactly, did you end up in this predicament?

I mean, after all, I certainly didn't tell you to launch the exact Kickstarter project that you thought was such a good idea, at the time that you launched it. Somebody else is responsible for that. You, perhaps?

Running a successful Kickstarter campaign isn't about always knowing just exactly what to do. There are plenty of people who have run successful Kickstarter campaigns, and they will be the very first to tell you that, looking back on things with the benefit of hindsight, they truly had no clue as to what they were getting themselves in to.

But, they didn't let that stop them. Heck, some of them even allowed themselves to get distracted by some of the very same stuff that you have allowed yourself to get distracted by. They've been there. They've done that.

No, running a successful Kickstarter definitely isn't about always knowing just exactly what to do. In fact, it's more about knowing what NOT to do.

Running a Kickstarter is a learning process. Did you hear me, when I said that? A LEARNING process. It's a PROCESS that entails learning.

There's definitely a learning curve. You will almost certainly make mistakes - maybe even a LOT of them.

But, at some point you have to acquire good judgment, based upon your mistakes, and upon what you have learned from them, not to mention what you can learn from the mistakes of other Kickstarter project creators who came before you, well before you ever even came on the Kickstarter scene.

If I offered to sell you a bridge, would you buy it? What about fairy dust? If I offer to sell you some fairy dust, right here and right now, would you be willing to buy it, having now read this article?

What about running in circles? Do you honestly think that your project will ever get anywhere, that it will ever reach the destination that you picked for it, by running in circles - the circles of you pledging to support my project, if I will but support yours?

In the old days, it was called a shell game. Now, it's become a substitute for being productive for your Kickstarter project.

Oh, that's right. I forgot! How silly of me! How could I forget something like that??

Maybe - just maybe - you'll be the one that gets lucky.

And, we all know that that's how most successful Kickstarter campaigns get funded - by getting lucky.

NOT!!

I'm not trying to rain on either your Kickstarter project or your dreams. All that I'm trying to get you to do is to come in from under the sprinkler.

It's not rain. It's not fairy dust. It is running in circles.

Learn to recognize things for what they actually are, not for what you want them to be.

Wishful thinking and reality are two very distinct things. Even a genie only grants you three wishes.

How many wishes does it take to make a Kickstarter campaign successful?

Let me know when you figure out the answer to that last question.

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Crowd Funding Tip # 2 - Visual Dividers: Focusing the Eye

When creating a Kickstarter project page, one task that will await you is determining what text to use in describing your project, explaining it, and transforming your message into a voice of persuasion.

This is no small task, to be certain. But, beyond just figuring out what to say, and how to say it, you are also faced with the additional task of how to present it, visually. This visual presentation of your text holds the potential to enhance - or detract from - the power of the message that you seek to convey.

Imagine, if you will, a world where no punctuation existed. Ponder for a moment a world where all instances of text are displayed without commas, periods, or any other form of punctuation. Then, on top of that, imagine that no one uses spaces - not even to form paragraphs. Text, as trivial and innocuous as it often comes across to us, as easy as it is to overlook on many an occasion, would suddenly take on a rather hostile form. Our eyes would feel under siege, as we began to read. The world of reading would come undone!

Can you begin to see how everything would run together, and that reading text would suddenly become a lot less fun and much more of a challenge. Now, imagine if you will great reams of text, entire mountains of it, all slammed together to form gigantic columns of text towering over a Kickstarter project page.

YOUR project page!

Obviously, you don't want that. What a nightmare that would turn into, for people considering backing your project. Text, thus, holds the power to act as a visual dam, obstructing the visual flow of your project page, and potentially costing you the support of additional backers. Thus, if you want the pledge dollars to flow more like a river into your Kickstarter campaign, then you would be well-served and well-advised to seriously consider how your text on display on your project page comes across, visually, to page visitors.

There are certain techniques that will increase the visual impact of text on your project page. The use of bold text, for example. Or, italicized text. There's even different font sizes that you can use to increase the visual appeal of text on your page.

And, this is all fine and dandy - as far as it goes. But, are you even aware that there is more - far, far more, that you can do to better manage the text resources of your Kickstarter project page?

Let's take a few example of how some other Kickstarter projects used visual dividers to enhance the look of the project page, and to better manage the mass of text, so as to make swaths of text more appetizing for project page visitors to nibble and consume. You do want visitors to your Kickstarter project page to actually read what you've written on it, don't you?

With that in mind, let's check out a few example, to give you a visual demonstration, that it might serve as a catalyst and inspiration for you to set about tackling the text beast that can easily grow to a very unwieldy size.

Our first example comes from a project called Super: Issue 2, which is the creation of Joshua Crowther and associates of Jay Crow Comics.

The idea, as you can perhaps better see, now, is to create a visual object to act as a separator/divider to place between swaths of text.






Now, you can do the same thing, by just using extra spaces, as I demonstrate with this sentence being separated a disproportional amount from the previous sentence.

But, which of the two is the more visually appealing approach to solving the same problem? Clearly, I think that Joshua Crowther and company, the ones who created Super: Issue 2 knew what they were doing. They wanted their visual dividers to double as text, to better focus the page viewer's attention.

Now, let's look at another example. This one comes from a really beautiful project page, the Kickstarter for Shamsee: A Fistful of Lunars., being published by Tristan Jade Tarwater of the Back That Elf Up website.

Note how you can use art, in conjunction with text, rather than rely solely upon decorative large text, as in our previous example, to break up the mass of text. This approach is invariably more inviting to the eye, and the Shamsee: A Fistful of Lunars Kickstarter has a cornucopia of beautiful imagery on its project page, demonstrating a clear mastery of understanding the importance of off-setting text with imagery, so as to make the consumption of text more manageable for the page visitor.


Another example that I would point to is a fairly recent Kickstarter launch called Murder & Midnight: Book 1. from Jon Eastman and David Ward of the Murder & Midnight website.

Again, a rather lovely way to utilize just text, but in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to the eye - and by extension, visually inviting to page visitors who encounter it.

Remember, when you're trying to maximize your chances of persuading people to pledge to back your project, it pays to know all the tricks, to possess every advantage possible. The use of visual dividers isn't exactly rocket science, but you might just be surprised by how often that you don't encounter it.

Our final example, today, comes from a card game called Pirate Loot, A Card Game of Treasure and Treachery, which hails from the fine folks over at Minotaur Games.

If you're going to offer swag (or rewards, as it is often referred to on Kickstarter), why handicap your project by not visually commandeering page visitors' eyes, thereby directing them exactly where you want them to look?

In conclusion, if you really want your Kickstarter project page to stand out, don't overlook the opportunity that visual dividers can provide. You can even use photographs (or cropped portions, thereof) to accomplish the same, basic task.

If you want maximum funding, then go for maximum visual effect! Visual dividers of some sort or other can help your Kickstarter project to be more successful than it otherwise might be without them.

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Crowd Funding Tip # 1 - Silence: The Unseen Project Killer

If you want your Kickstarter project to die an early death, then say no more - literally!

That's right, my friend, silence is the unseen killer of Kickstarter projects, everywhere. Want to raise a lot of funds? Then make some noise. Want to go unfunded? Then, embrace silence with every fiber of your being!

I've spent a good bit of time, lately, browsing Kickstarter projects, and one thing that really stands out to me is how seldom that project creators issue updates or make comments about their respective Kickstarters.

Silence won't get you anywhere. It won't move your project forward. It won't get you funded. Why, then, do so many people do it?

Part of it, I think, is simply attributable to the fact that they don't know any better. It goes hand-in-hand with being a newbie to the Kickstarter medium, and to the phenomenon that is crowd funding.

When I visit a Kickstarter project page, what's the number one thing that motivates me to click that page off in my web browser? You guessed it - Silence!

Another part of the silence problem is attributable, I think, to the fact that, many times, project creators just don't know what to say. They want to say something about their project, to attract people' attention and to persuade them to back the project that they have launched, but all of a sudden, they find themselves at a loss for words. So, instead of embracing spontaneity and speaking or writing about their project in an off-the-cuff manner, they opt for the easy way out - silence.

Of course, it's pretty darned hard to build and grow a following around a culture of silence. You have to break out of that bond. You've got to burst free of that shackle. You've got to launch, not just your project, but yourself into action.

You don't have to speak volumes to say something. Even a mountain can be moved one speck of dirt at a time. It just takes time and effort and persistence.

The future of your Kickstarter project depends on YOU. So, grab your tongue and grab your pen, and one way or another, find something to say about the thing that you want everyone else talking about.

If your Kickstarter isn't important enough for you to talk about it, then how can you expect others to talk about it?

Avoid silence, as though it were the plague! Both your project and your backers will thank be thankful for it.

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