What I learned from my first Kickstarter (Prepping for the second 👀)✨
Tips for creators that I haven't seen mentioned before about Kickstarter.
First of all, I wanted to let you know that I have a new Kickstarter campaign coming up! The Patreon community helped me decide that the next pack would be a female Dwarf Cleric! I've been sharing my progress on Patreon, but I'll be launching a Kickstarter with extra goodies soon.
My Kickstarter tips
While I'm prepping the Kickstarter, it seemed like a good time to gather all my notes on my first attempt and bundle them all into a write-up for both your benefit and mine, since I know there are a lot of creators on this mailing list. Even if you aren’t a creator, you might find these insights into a campaign interesting!
If not, feel free to just skip down to the bottom of the email to my recommendation for another artist's newsletter. :)
Back in April 2023, I Kickstarted the female Human Fighter for D&D Dress Up, after already creating the male and female Elf Ranger packs and releasing them without a Kickstarter. The idea is that through smart combinations of different hairstyles, skin tones, outfits and weapons, you have access to lots of different character customization options for the price of a coffee.
For our easily-overwhelmed minds, I’m splitting this into a series of 3 parts: Before your campaign, during, and after. I’m sending you the first part today, and I’ll send during and after tomorrow and the day after.
Keep in mind that my Kickstarter was digital only fulfillment. I’m sure I would have run into other issues if I had had any physical rewards to fulfill. I’m still debating whether I want to include something like that in the next Kickstarter.
Also, this is really a list of things I hadn’t realized before I did the Kickstarter. I’m not including “the most common pitfalls” because you can find those in numerous other articles. Well, this one is half most-mentioned, but also half something I haven’t seen before:
Before: Create a pre-campaign page a.s.a.p. and start talking about it.
As soon as you know what your Kickstarter is going to be about, create the sign-up page that notifies people when the project goes live if they sign up. One post on social media, or even promoting just a week beforehand might not give you enough followers to give your Kickstarter that early boost that can help your campaign succeed. People who are not as perpetually online as creators have periods where they’re just… offline more. If that happens to be today, this week or even this month, you won’t reach those people, even though they would REALLY love to back your project.
That is the part that people often emphasize. One other thing I’d like to emphasize though, is that you want a way to reliably reach those people. Social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok aren’t going to be it, because posts easily get lost in a sea of other posts. Newsletters and Kickstarter notifications are less frequent, and thus get more attention once they get sent out.
By setting up the pre-campaign page, you’re giving people a more reliable way to be notified when it’s time to pledge, without creating a lot of extra work for yourself by having to set up a newsletter service.
Before: double check all the places where you promise delivery dates (or any other important facts, for that matter)
I realized that the processing time would prevent me from fulfilling the Kickstarter in May after setting up my first draft for the campaign. I changed the date from May to June delivery as in my updates and the Kickstarter description, but my awards still said they’d be fulfilled in May. Thankfully nobody gave me a hard time about this, so I guess I was clear enough in other places - but it’s an oversight I wish I hadn’t had since this will be one of the first places people check for timelines. Check, check, double check everything, and ask for a second or third set of eyes to check with you!
And those are my tips for before the Kickstarter launches! See you tomorrow for part 2: During your Kickstarter. :)
Thank you for supporting my work. As always, if you want to have a chat, feel free to leave a comment or email me.
-Rengin
Other newsletters full of art
Natasa Ilincic
I want to use this space to feature some artists’ newsletters I enjoy!
The first is Natasa Ilincic. She has been sending updates about her tarot deck, art books and latest paintings and it’s a joy to see those dark, autumny, witchy vibes in my inbox.
Like this art? Visit her website to subscribe to her newsletter! (Right in the nav menu)