Trent Hamm

What makes a Kickstarter campaign compelling to the donor?

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:02:00 -0600

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of articles from successful Kickstarter project developers on how to create a successful Kickstarter campaign. Here’s a great example of that, from Michael Mindes:

Here’s a link to Michael’s thoughts if the plugin above doesn’t work for you.

What I haven’t seen addressed is what makes a Kickstarter campaign work in the eyes of a donor. What pushes a potential donor - a person who stumbles upon a Kickstarter campaign - into an actual donor who puts their money down on the table?

I’ll admit it - I’m a bit of a Kickstarter junkie. I have donated to more than a dozen campaigns in a lot of different genres, and I’m considering a Kickstarter campaign for my novel. For me, the appealing part of Kickstarter is really the entrepreneurship. People who start Kickstarter campaigns are people that are out there doing things. They’re not sitting at home consuming. They’re producing, they’re often doing it on a shoestring, and that deserves attention.

I’ve seen hundreds of Kickstarter campaigns. I’ve donated to a couple dozen of them. What made the difference? I can identify seven things that convince me to donate. I am going to assume that you have something compelling that you want to make and it’s something that is interesting to me on at least some level.

1. Let me examine as much of the material as possible beforehand.
This is often the deal breaker. If I can actually see some aspect of the end product, I’m more likely to donate. The more I can see, the better.

Want me to support the Kickstarter campaign for your book? Let me read some chapters or, at the very least, let me hear you articulate the ideas for the book at length, like Frank Chimero did for The Shape of Design. Want me to support the Kickstarter campaign for your board game or card game? Share a print-and-play version of the game (perhaps with a few bells and whistles removed), like Eminent Domain did. Want me to support the Kickstarter campaign for your album? Let me hear some of the demos for the tracks, like Bears did for their third album, Greater Lakes.

Showing this material strengthens the promise between the Kickstarter campaign and the donor. It shows that this isn’t just someone asking for money. It’s someone who has already worked hard to create something interesting and is looking for help to make it a full-fledged reality.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for every campaign out there. There are some manufactured items that are simply difficult to share, like the LunaTik Multi-Touch watch. Even in those cases, you can still clearly show off a video of a prototype of the watch.

Show me you’ve already invested something of yourself into this beyond just launching the campaign.

2. Let you come through.
Don’t just copy what other people have done. Instead, do what you think is cool and interesting.

There are going to be countless guides from people who have succeeded on Kickstarter telling you what you need to do to create a successful campaign. Listen to them, sure, but don’t follow it like a recipe. If it doesn’t seem right to you, don’t do it.

More importantly, if you have an idea that you think is cool or interesting, put it out there. Don’t worry about whether or not people will think that you’re geeky. Often, people are there because you are geeky. You’re passionate about your idea or else you wouldn’t be starting that campaign.

Let your freak flag fly. Show us your sense of humor and your particular flavor of unusual thinking. Those are the things that turn an ordinary project into something unique and interesting that pulls people in. It certainly pulls me in.

3. Have a good reputation.
I am always wary of Kickstarter campaigns run by someone who is a complete unknown. I’d like to be able to Google the people involved or the microbusiness involved and learn something about them.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be directly connected to what their Kickstarter campaign is about. What it simply needs to show is that this person has a reasonably good reputation and, more importantly, has the ability to produce interesting and compelling things.

If I can’t find anything about the people involved after some simple internet searching, I’m wary about donating to their project. I’m generally not turned away by some degree of negative comments - it’s impossible to find someone compelling who doesn’t have negative comments about them somewhere on the internet - but it needs to be paired with positive things, too.

4. Don’t have a giant reputation.
For me, Kickstarter is, at least in part, a platform for launching dreams. It provides resources to people who do not have the resources themselves to launch a product or an idea.

If you’re already rich or you already have a thriving enterprise, you’re going to have to make a clear case to me why you don’t already have the resources to launch this item.

Of course, this is heavily tied to the previous item on the list. If you’re trying to be stealthy and disguise the fact that you don’t have these resources, you’re not going to show up very much with a Google search and you won’t have any sort of positive reputation.

5. Make realistic promises.
Don’t tell me that the item will ship guaranteed on a certain date, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about life, it’s that something will go wrong.

Instead, focus on what you can promise about the project. For example, if you’re creating an item that has to be manufactured elsewhere, give a timeline for when you’re going to get the specifications to the manufacturer, then state what the manufacturer’s guidelines are for getting that item out.

If you’re writing a novel, give me a schedule for how you’re going to write it, one that includes some breathing room for you. Don’t promise a full novel in two months because life will almost always get in the way.

The key here is risk assessment. Every project has risks. A good project has already thought about the risks and has solutions should these problems arise. This takes forethought and planning. The more you’re able to show these things, the more it becomes clear that you’re taking the challenge of making this project a reality seriously.

You don’t have to include this info in your pitch, but a detailed description of this in your update blog will go a long way toward showing the potential donor that you’ve thought about the pitfalls already and aren’t heading into this with unrealistic dreams.

6. Don’t make it seem like a chore.
If this is something you dream of launching, the process should be fun for you. It should not be loaded down with negative adjectives. It should not sound as if it were written out of a business school manual.

If I’m glossing over paragraphs of your description because they’re boring, I’m probably not going to invest in your project. If I start coming across business buzzwords, I’m probably not going to invest in your project.

I want to see new ideas, excitement, and passion. I want to see Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in a garage somewhere, not a carefully crafted business proposal. I don’t want to see buzzwords. I want to see reality.

Write this from the heart. Give it to your friends before you ever post it and ask ask them how they would improve it to make it more interesting (don’t ask them if it’s bad, just ask for three ideas on how to improve it, because friends often don’t want to hurt your feelings). Take their ideas to heart and revise it. Cut out the technical stuff. Cut out the business-speak. We don’t want to hear it.

We want to hear what makes you excited. We want to hear about something jaw-droppingly cool and why you think this is cooler than liquid nitrogen. Nothing more, nothing less.

7. Don’t just dream big. Dream enormous.
The campaigns that really sink their hook into me are the ones where I am convinced by the whole presentation that the people behind this are hoping to change their lives by the outcome of the project. They’re not just hoping to produce an album or a gadget or a one-off cultural event. They dream of making this thing big. They feel it in their bones and yearn for it with every ounce of themselves. This Kickstarter project is a key part in birthing the dream of their life.

I want to see someone who is Kickstarting their film because they are driven to become a filmmaker. I want to see people who are Kickstarting their board game because they want to spend the rest of their lives designing and developing them. I want to see people launching community festivals because they want to build it into something great and life-changing for themselves and for all the people attending.

Tell me what your dreams are. Convince me that this is a step toward making that happen. The better you do this, the deeper you set the hook.

Combine these techniques with my initial caveat about having a compelling idea and you’ve likely got yourself a donor.

My "top ten" books for 2011

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:01:23 -0600

I read voraciously. I keep up with new releases by reserving books at the library and browsing the new release section, but you’ll also often find me digging deep in the racks for some obscure book from ten years ago or reading a beat-up paperback I found in some dusty used book shop.

These are the ten best books I read that were released in 2011. How do I decide that? At the end of the year, I just went through my list of books read in 2011 and marked which ones I want to re-read in the future. I then checked their year of first publication. That left me with ten books published in 2011 that I read and hoped to re-read in the future. Easy enough, right? If I liked it enough to want to re-read it, it’s got to be pretty good.

These are in no particular order, of course. Just the ten best books of 2011, in my opinion.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I love reading biographies where the subject winds up seeming like a real person, not just some mythological person that has ascended into the pantheon. Isaacson accomplishes this with Jobs. While he comes off as whip-smart and driven, he also comes off as a deeply flawed person who was able to leverage those flaws into lasting achievements. Isaacson has mastered this type of retelling, as his previous Einstein was similar in the genius/flawed person duality. Here’s the Amazon page for Steve Jobs.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
I’ve loved Murakami for a very long time, since that night about a decade ago where I stayed up all through the wee hours to finish his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. As usual, Murakami was able to completely take over my imagination for a month with a novel that seems somewhere between inane and insane if I were to try to describe it. I guess I’ll settle for calling it a quirky love story, but that doesn’t do it justice. Here’s the Amazon page for 1Q84.

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Memory is a subject that has fascinated me for a long time. My memory seems to be amazing at recalling specific events and facts, but often extremely porous and prone to magical thinking when tying these things together, and I’ve often longed for a powerful short term memory capability. Foer’s book puts all of these items into brilliant context in the way that a truly worthwhile “pop science” book can do, littered with anecdotes and ideas that connect neuroscience to actual daily practice. Here’s the Amazon page for Moonwalking with Einstein.

REAMDE by Neal Stephenson
I picked this up expecting it to be another heavy dose of science-heavy “geek lit” like most of Stephenson’s other novels. Instead, I got a wonderfully engaging thriller including the Russian mafia and Al Qaeda bookended with some interesting ruminations about online gaming. It’s a fat novel (like everything Stephenson has written in the last decade), but it reads like an absolute page-turner, especially once you get past the initial character intros. Here’s the Amazon page for REAMDE.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Ready Player One is one of those novels that you simply stumble upon without expectation or foreknowledge and find yourself swept away by the imagination and creativity of it all. The novel looks at a near-future minor dystopia where a large segment of the population plays an online game in which the game’s creator has hidden something valuable in a swath of late 20th century pop culture references. It’s just a wonderful, fun, and fast-paced tale, full of imagination and ideas. Here’s the Amazon page for Ready Player One.

The Information by James Gleick
The biggest change in our lives over the past decade is the immediate access to an overwhelming abundance of information. Most of us now carry thousands of libraries worth of information in our hip pocket. What does that change about the world? Gleick’s book examines this new world of information access in a thoughtful and thought-provoking manner. Here’s the Amazon page for The Information.

These Guys Have All the Fun by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
This book was quite fun, actually. It’s a retelling of the growth of ESPN from an idea in someone’s head to a fly-by-night sports and entertainment channel on a few cable systems to the 800 pound gorilla of sports reporting that it is today. The authors turn this story of media growth into a mix of a business bestseller and “Weekend at Bernie’s,” meaning it’s both fascinating and fun. Here’s the Amazon page for These Guys Have All the Fun.

A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
This will be a controversial pick for some, as it was the fifth entry in the ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series and has unquestionably split the fanbase. I felt like it was a fantastic return to form after the one middling entry in the series and pushed the narrative (and the intricately imagined world of Westeros) forward wonderfully. The last third or so of this book was some of the best fantasy fiction I’ve read in a while. Here’s the Amazon page for A Dance with Dragons.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion
I was a big fan of Didion’s 2005 book The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she discusses how she dealt with the death of her husband over the year after his passing. This is something of a follow-up, where she simultaneously looks at her own increasing frailty and the pain of losing a child, all while keeping the powerful storytelling and gentle wit of her earlier works. This one grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Here’s the Amazon page for Blue Nights.

In the Plex by Steven Levy
It’s probably safe to say that Google has had an incredible amount of impact on the world over the last fifteen years, bringing the possibility of instant information access to our fingertips. Levy, a writer of many brilliant books on technology, takes a deep look at Google here and uncovers things both impressive and terrifying. Levy’s tone is upbeat and informative as always, but somehow the subject matter here hit home deeply, perhaps because of Google’s presence in almost all aspects of the online world. Here’s the Amazon page for In the Plex.

The feeling of a blank page

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:30:57 -0600

A new year feels like a blank page to me. It is a story yet to be written, one that you hope will have a good ending.

This year, the idea of a blank page is even stronger than before. Just a few weeks ago, I turned a new page in my life, turning over the management of The Simple Dollar (which I spent the last five years building) over to someone else and earning myself the freedom to start seeking a different path.

That blank page is even more real right now, as I’ve set a goal of finishing at least two strong novel drafts this year.

The word processor is open and the blank page is before me. What will be written?