Failing @ Kickstarter

Well, the Kickstarter campaign I put for my upcoming book failed – I did do far better than my Indiegogo campaign a few years back which failed to pick-up any backers at all… so I’m 6x better this time around!

So, with all that said and done, I still “won” because I did generate sales that I wouldn’t have had otherwise and overall, it was a learning experience. What are some of the lessons?

• Having too many options, some people offer only a few, I offered a bunch. If you hit virality, then it’s great but if you don’t… I think it confuses people.
• Lack of promotion… I really didn’t have much of any time to promote this kickstarter campaign, it is a FULL TIME JOB to try to gain traction with these crowdfunding campaigns and I just didn’t have the time though I did get a wicked amount of SPAM from companies offering to this on my behalf which incidentally, none took me up on the offer of a % of sales rather than a lump sum.
• Price points, this has been on ongoing issue with wooden laser cut projects – they cost a lot to produce and ship. There is no way around this rather than making things way too small (in my opinion) or skipping on detail. Not a compromise I’m willing to make.
• Digital is where it’s at! If you notice, 5 out of the 6 backers went for digital offers… which tends to support my views on CNCKing.com and other ideas I have. My niche is digital, not physical.

I understand people come to crowdfunding to support designers and entrepreneurs but they are also looking for a deal.

How does this affect the upcoming V5 CNCKing.com book?

It doesn’t affect it at all, my indiegogo campaign failed completely and the book that I was seeing “funding” for ended-up becoming by far my best selling one! I doubt this upcoming book will be any different. I have had to push things back a bit though as I’ve been so busy with CNCROi.com and working through a backlog of ideas for CNCKing.com projects. I have some awesome stuff coming through the pipeline, just need to find time to finalize and launch them!

Suffice it to say, if these campaigns are a predictor of future success, this upcoming book should generate 6x the sales of the previous volume! I’ll have a yacht sailing the Carribean with my Trotec laser & ShopBot Alpha in the back and bikinis in the front!

CNCKing.com Crowdfunding

This isn’t my first nor anywhere near my last attempt at this crowdfunding model, I can design anything and have the equipment and shop to handle pretty large production runs so I’ll cross my fingers, and hope I get more success out of the next one! In the meantime, I’ll have to play with ideas that are more “viral” and “deal” related while not skimping on quality. I can do it!

Thank again to everybody, it was a fun experience!