Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo – A Creator's Perspective | Hacker News Reader

Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo – A Creator's Perspective

adamleeb.com

56 pointsAstroAdam21 comments

From the other side -- Indiegogo is notorious for a number of policies which are friendly to scammers, including:

• Allowing project creators to use 3D renders and concept art to advertise their project, rather than requiring photographs of actual products.

• Making it difficult for users to report projects which are likely to be scams, and failing to respond to these reports.

• Allowing project creators to use "flexible funding" to receive any money donated by backers, even if it did not reach their funding threshold.

As a backer, I treat a project creator's choice to launch on Indiegogo with deep suspicion. While not all Kickstarter projects are legitimate either, the odds are certainly better there.

From a backers perspective, I agree. They need to do a lot of work to repair some of the damage done from letting just about any campaign go on there site. It was a shortsighted move that was probably done out of desperation.

I know this article is explicitly from a creator's perspective, but as most people reading it will be backers, I wanted to chime in.

Specifically, it seemed to me that many of the features that made IGG appealing to the author are things that are undesirable to backers. Pervasive, cross-site ad tracking? Hidden product tiers and partitioning of backers? It seems to me that IGG is trying to merge crowdfunding with ecommerce, where such tactics are obviously de rigueur.

From my perspective, however, the original point of crowdfunding platforms was to provide a place that good ideas without funding could have a second chance to see the light. In my mind, this makes crowdfunding perfect for things that target niche markets, or are very "out there", or want to explore ideas that generally would be difficult to pitch to the mass market. Instead, what it seems to be evolving into, and what it should not be (in my opinion), is a place for companies to soft-launch their latest DNVB idea.

In that sense, the choices that Kickstarter is making is to maintain the platform in a similar form to its original incarnation, which at least gives projects the chance to stand out for their ideas rather than their marketing. Marketing wins practically everywhere else already! For projects which are outstanding in their area, but truly too niche to gain sufficient traction to meet their funding goals... I'm not sure what the solution is there.

Another, different approach is that taken by Massdrop, which seems to have embraced the niche appeal of crowdfunding rather than trying to move the needle back to web sales. Of course, it does provide a sales channel, but not in a way that encourages the peddling of schlock through one-and-done, ad-driven campaigns. I'd be interested to read a similar write-up on their backend support for creators, to get a better insight into their thought process and business model.

Finally, I sincerely appreciate the author taking the time to write up their experiences and share them. Even if their goals and my (naïve) preferences are not perfectly aligned, we wouldn't be able to talk about it without this article to spur discussion.

For reference, I successfully ran 2 Kickstarter campaigns in the past and both times I did it, I had basically no audience or any idea what I was doing.

I don't think you can blame KS for your campaign flopping. That would be like opening up a store on your own, and then getting mad at the person who rented you the building because you're not selling anything. All they did was provide you the location to sell goods, it's on you to bring people in and convert sales.

Kickstarter is basically accepting money as a service with some unique twists. They never claim to be a marketing agency that will promote your campaign for you.

Sure, if your campaign gets popular you'll probably trend for that category on their listings page, but if you're depending on random people browsing KS to back your campaign then you're just setting yourself up for failure.

The long story short is, running a KS campaign is like running a sales campaign. You really need to plan a ton ahead of time, and ideally have an audience before you start the campaign, and if you don't have an audience, you need to find outlets to find people who are likely well aligned with what you're trying to raise funds for.

In other words, there's no shortcuts or guarantees when it comes to sales.

Then why don't build your own website and cut costs?

Kickstarter takes 5% of your campaign. There's an extra 3% on top for payment processing but you would be paying about that (2.9%) if you accepted payments on your own.

So you're giving up 5% to have a completely ready to go platform optimized for setting up a description page, create rewards, handle payments and everything you see on the KS front end. Then on the backend you have a bunch of tools to help contact your backers and post ongoing updates.

Back when I used KS, they took 10% not 5% and it was still a no brainer to use them instead of rolling my own platform.

Let's just say your campaign raises $20,000. That means KS will take $1,000. Even an MVP of KS would likely still take 3 months of legit full time development. Would you trade 3 months of your time for $1,000?

I wouldn't, and it's not just about the money too. I want to be in the business of doing freelance dev work and making video courses, not creating a crowd funding platform that I only used once or twice.

Plus, there's the credibility factor of KS. That holds a lot of ground on its own.

Agreed, at 5% plus cc fees, both IGG and KS are well worth the costs. I actually think they are very under priced considering that just about every other marketplace takes 15% or more. (I hope KS and IGG aren't reading this!)

As a backer, I feel that IndieGoGo does absolutely nothing for you. On the other hand, they actively enable scammers to continue scamming!

I backed a product that seemed to be ready, from everything the creators had posted. But months went by and the product wasn't shipping. As people started complaining, IGG's website actually allowed the creators to shadow-ban complainers! I manually verified this by using a private window: my comments, which were visible to me, were not visible when using the private window! My comments were not abusive in any shape or form: I had just pointed out that even though these guys are claiming it's not ready yet, they are already advertising the product in a trade show.

All of my complaints to IGG were either ignored, or answered with a generic "not all campaigns are successful". They refused to take action when it was pointed out to them that the creator is actively deceiving the backers!

And the creators, after ripping off 1009s of users, went on to run new campaigns, which also ripped off people!

I will never back an IGG campaign again. Actually, I had half a mind to take them to small claims court, but dropped the idea.

IndieGoGo are a bunch of scammer-enablers.

Edit: case in point, this camera: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/alpha-the-world-s-smalles... (read the comments! and see the dates)

The campaigners went on to make this campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/snap-the-smallest-afforda... (read the comments here too!)

From the article "Kickstarter is virtually genericized at this point"

> IndieGoGo are a bunch of scammer-enablers.

Agree, IndieGoGo has developed the opposite reputation. I would say that IGG is "genericized" in it's own way. As a backer, IGG just feels sleazier. No one has mentioned their Flexible Funding[0] which is a core tool for scammers and something IGG uses as a strong selling point.

IGG could fix this but they make money on Flexible Funding. As they state in the link below: "With flexible funding, you keep all funds, even if you do not meet your goal!" (note the exclamation point at the end). Scammer-enablers might be too kind of a word. Collusion might be accurate.

[0] https://support.indiegogo.com/hc/en-us/articles/205138007-Ch...

I've backed like 5 projects on kickstarter and one on indiegogo. As a consumer, I very much look at a project on indiegogo and wonder why it is there and not kickstarter. I don't do the opposite.

Reading the article I'm reminded of the old Avis campaign: We're number 2. We try harder. Indiegogo does more for creators because they have to and Kickstarter doesn't. So I guess the takeaway from this is that Indiegogo is putting up the good fight to stick around. Hopefully it works out for them and the consumers.

This seems to me like a recap of the age-old saying: "Second-best always tries harder".

That’s not a saying. It’s an advertising slogan made by David Oglivy for Avis car rentals.

Let's make it one then, starting now. :)

I completely agree with the thoughts here. I deeply regret going with Kickstarter a few years ago for an eSports related-project (http://www.gameref.io/). I had a lot of media coverage and the community seemed to be excited, even with a few manufacturing deals on the horizon. I was too cocky, thinking "of course I'd get funded on KS" and flopped.

I went with KS in spite of IGG reaching out, saying that they love the project and they would work hard to reach my funding goals. Oh well, c'est la vie. Live and learn :)

This is interesting to read, because from the perspective of a backer, Indiegogo is much less concerned about its users being scammed, allowing for creators to pitch products with the barest of evidence that they're acting in good faith. They also have lower standards for what can be sold, and basically allows manufacturers to treat it as another distribution channel -- e.g. a storefront for things you can already find on Alibaba [0].

KS obviously has its own problematic campaigns -- if you aren't doing anything overtly scammy, they aren't going to try their hardest to look for reasons to stop you and lose their percentage cut of the campaign funs. But they do have standards when the bullshit is outright. Too many examples to list, but one of the most prominent and hilarious examples is the SKARP laser razor. It raised $4M on Kickstarter before KS was finally pressured to act on the obvious fake engineering and faked prototype [1]. SKARP immediately found a new home at Indiegogo [2], where it raised $500,000 and, 3 years later, has produced nothing while its creators have gone completely dark.

Indiegogo straight up has fewer guarantees about accountability, allowing creators to not only opt for "flexible funding" (they keep whatever money they get even if the campaign fails), but to continue collecting pre-orders after the end-date, and to change up the campaign rewards so that anyone looking at the page a year later won't know what was actually promised when the campaign first raised the bulk of its money. Waterseer, which was one of a batch of bullshit "water from thin air" products, had pitched a $130 violation-of-the-law-of-physics [3] when it raised $330K+ last year. Its homepage now pretends to sell a completely different product, with the creator pretending like the previous fake product never existed, and Indiegogo has apparently agreed to join in the coverup, allowing the creator to completely change the page and content with no mention to current or past readers that anything has changed. Here's the old page, and here's the current page [4], here's a copy from Internet Archive [5]. Indiegogo seems to have no qualms with creators wiping out the past -- KS at the very least forbids changes to the campaign page after the fundraising ends.

[0] https://entrepreneur.indiegogo.com/how-it-works/indiegogo-ch...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/13/kickstart...

[2] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-skarp-laser-razor-21s...

[3] https://www.popsci.com/this-device-may-pull-water-out-thin-a...

[4] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/waterseer

[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20170328234943/https://www.indie...

He doesn't mention how much more he spent on advertising (lots of mention of a FB pixel for retargeting) and how much he spent on the marketing firm, to just achieve $180k more than his first campaign. Especially given they now have a reputation, existing customers etc, I don't think the calculus works out...

I am planning to write another article after the campaign is over with more data. Maybe we would have raised more money on KS and spend less on advertising but there is no way to prove that at this point regardless of what data I share.

A friend of mine built https://backit.com to help drive exposure to top projects

It seems like a useful site.

One suggestion: The result box on mobile is rather narrow, the arrow overlays the start if the title. Not a full title is displayed at once which made it tedious for me to browse through it. Maybe make it a full width box and don't let the arrows overlay the project titles.

:wave: happy to see my fb pixels hackweek project is such a boon for creators :rocket:

Hey everyone,

Feel free to reach out to me if you want any significant data on how to set up a crowdfunding project. My startup specializes in this kind of data.

Just some quick data for your interest.

As of today, within the last 24 hours.

Kickstarter has 305 projects end, with 148 of them being funded.

IndieGoGo had 205 end with 18 being funded

Ulule.com (mainly for Europe) has 27 end with 19 fund.

These numbers are pretty typical of what we see every day. The exposure on KS is much better. If you want any help reaching backers who would already be predisposed to backing a project like yours, that is what Backit.com does. Again, feel free to drop me an email, and I don't mind helping answer any data-driven questions you may have about setting up a project.

britton.mathews@backit.com

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