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.