How to Ace Your Kickstarter Campaign

Thomas Biskup, the guy behind roguelike game ADOM has been fundraising on IndieGoGo to help free his time and hire others for updates after not updating the game for 10 years. It's been a really well run campaign, impressive to watch it unfold.

Even half way through it wasn't looking like reaching the target of 48k, but he kept adding updates, new minigoals, then stretch goals complete with artist illustrations. He reached out to the community around the game to figure out where to reach even more of the community, he fielded questions and complaints on reddit, and kept updating his blog throughout (http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/08/adom-crowd-fu...).

Now with 24 hours to go he's managed to keep up the enthusiasm, and even had two people volunteer to donate 5k if the community can match the donations.

From what I've seen, what he's done matches the guidelines in this article, and it really has worked out very well. It could be a textbook example of how to run a campaign. One thing he's done not in the article was adding time-limited "minigoals" to encourage people to donate early and get momentum. For example, adding new software features for every 1k raised over a few days in the middle of the main campaign. Another is allowing people to personalise in-game items if they donate enough.

Now the only thing is to see how well he can match the hype once the excitement has died down. Even if it doesn't work out it's great to see he has finally found a way to monetise this game that so many people have enjoyed playing.

To be complete though, we also need a "what not to do" list. in many cases re. funding that is equally important, IMO.