Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkaplan | Hacker News Reader

This could start a trend towards moving away from Kickstarter. So far, the more famous projects that have pursued funding from a similar model without using Kickstarter itself (e.g. Lockitron, App.net) have done so out of necessity – they weren't allowed to use the Kickstarter platform.

But if people keep succeeding without being hosted on Kickstarter itself, that 5% fee might look more and more unattractive to people starting large projects. How much value does being on Kickstarter really add to your project, and how much is simply due to the brilliant fundraising model?

View on HN

I am currently running a Kickstarter campaign and I must say that this is far from being a trend. The run away success campaigns have a track record and a following, which is leveraged to create the initial PR push. Without hitting 20% funding very early on the project has very little chance of succeeding (kickstarter stats).

A lot of our pledging happened from traffic coming directly from Kickstarter. My guess here is that people that come to Kickstarter have an intent to back and they become shoppers. User lands on one cool project, gets excited, browses, which leads to other projects being discovered and potentially backed as well.

At the end of the day, it's a funnel and your project has to be discovered in order for some users to convert to backers. It's also about connecting your project with the right audience. By cutting out Kickstarter you cut out a large portion of users that are more likely to convert, reducing chance of initial social sharing, crazy trends that create press stories, etc. This is why I don't think this is a trend.

I agree - I believe that hardware products that are accepted to Kickstarter should still leverage its inherent momentum. Based on reports from project creators, I have heard anywhere from 30-50% of traffic comes sources internal to Kickstarter.

Maybe the way around this with selfstarter is to have a simple directory page, anyone using the skeleton to create a project can submit their URL. That could be the agregator for those folks to browse through multiple projects. It would be another source of traffic for projects.

Like a Reddit for selfstarter projects, but the up votes are pledges.

Exactly. It's a reminder that Kickstarter does curate, and that nothing beats email. Getting featured in Kickstarter's weekly newsletter is probably the biggest boost, and then they'll feature you on the front page and/or category pages.

Considering all of the kickstarter things I have backed have come from my social graph, rather then kickstarter's discovery tools, I'm not sure it's discovery for the larger scale projects.

Curiously, I'm the reverse. I've found a lot more interesting kickstarters through the "your friend has kickstarted X" emails that kickstarter sends out than I have through normal social connections (e.g. twitter, IRC, etc).

Kickstarter has credibility though. I'm comfortable giving them my money, because I know I'll get it back if the project isn't funded.

Lockitron and App.net have their own credibility based on who they are and who has invested in them.

If I was to put up a SelfStarter page, there isn't anything to stop me from just taking everyone's money regardless of the funding status.

As someone with no particular experience other than backing a few Kickstarter projects, app.net, and Star Citizen, I like the uniform visual layout, structure (regular updates by email, money is always refunded if the project isn't funded), and regulation (no possibly misleading renderings of hardware) of Kickstarter: it increases my confidence in something inherently full of uncertainty. But I don't know how much of that is real benefit and how much is merely emotional. At least Kickstarter would have prevented robertsspaceindustries.com from falling over from load yesterday was harmful, and it wouldn't have allowed them to have "refund if not funded" unchecked by default...

As an insider, I'd be interested in talking to you more about that. Check my profile for contact info.

We're testing this now with our IgnitionDeck product. I'm not here to self-promote, but wanted to say that I do believe your assertion to be correct, at least in part.

I think eventually, people will raise money on as many sites as they can, similar to offering multiple payment methods.

I guess it depends on how viral and interesting your product offering is and how well you market it. Kickstarter has the benefit of a large user base with lots of traffic. Though as more projects are listed on KS it becomes harder to be found.

I've surveyed backers on Ouya (a runaway kickstarter game controller). They found out about it through precoverage on enthusiasts sites like gamitron. Very few of the backers came from Kickstarter itself. Lockitron did something very similar on techcrunch. That tells me that the key is promoting on enthusiast sites.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com