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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

That's pretty impressive. Kickstarter has a 5% fee (and Amazon their own processing fee) which means ~$50m in revenue for Kickstarter and $25M in revenue over the last year. I wonder how long they'll keep with Amazon as payment processor, it seems like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

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I wonder how long they'll keep with Amazon as payment processor

On the other hand, tons of people have Amazon accounts and using Amazon as a payment processor is really easy. I've only backed a handful of projects (https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/1482970964), but I was shocked at how simple it was to do so: click "okay" on Amazon, enter a password, and it's done.

Isn't the 1bn just for pledged money though? Is there a breakdown of what percent of pledged dollars actually gets funded (when KickStarter takes their cut).

Not saying they didn't do well, but I'd estimate the cut they make is somewhere closer to 30-40mm and not 50mm.

Correct, but the total is higher than your estimate:

https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

$859M in successful dollars which comes to $43M, though that doesn't count current pledges for projects that will go on and succeed (there are currently $24M "live" dollars).

They are only using Amazon for US-projects, all of their other sites fore their new countries pay "directly" to Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backer+questions#faq_41...

I know it says that but the UK definitely uses Amazon, at least it did when I backed something last night.

Were you backing a project at the UK Kickstarter, or are you in the UK backing a US Kickstarter? What payment backend is used depends on where the project is based, not the backer.

Good point - US based project.

here's a podcast on this very subject: Its actually really interesting.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-...

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