How to supercharge your writing career with Kickstarter

Learn how to validate your Kickstarter idea, build hype for your campaign, and deliver well so backers come back repeatedly.

Hi friends,

When I first started teaching Kickstarter, one of my best resources was a seven-day free Kickstarter course. Now that we have a book and a podcast about Kickstarter, along with a huge course and countless presentations about it, this Kickstarter primer is not as necessary.

It’s still very valuable, though, so today I’m bringing it out of the vault to share it with you. If this whets your appetite for more Kickstarter info, then I have a more extensive course behind the paywall that takes you through setting up a campaign on a deeper level. You can take it for free with a seven-day trial, or give us a tip if you want to support us without committing long term.

*** Please note that if you are reading this via email, Substack only sent out a partial version and the article will eventually stop without notice. If you want to read the whole 2,500-word article, then go to this website or download the app.***

Validating your idea...

Validating an idea is an essential component of any Kickstarter campaign, as it will tell you exactly how big your market is, and whether there is rabid interest, mild interest, or no interest in your product.

I always start my validation tests at Google, by typing in several keywords into the search engine and seeing how many results pop up. Google will tell you the sheer volume of terms related to your search. The higher, the better.

You can also run this search by going to the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, and typing in your search terms to get an idea of how active and popular your search terms are with people around the world.

Then I head over to Amazon and check the rankings of products. Again, I type in some similar search terms to what I’m trying to create. 

Then, I click on the most popular products and see their popularity index on Amazon as a whole.

After that, I’ll know exactly how popular the product is, how likely I am to find an audience, and roughly how much I can expect to raise from on Kickstarter.

Finally, I will run similar searches on Kickstarter and Indiegogo to see what hot topics there are in my category.

By doing this very quick search at the beginning, I will see if somebody has already created my idea. If so, I would abandon it in most cases.

None of the above are guarantees though. Just because there are no searches on Amazon or Google that return what you are trying to create, it’s not necessarily a bust. It just means you’ll have a longer row to hoe.

Finding your ideal audience...

Finding your target market, and growing it, is the best predictor of how much money you are going to raise during your campaign.

Most people think they are going to click the launch button and magic is going to happen, but that’s just not the case. It’s a lot of hard work finding, building, and nurturing your audience.

However, if you find your target market they will tell you exactly what they need and how to build a product that suits them. They are going to be your best beta testers and your best brand ambassadors.

They are not hard to find either.

I start finding an audience before I ever leave the house by joining Reddit forums and Facebook groups. 

I join early and provide relevant comments and links to the members. I engage with them and find out what they are about. I truly care about what’s going on, not just as a marketing gimmick.

Then, I leave my house by finding Meetup groups in my area.

While there may not be an audience for the exact product I’m trying to build near me, there is usually a group in the broad range of product class (i.e. if I’m trying to build a motorcycle motor, there is a motorcycle club even though it doesn’t specialize in repair).

I join these groups a long time before I finish my product, provide updates, find friends, and talk shop. Then, when my product launches I KNOW people want it because I have a community of hundreds of people that told me they want the product.

The best time to launch...

Finding the best time to launch is one of the biggest challenges with Kickstarter. There are several factors to consider, which all starts with the time of year.

Here’s the truth: launching a Kickstarter after Thanksgiving or when school isn’t in session is usually a bad idea.

Why?

Well during the summer people tend to be on vacation, so they are less present around their computer.

During the holidays, people are thinking about spending disposable income on gifts for people not a product they won’t be getting until 4-6 months down the line.

Also, during the holidays you are competing with rock-bottom pricing from Amazon and other retailers.

Another traditionally bad time to launch would be right around tax time, because everybody has a tax bill due so the last thing they are thinking about is purchasing new stuff.

On the flip side, right after tax season when people are flush with cash is a great time to launch a product because most people have disposable income at that point.

But that’s just one factor that goes into picking the right time. Another factor is buyer mentality. You want to hit a buyer with a product when it’s hot in their mind.

The Coolest Cooler was one of the biggest Kickstarter ever, and the creator launched his product in June (which goes against what I just said and proves there are no rules in business) when people were thinking about summertime activities.

However, did you know that he also tried launching the same product the previous December to disastrous results?

There are many contributing factors to that, but most experts attribute this to the idea that nobody was thinking about, or cared about coolers, in December, so nobody bought it.

Another factor is your convention season. Every industry has conventions, and it’s generally not the best idea to launch a Kickstarter during the biggest conventions because every big company is making announcements during CES and other shows.

While I do love having conventions as part of your launch strategy, I recommend smaller conventions where big companies aren’t launching competing products.

There’s just no way to compete with Samsung and Apple. They will destroy you.

The last factor I consider is backer psychology. People buy more when they are depressed.

People are the most depressed during the early months of the year, less so during the summer and around holidays, then there is another uptick around Labor Day until Halloween.

If I had to pin the best time down, I would say right after the New Year until March, and September-October as long as you can deliver by Christmas, are great times to launch.

However, it may be different in your industry and it’s important to check for yourself using the factors we discussed.

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The rest of this article is behind the paywall. If you only follow the stuff we’ve shared so far, you’ll be off to a great start on Kickstarter, but there’s so much more below. Plus, there’s a whole Kickstarter course in our member area. If you’d like to continue, which I hope you do, then you can sign up for a 7-day trial, or get a 20% discount for joining us.

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The most important part...