After the huge success of the American Circumcision Kickstarter, I had a number of people ask me about our Kickstarting process. Here are the two most important metrics you’ll need to know if you’re interested in running your own Kickstarter:
- The average Kickstarter contribution is $50.
- Only 10% of people who visit your Kickstarter will contribute.
With these two stats we can figure out how much attention you’ll need to raise your goal.
Let’s say you’re trying to raise $50,000. If the average contribution is $50, you’ll need 1,000 contributors. If only 10% of people who visit your Kickstarter contribute, you’ll need ten times that – 10,000 people – to see your Kickstarter page.
But each click reduces the number of people who convert. If only 10% who see the link to your Kickstarter will click (and that’s being very generous – real talk, it’s probably closer to 1%) you might need 100,000 impressions across social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.) to lead to the 10,000 who actually see your page, to lead to the 1000 who actually contribute.
Obviously, these numbers may change depending on your particular Kickstarter. Someone coming to your page from a organization that supports your cause is more likely to convert than a random person browsing Kickstarter. If your pitch is really good, more may convert. And you might get higher contributions depending on the rewards you offer or the supporters you target. But the principle is the same. The more attention you get, the more you can raise.
You can also use this metric to work backwards. If you have 50k twitter followers, at least 500 will probably contribute, which means you could raise $25,000 with a few tweets, and nothing else – and that’s not even counting the retweets.
If you already have a big audience, this process is easy. The challenge is when you’re trying to raise more then your current audience. For reference, our film American Circumcision had 200 Facebook likes and 20 twitter followers when we started, and we raised 90k. If you’re going to do that you have to hustle – and reach out to people with bigger audiences.
So then it comes down to two things:
- How good is your content?
- How much attention can you get on your content?
That’s it. We can get more complex and talk about what makes content shareable, how to figure out what content is valuable to your audience, how to offer value and reach out to people with bigger audiences, etc. – but it all basically comes down to those two questions. Can you get people’s attention and convert it to support?
The better you are at one, the easier the other becomes. If you have lots of people’s attention, you might be able to upload a Kickstarter video of you saying “trust me, it’ll be cool” and only 1% convert, but it’s 1% of your million person audience, so you get funded. Likewise, if not many people see your Kickstarter, but everyone who sees it contributes, you could also get funded.
Of course having one makes the other easier. Great content will get shared more and get more attention, and already having a big audience gives whatever content you have more authority and social proof.
That’s Kickstarting in it’s simplest form. So make great content, and start building your audience now.
Read More: The American Circumcision Kickstarter Was A HUGE Success
