I WANNA CROWDFUND!!

Woah there, settle down friend! I know you’re looking at all the hundreds, thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars people are making by funding their sweet sweet wares through crowdfunding campaigns and want in on the mayhem.

So I’m making you all this handy dandy guide for where to START because there are a LOT of things to be overwhelmed by when deciding where the hell to even BEGIN.

Don’t expect this to be an exhaustive guide but if you DO have questions/are curious about more IN DEPTH topics related, feel free to drop a Q in the comments below!!

Here’s a simple 3 steps to get to steppin’!

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STEP 1 : PICK YOUR PROJECT

Seems simple enough, you have to decide what it is you want to crowdfund, if this is your very first campaign, I cannot stress enough to start with something Small & Feasible.

Good examples of Small & Feasible are:

• 1-2 enamel pins (goal: $500-$1000)
• A small collected booklet of artwork (goal $750-$1000)
• 1-2 keychain designs (goal: $750-$1,500)
• A SMALL digital game with only digital goods ($500)

Are we noticing what I’m putting down? Are we grasping a little bit that this should be Small. It’s not to say you CAN’T start big. But you know, I’ve made my mistakes (Launching a $9,000 project to print not 1, but 3 books each at several Hundred Pages long with absolutely 0 audience).

I’ve been in the trenches and I want you to AVOID making the same wallet-shattering decisions I’ve made in my life because, back then, I was living at home with a part-time job and barely any expenses. I could afford to fuck up.

But you shouldn’t have to. If you don’t have an audience, start small, make things easy for you, you don’t have to swim upstream so early on.

OKAY OKAY enough with the preaching, you’ve picked a project–what now.

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STEP 2: BUDGET PICK YOUR PLATFORM

So there’s a LOT of these funny little platforms that have cropped up. We’ve only ever used the ALL-OR-NOTHING types.

There’s some merit to the partial-funding types. They just don’t feel very useful to us personally since we can’t really function on a partial-funding.

Anyway, here’s what WINDY & WALLFLOWER has used in the past & some little pros & cons just to get you started.

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These are not conclusive and if it looks like I favour KS its because I do. BK kind of makes it obvious they play favourites with the big guns on the platform in a way it’s never quite felt so much from KS (probably because they’re so hands-off about everything). Idk. Maybe I was wrong to expect more. I really hope things change, as it is now…. eeehh.

ANYWAY. These aren’t the only two, here’s a couple other platforms I’ve heard of but I can’t personally endorse, since I haven’t actually run a campaign with them, if you HAVE pls tell us about them, I’d be happy to hear even more!

• INDIEGOGO — second-largest after KS. has all-or-nothing or partial-success campaign options.
• CROWDFUNDR — this one floated around for a while, still small
• LA RUCHE — hi QC! This one’s hosted by Desjardins! I’ve been curious about launching a translated edition of one of our comics here but haven’t tried it yet! Our buddy PONTO has, though and was successful!

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STEP 3: PICK YOUR TIMEFRAME

Everyone’s gonna tell you timing is CRUCIAL to your campaign, but as a fool whose launched campaigns all throughout the year in crazy conditions. I’m here to tell you that it has SOME impact but definitely not as much as you think.

The real impact comes with How Long You Crowdfund For. In my humble opinion.

Okay so lets break this one down a little bit. When you crowdfund you want to consider:

• What time of year works best?
  Okay, this one’s the tricky one because I’ve broken my own rule about it more than once. As a rule of thumb: Dec-March are tricky. December you have your holidays so a lot of folks are focused on buying gifts, and already spending a lot. Then you have your after-holiday dead zone. At least for little guys like us, January-March are a tougher sell, people are recouping. We HAVE launched projects during this time, though, some of which have done pretty good for themselves. Noticing that small less-expensive items do best during this time of year. There’s no hard-fast rule against launching in this window, just a trend we’ve noticed. With the right preparation you can launch just about any time.
  
• How long will you run the campaign for?
  Now THIS… is a good question. There’s been a lot of talk about how long to run a campaign for and I’m here to tell you that the magic number usually hovers between 14 & 21 days. (Unless you’re designing a Game or a Tech-type Item… but I don’t know anything about running those, so). Basically your biggest push is going to be in the first 48 hours and the last 48 hours with the most action being within the first week and the last week. Any time in between leaves you scrambling with whatever you can do to let people know that this is a campaign worth backing and sticking with.
  In my experience, the longer that in-between time is, the longer it gives people to second-guess their pledge and bow out. It also doesn’t yield much more return the longer you run for (so cut yourself some slack, run it for shorter than you think you need to).
  
• When do you even start setting up?
  We… used to start setting up campaigns like 2 weeks before launching which was insane. Don’t do that. We try to set up campaigns now 2-3 months before launch because both Kickstarter and Backerkit offer a means of setting up a landing page to start whispering hype about your newest project. We like to give ourselves enough time to pull in about 100 sign ups to make a project REALLY run in that first 48hrs. Yeah 48 is the magic number, we’ll talk about it a bit more in a hot sec.
  
• How long should your timeline be to complete your project?
  This is sorely dependent on YOU, if this is your solo gig, are you working part-time/full time elsewhere, how big & involved the rewards on your projects are. We’ve found estimating that taking anywhere from 4-6 months to complete your promise seems to be the magic number. If you wrap-up early people are happy & the time frame doesn’t make backers balk too much when they’re pledging. (Listen, I get it, backing a project that’s estimated to deliver years down the line means keeping track of this one thing for longer than your memory can stand.)

LETS TALK ABOUT THOSE 48 HOURS

Yeah okay, we’re talking time-frames and this 48 is the magic one for crowdfunding.

THE FIRST 48…

It’s GO-TIME, baby. You want the biggest push, the fastest you can on any platform. We’ve started noticing that the faster you hit your GOAL and then 10k, the more happy the algorithms & staff are on these platforms are and will likely push and shove your project along anywhere possible to help you maximise your pull on audiences.

Basically, it’s extremely important here to push your project BEFORE launch and get people chatting about it. Make flyers for cons, make flyers for shops in your area. Find funky little creative ways you can pull people in and talk about your project. Social Media will only boost so far (and if we’ve learned anything these past few years its that One Guy can destroy a whole platform you’ve built your career on haha we’re NOT salty at ALL~~)

Anyway once you’re past 48 at about 72 hours things WILL start to slow down, (hence why its really important to get as much out of that big push as you can) but that’s okay. Here’s where you take your baseball cap and you spin it backwards and say a cool catchphrase like, “It’s Go Time Baby.” and then you annoy everyone on social media and in emails by being overzealous (jk–sorry my backers, my followers reading this, thank you so much for your patience, it turns out Marketing Hard).

We usually try to keep things going by splitting our project into attainable stretch goals which helps us break down the official Goal (this is why in more recent projects we try to keep our Main Goal at about $2k-$5k) into bite sized pieces. (For books it’s book embellishments, for pin sets its new designs, things like that).

THE LAST 48 HOURS

Just like the first, at this point in the game, most platforms are helping you scream and shout about your campaign ending aaAAAAA!! By this point you want to try and have most of your stretch goals unlocked, but it does help to have one or two crazier ones for people to reach for. Essentially most platforms send out a blast on your behalf AT 48hours telling people who were interested in your project and who backed your project that the campaign is ending very soon, you’ll usually see a huge uptick here.

OTHERWISE, the platform usually sends out one last email on your behalf (it used to be at the 24hrs-left mark but I think now it’s generally at the 8hrs-left mark). The rest of that big push is on you! I’ve seen folks livestream the end of their campaigns, I’ve seen folks celebrate and panic over on socials (that’s usually me), I’ve known folks to go out and drink trying not to think about it.

But if you got it THAT far and you’ve funded, pat yourself on the back, there’s a job well done.

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NON-NEGOTIABLES

I rub my hands together and tell you here that if you DON’T fuck around with THESE THREE things on a project you WILL find out.

DON’T FORGET…

Crowdfunding is a big beast so here’s a handy list of things to keep in mind:

• SHIPPING
  You are going to be shipping far & wide and sometimes that means losing personal privacy. It took us a while to do this but it’s well worth investing in a P.O.BOX to use as your return delivery address. Canadians…. look into FLEX DELIVERY, it’s saved our hide on many an occasion having an alt business address on things that isn’t our personal home address.
  
• BANKING
  Most of these guys are used to crowdfunding at this point and getting a mysterious sum of $1-10K is fine but above that, it might be worth calling your bank ahead of time to let them know that this isn’t fraud and you are actually setting up a pre-order. If you’re buying stock over 10K and you don’t already have a history of doing so, it might also be worth letting them know thats a type of purchase you’ll be making beforehand, too.
  
• STORAGE
  This goes without saying but try to visualise how much space the thing you are making is going to take. Um… storing 1000 blankets was not something I ever planned for but has been an INTERESTING journey since we launched the campaign for KING’S GRAVE years ago. We’ve only just now found a space that isn’t directly INSIDE our apartment….
  
• ORDERING
  Figure out what you’re crowdfunding for. Is it limited edition? Is it something you want to upkeep in the future. Think about what ordering extra stock looks like if you plan on keeping things around for a while. Sometimes its best to budget for an overshoot than it is to plan to re-print every couple of months, depending on what it is you’re making.
  
• SIN & PERSONAL INFO
  If you’ve been following us for a while you already know what I’m going to say here: do not give your SIN number to any company asking to use it to confirm your identity. They don’t need it. You can send them THIS PAGE if they insist on it, usually they find an alternate route in this case. This is primarily focused on CANADIANS but everyone reading this should get intimately familiar with your rights to your personal information. You can replace identification that’s been compromised, you can’t replace your Social Insurance.
  
• BACKER ETIQUETTE
  You will get a LOT of very, very sweet and kind people who will be happy to hear from you. I love these people, they keep me going. You will also get a decent number of really rude backers who are entitled to your work/time because they dropped cash. You don’t have to bend to everyone’s whims, but you should be very clear about your terms & conditions on your page. The clearer you are the more it mitigates confusion on both sides. Backers don’t like to be kept in the dark (with reason) so for that reason we try to keep people in the loop with about 1 update per month with news about our progress after we fund. Patience goes a long way from both sides, you don’t have to tolerate being harassed or rudeness. It’s your project.
  
• TERMS & CONDITIONS
  As mentioned, you want to be clear on your campaign page so everyone knows what to expect. Make sure you outline these key points somewhere on your page:
  • Timeline: when can backers expect the item.
  • What happens if the item is damaged upon receipt?
  • What happens if the item is lost in transit?
  • How long to backers have to report back with an issue?
  • What is your refund policy?
    
    Backers are entitled to this information. People will try to scam you. All I can say is trust your gut. Having this type of policy clear as day, means everyone is on the same page so if you’re not sure about an instance you can refer back to your policy which backers agree to, the moment their pledge goes through.
    
• FAN ART
  This is the hornet’s nest I fear–if you are an artist considering making a fanart-related project… consider maybe Not Doing That. Not because I am a hater of folks making fan-related merch… you are all amazing and wonderful at it… HOWEVER… if you do NOT have a license to create certain items…. companies can and WILL slam your ass for it. I’m hearing Real World Stories of people still paying Didney off for a campaign that made in the 100s of 1000s of $$. Your crowdfunding goal is PUBLIC which means people have a solid number to come after you with if they choose to do so. Look, I can’t tell you NOT to, I can only wave a cautionary tale. (Also: yes I am judging folks who crowdfund merch of indie IPs… get your own fucking idea and stop mooching).
  

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OBSERVATIONS

That’s all the BIG SERIOUSNESS out of the way, let’s give you a series of little observations… things I’ve learned along the way as both Tas & I have run over a dozen campaigns at this point of varying shapes and sizes.

• BOOKS WILL EAT THE WHOLE BUDGET AND THEN SOME…. it doesn’t matter if we’ve made 7k or 16k on a book project this guy always juuuust budgeted or dipped in the red. Kickstarter LOVES books, though and will often encourage the production of original works through Project We Love <3
  
• ENAMEL PINS…. have the best return always. They are small, easy to produce, easy to make stretch goals for. Kickstarter doesn’t like these. Backerkit loves them & will actively encourage “craft” or “artist-alley-esque” campaigns. People like shiny things, I can’t blame them, so do I.
  
• PLUSHIES…. people love them, you get the sweetest reactions to convention promotionals…. people are also… very picky about them. Watch out. (Also if you’re not solely making plush as adult collectibles you HAVE to get them tested which is easily about $500-$1k extra per design).
  
• BLANKETS…. you will get so many pet photos of cats chilling on blankets 10/10 funding experience. Very chill. (Only downside is storage because… they’re BIGG)
  
• CARD DECKS…. have some of the WEIRDEST QUESTIONS ALIVE IDK.
  • Backers will ask you whose making them
  • If they’re gonna have a seal??
  • What paper stock??
    And they will be…. immensely entitled about it…idk why. You have to get through this hurdle but once you’re selling them outside of crowdfunding you’re golden.

OKAY THAT’S ENOUGH RAMBLING my brain is melting out of my ear holes. I might consider making campaign-type specific posts if folks are interested (running a Book campaign is different than running enamel pins vs blankets vs, you get it).

GOOD LUCK OUT THERE. GO AND MAKE SOME SICK SICK MERCH. ILU BYE.