I'm Giving KICKSTARTER.com a try...
 

After browsing through the KICKSTARTER web site, I thought I'd give it a try since it doesn't cost anything to launch a project. I thought I'd post my experiences here for people who might be thinking of going this route. There was very little information about the site on this forum.

I'm going to try to raise just $2,000 to fund the pressing of the first run of DVDs for my documentary. If I don't get funded I'll just pull the money out of my pocket like I was planning to do. Essentially this amounts to pre-sales of the DVD with an option to become an Associate Producer for anyone who might feel like being extravagant. The project has 36 days to raise the money.

Launching the project was pretty easy. The web site works well and isn't hard to figure out. You have to authorize Amazon.com to get access to a bank account for depositing funds. You write up a description and make a little video (gee, I don't like being in front of the camera) and upload them and you're ready to launch.

The link to my project is: Glen Rock Fae - A documentary about the fairy world by Kevin Spahr — Kickstarter

I suspect that the amount of promotion that you do has a lot to do with your level of success. I don't think you can just put a project on the KICKSTARTER site and expect people to find it and start pledging money. So I will be promoting it to the audience that might be interested in this type of film.

good luck - it's an interesting way of funding.

I was looking into this for a web series I'm doing, I've also given money (small amounts, albeit) to film projects.

When I've given to film projects, I usually get a notice later saying the project didn't meet the fundraising goals, so they get nothing. The ones I've heard of who are successful are directly tied to some charitable cause.

I guess it's obvious, but if the project can be tied to helping people directly, it does better.

We raised 15k through kickstarter for a a feature length film last summer. We did a lot of promoting and came up with some unique incentives. The best part is we now have a built in following for the project.

Here's the teaser trailer. YouTube - TILT teaser trailer

I think the project is still listed on the kickstarter site.

The update is that I'm 5% funded in the first week. I do not know any of the contributors. 29 days to go.

There are a good number of projects that have been successful on Kickstarter, glad to have some input from DVInfo people that have been successful - Congratulation Jeremy! I understand that my project is targeted at a specific group of people and will not have wide spread appeal to the population in general. (Now if Miley Cyrus does that "Wings" movie about fairies, that would generate additional interest but that's in the future.)

One of my problems is that I'm not "plugged in" on the social networking sites. Since the idea of using crowdsource funding was a last minute idea. it is kind of late to build those resources now. So lesson number one is to get connected to people long before you start a crowdsouce project. My wife and some friends will be posting the project on Facebook this week. I have had some people bloging about the project too.

I have started doing a little advertising here and there. I will be increasing the budget in the upcoming weeks. Curious if that will help. I plan to do some additional promotion in the next couple weeks too.

The thing that I find lacking at Kickstarter is the total lack of metrics. They don't even give you a hit counter. I have just added a photo to the description that resides on my web site so I can watch the number of times it is loaded. Not the best counter but it is something. If you had data on where the traffic was coming from you would have some idea of what works.

In my research I have found stories where people thought that they were not going to reach their goal, so instead of loosing the funding that had already been committed, they gave money to friends to pledge so the project so it would be successful. I can understand why someone would do that, but since this funding is not critical to the publishing of the DVDs, I will not do that. If it fails, it fails.

I'll post an update next week.

Re: I'm Giving KICKSTARTER.com a try...
 

Twenty days to go and only at 10% funding. The trailer just went up on YouTube.

I have had a few more people post blog entries about it. A bunch of people Facebooked it. Not as much response as I would have thought. I'm trying to think up some new ways to promote the thing...

I have not promoted to people on my personal email list or to people directly involved with the festival. I'm interested in trying to get people outside of my circle of friends involved.

It continues to be a good learning experience and I have made some new internet friends in other parts of the world. That's cool.

Re: I'm Giving KICKSTARTER.com a try...
 

I got busy and forgot to wrap things up with this thread...

I didn't meet my goal. But I think that if you have a project with a large following or an exceptional main stream product idea that can get a buzz going - Kickstarter would work great. I knew going in that my project was narrow in appeal. Thank goodness funding through Kickstarter was not necessary to get complete the project!

I had also experimented with Google Adwords in an effort to drive traffic to my Kickstarter page. Although I did not spend much and I got lots "click throughs", it had zero results. If I would have seen some results I would have increased my Adwords budget.

I am disappointed more in my experience with Goggle Adwords than I am with Kickstarter.