How To Succeed on Kickstarter

1. Introduction: Hello again. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch another class of mine here on Skillshare. After sharing my learnings on how to become a freelancer, how to self-publish non-fiction books, how to stretch your website, and how to edit and monetize the smartphone photography, I wanted to talk to you how I have been using Kickstarter. At the beginning of 2015, I launched projected funds to the production of "This Year Will be Different," the insightful guides to becoming a freelancer. I have to say that going live back then wasn't my initial plan. I only did so because the illustrator I hired wasn't able to meet the deadline, and now I'm so incredibly, grateful for that. At that moment, writing at Kickstarter seemed like a good thing, given it was the beginning of the year, I had an almost finished product and the name of the book was so fitting, and I finally wanted to talk about it. The fit angle such as "This will be Different." It would have felt like a missed opportunity if I didn't go live in the first week of January. That's what happened. The Kickstarter project went really well and afterwards, which is a much longer story, I got Kickstarter as a client to help launch the platform in Europe. Since then, I have launched four more campaigns for my own project, I have two more here, so this one and the cards. As part of my role for Kickstarter, I also have many other succeed on the platform. Kickstarter is mostly known for funding baked, kept projects, however, and something you should know, most projects launch in a music category. The platform is just relevant to freelancers, and artists, and makers, and all sorts of creatives. It can help you turn your site project into the creative career, as it did for me. To me, personally, Kickstarter has never been about making money. It's mostly been about leveraging ideas and bringing site projects to life, as you'll learn more about in this class. I'm going to walk you through using Kickstarter as a freelancer. I'm going to talk about what sort of projects you could do, how to prepare for running a campaign on Kickstarter, and of course also, all the things that you need to know to succeed. It's going to be a lot of work, but if you're up for the challenge, running a Kickstarter campaign might change your life as it has for me. Just the warning, this is going to be a lot of work. However, it's also going to be the most rewarding time in your creative career. Get ready to take notes and thank you so much for watching. 2. Case Studies: How artists and creatives use Kickstarter: What I really like about Kickstarter is the ability to make creative projects happen and do so via before the financial risk. You want to launch a magazine, publish a book, create a series of comics, or even a series of ceramics. Record music or work on an illustration project with Kickstarter you can do it with only a minimum upfront monetary investment. Additionally, you can build a community around your work and keep people much closer. Their financial contribution gives you the time and the necessary space to focus and also a little bit of pressure to actually do things. I want to show you how some people used Kickstarter and how they frame their project. I personally find it very inspiring to see all the different approaches and hope you agree. One good use of Kickstarter is when you want to print something. Usually the more you print, the cheaper it gets and so better its illustrations, cards, maps. Using Kickstarter, you can invite people to get their print even before you've invested in the printing. I for example, really like Cody Jones project, Welcome to our city, which is supposed to be a visual reminder that everyone is welcome in a city. He published a project during the time many people, they're forced to leave their home countries. He made a political statement and given Kickstarter, picks his project as a project they love. It's also helped raise the attention for the issue. Another project I like is Soheresone, [inaudible]. I don't know how to spell their name and his friends created an Instagram account that they published questions they found worth asking. They thought it would be great fun to use these questions of parties they are on dates. But obviously, they also realized they didn't want people to use a phone when asking these questions. They wanted the French, the carts, and sort of people could play with game they have had to use of technology. I've been carrying these in my bags ever since I got them and it's such a good thing to just have and pick out whenever you want to, ever really interesting conversations so that already works. The platform is also a great tool if you want to create a project that is extremely niche and doesn't quite fit the mainstream. Take the project you are handling, a book about patchwork lesbian families. Susanna Scheerer at the author, needed to explain to a child why they had had two mothers, and it's not an easy question, right? So she fell in parts of creates such a book herself. When I spoke to her, she said the role needed stories like you're handling that these better kind of stories we all needed to hear these days. The fascinating spin to the story is that after the project got funded on, Kickstarter. A publishing house approaches Susanna, and she's been working on publishing the book in a traditional way. They simply had a visible proof that there are people out there who would love to see this book published. Then there are also stories via the outdoor and embrace being in there and not publishing the traditional way. Justin Moore, is one of them. Justin, is a vegan cook, fascinated by the cuisine of foreign countries. He uses, Kickstarter to publish his book, his cook books and to grow his community. He for example, travels to Malaysia and Sri Lanka and as you can see here, India, and then published recipe books featuring the cuisines of these countries, which makes it also tax-deductible. Honestly, I'm such a huge fan of his approach to building an independent community, an independent career. That's actually what I wanted to say. You of course, don't always have to print something to run a Kickstarter project. One of my old time favorite projects is 100 cylinders. It's by Maia Beruti, Maia had a fascination for ceramics and she knew if she wanted to become good at making ceramics, she needed the practice and her idea was to make a 100 cylinders, to perfect her ability to create the basic form, which is a cylinder. In a normal life and something I've always asked myself is and you might have the same question, when you like ones that break this. Before she went live on Kickstarter, before she even decided to do this, she was thinking, what is one supposed to do with 100 cylinders? She's of course right. What are you going to do? She used Kickstarter to find the find buyers for the products who would simultaneously pay her to learn. Which I think is a such a good system hacking idea. Because she totally hacked. How you usually use Kickstarter, she used that to learn something. Another great example is Moneysplained by Ally Jane Grossan, who wanted to make a podcast and fought by running a Kickstarter, she could get some listeners even before she started. Her plan was to learn about finance and shareholder earnings with others and for this project, and during her Kickstarter, she convinced almost 300 bakers to help her get her podcast of the ground. Which when you think about it, she is starting something on iTunes that already has 300 bakers even before she's done anything, that's such a good approach to running a creative project if you already have people invested even before you gone through so much pain. As you can see, there are many different ways to use the platform and finance all sorts of projects, and not all projects are big and about tech, as one might assume, and as it's usually known about Kickstarter. Which is why I also did this class to show you how you could frame your project and how you could put something on Kickstarter and actually make something happen without having to invest all the money that usually is necessary. 3. Why go live on Kickstarter in the first place?: You might wonder why you should launch on Kickstarter at all. I know that there are many other platforms that enable you to sell your products to customers. You could upload them to Etsy and make the order. You can also use platform such as Society6 where you just upload a design and they take care of everything else. Why do I still believe a Kickstarter is a better way to launch just about anything online? To me, one of the major advantages of Kickstarter is the limited availability. The ticking clock makes people much more likely to support a project than if something was available to them at all times and forever. Also, you'll be able to build up much more momentum when you go live on Kickstarter instead of just any platform, just because Kickstarter is a tool for community building. With the other tools, it's recommendable if you already have a community you bring along to help you get a better ranking, because it's so much about ranking. In Kickstarter, it's so much more about making things even happen because they wouldn't, if there wasn't the money coming in. Additionally, because running a Kickstarter project makes you be extra loud about it, even the people who don't support the project, at least remember you that you've done one. In their ideal case, they also remember what it was for and can refer you if something comes their way. About me, people obviously know that I know that I can write just because I've written three books and they know about the books because I had to promote the books. So I would repeatedly be like, "Hey, I have a new book coming out. If you want for this book to get edited, and illustrated, and printed I need your support. So I personally don't believe that any of my books would have sold as successfully if it wasn't for the magic of the Kickstarter mechanism. I really think that, that helps personally me. I think it also helps a lot of other people who wants to make something and just needs the emotional support and the financial support to make things happen. 4. Framing Your Project: Kickstarter is a platform that's all about making something to share with others and the most important thing is you make something others benefit from. To give you an example, when I first started researching the content of my first book, This Year Will Be Different, a guide on how to go freelance, first and foremost, I wanted to know all the things myself. I was about to go freelance, I didn't know how that works, I gathered so much information about it. Once I had all of this, I was just like, "This is really valuable. I should probably share it with others and somehow, make sure that others have access to this same information I got because I felt extremely empowered to go freelance after I talked to so many people about it." The same thing goes when I decided to create tour guides for Berlin and Vienna. It was mostly because many people asked me for tips for those two cities. I found a way to make it happen, that suited me, and I thought it was kind of fun and could be interesting for others. I created these tour guides just because I already had that demand for that, I guess. Whatever it is you want to create, it should never be just about you. It should mostly be about the people you are creating something for. It should be about what you want to share with others. Now, I get back to the spin on why to use Kickstarter as a freelancer. If you're a freelancer or aspire to become one, think of a project that would help you to kick-start your career. Do something people could actually hire you for. If you want to shift into a new field, use Kickstarter to show you can actually do what you would like to get paid for. If someone wants to write a book, then they should write a book and other people will pick up on it. If someone wants to be hired to make ceramics, they need to show that they are able to actually produce ceramics. This is just like this entire show what you know how to do, and others will notice, and then ask you to do something. Students usually complain that they can't get work experience and they can't get work experience because they don't have work experience. If you really think about it, the fact that it's work experience just means someone paid you from making something, from making that experience, which then serves as a social proof that you've actually make that experience you said you've made. Follow me? Yeah. If you use Kickstarter to create that social proof of having made a particular experience, you'll create a sample of your work in a field you desire to break into. You'll fake, I guess. You'll fake work experience but you'll show that you have the experience, it's just not work because it's a side project, but it can turn into work because you've made that experience. Anyway, simply use Kickstarter as your stepping stone to whatever direction you desire to go into, because I think, that's what the platform is most suitable for. 5. Class Project: For your Skillshare class project, write a short description of what you want to create then come up with a compelling title, if you would like me to give you feedback on your project, please share your Kickstarter preview link so that I can give you some personalized tips. If you followed this class to the very end and use all these tips I'm sharing here, It'll be set up for success. Good luck. 6. Target group: who is this for? : I've already mentioned how important it is to think about who you are creating for. Then I talked about how to best frame your project. The reason why Mike Exciter projects for my books worked so well was, at least as what I believe, was because I was very specific about who they were for it and what benefits might kick setup Becker's could expect from reading them. The clearer you can be about who your target group is, the easier it will be to find an approach them just because they will understand you're speaking to them specifically and not to anyone and everyone. Also, because you'll know that they are and through what channels you can best communicate with them. Of course, it's easiest if you identify as your own target group, obviously. Even better if you have a few friends who also seemed to be the sort of people who might be interested in your project those are also the people you should ask for feedback once you have something to show. It makes little sense to create something you think is interesting to everyone. The question really is because obviously you are asking people for money, the question really is. Who is someone, who is the sort of person who really, really cares. Your project gets realized? It's mostly people for whom you are solving a huge burden, something that they think is really difficult. They struggled with or whose taste you meet. With some projects, it's easier to say who will enjoyed our results with other projects such as art and illustration project, it might be harder to say, there will be even like political projects is like who is the sort of person you'll go after? Nevertheless, it's important to ask yourself all these questions because it, there'll be much easier for your later on to find resources, to find magazines and even like Instagram icons that people who might enjoy your project follow. We'll get to that in the video. Then we took about PR and spreading the word. But just for now, write it down. Just like think about who is the person who really cares that my project happens? 7. When is the right time to go live on Kickstarter?: When is the right time to go live? Good question. You should go live on Kickstarter when your project is so advanced that people you ask for money can actually see what they are picking. On one hand, it will be much easier for you to talk about your project. It will also be easier for your target group to imagine what your creating. For example, when I launched a project to fund my first book, that text was already written and I even had some finalized illustrations. I commissioned someone to create for the book, so people could see what it was. I already gave them something very well like, I will probably like this when it's finished. They've the city guides, I had already taken older photos, that texts photo backside were already with my editor. All I needed for both projects is actually was to support to finance the printing. But of course you might not run a Kickstarter to print something. You still need to decide how far you can go before you need funding to continue working on your project. Then you remember the 100 cylinders project. She has already started making and the video is showing her making. People sort of had an idea of what they will get or how good she is at what she said that she can do. Kickstarter is a great tool to help you fund passion projects. Projects you would do even without the funding. Like I take pictures of cafes, no one pays me for that. I collect stories, no one pays me for this. It's like an extension of whatever I'm excited about. Because then it's so much more about the excitement and so much less about them money. In my eyes, the platform is a good tool to help you go beyond of what's possible if you're making something just for yourself. Just like, I can collect stories and store them on my laptop or I can get people involved and print them and have something real at the end of this project. I really think that it helps you reach out to us with an idea that fills you with joy and it's like this magic Venn diagram in the middle of you being excited and showing it to people and they are being excited and then there's just more excitement. 8. Project Calculation: Calculating a project is something many people fear, even though it's not as scary as it seems. Calculating a project means finding out the amount you need to raise to realize a project. This amount should include whatever you need to produce something. So it needs to include the material obviously, but it also needs to include funds for packaging and for envelopes and last but not least, shipping fees. Which is something I'll talk about in another video in much more detail. Okay. So you also need to consider taxes applicable in the country of your residency that are very different for every single individual. So it really is something that you have to figure out for yourself. The Kickstarter fees which differ in every country and that you can find in Kickstarter's FAQs. Once you have a sum of all the things I just mentioned, it's time to consider the time it will likely take for you to prepare for your project before you'll be set up for success. What do I mean? Different projects need different amounts of funding and there's a difference if you are trying to raise €500 or $500, or 10,000 or let's say 20,000. It's like the more money you want, the more time it will take. So I generally like to recommend to people to first determine their main reward they think most people will want. Then divide the sum of the project goal to estimate how many backers it will probably take to get the project fully funded. The more backers you will need the longer this will take to prepare. I'll tell you a little more about Kickstarter statistics. They'll just help you estimate the workload that's awaiting you. 9. Kickstarter Statistics : If you're out to go into the details of how to run a Kickstarter project. I thought I would share some statistics. You can look up kickstarters latest statistics on a website. They are all public and I think they update every day. First and foremost, the overall success rate at the moment is at about 36 percent. You could say it's become harder to get a project funded but what's mostly changed is that more people think they'll just launch a project and the money will roll in without much effort. Of course, it's not the case and it might shock you to hear that almost 20 percent of the unsuccessful projects don't receive a single pledge. One statistic you might like to hear is that once your project gets to 20 percent of its funding, you are 79 percent more likely to succeed. I remember when I had my first project life, I checked the statistics page every single day just to see how likely the project was to succeed. I was so nervous. If you ever ask yourself how much people pledge on average, it's $25 or euros, it's like 25, that magic number. It's how most people are willing to pay for and indeed book a record, a movie, and similar. One thing I consider important to mention is that 60 percent of successful projects on Kickstarter receive between 1 and $10,000 euros or dollars obviously. So, the platforms is mostly become known because of the large projects that receive hundreds of thousands or even millions in funding, but the reality is that's the majority of projects are rather small. Personally, I would say that if you have a reasonable network and you know your target's group, a project for which you need to raised up to 10,000, I would say, is very likely to reach it's goal if you do things. Should you need more than 10,000 which can happen, you should just prepare much more fruitfully and we'll cover that in the next classes. Then the preparation time just might take longer, but it's all doable. You just have to know your target group and have a network. Okay. 10. Brainstorming Creative Rewards: You might wonder why I first want to talk about rewards before I tell you about writing the story of your project. Bear with me, it will all make sense. What I consider most important with kick-starter projects is what you wanted to get. Even before you should think about how to best phrase story, let's think about the rewards you'll offer. What I should say at this point is that you are only allowed to give rewards that you've created yourself and that are related to your overall project. You can't give away any sponsored products, donate to charity or give anything you would probably not want your mom to see over here on the internet. Things such as porn, violence, you know all these things, anyway. I've already asked you to determine your main reward, and I've also already told you that most people give $ 25, € 25 , pounds if they're from Britain. 25 is like this big, meaningful number. If you've made the calculation that I asked you to do, you know how many people you'll likely need to convince to support your project for the project to be successful. The goal of this exercise and this video is to decrease this number simply because I would generally say it's easier to convince a smaller number of people to give a little more than to try to convince a huge number of people to give a little bit. It's like it's much easier to get € 100 from 10 people than €1 from 100 people. It might be an idea to suggest to people to get to whatever you are making and gift the other object they back to their friend. But that's just like the most uncreative possibility that you should implement any way. Some of the greatest rewards are digital. First of all, they are scalable and maybe even better, you don't have to ship them. You could offer people whatever you are creating in digital form., you could create a tutorial and ship it digitally, you could also offer things such as a phone call, a Skype consulting session, a personalized email, or similar. Talking about personalized rewards brings me to my next point. Given running a kick-start project is all about connecting to your audience in a meaningful way, you can use your reward as a tool to do just that. Remember when I talked about Justin Morse cookbooks. One of Justin's amazing rewards, and I think my most favorite rewards, is that he offers the host dinner parties in various cities where he gives the book to his bakers personally, and then he cooks up some of the delicious recipes. For film projects create those might organize a viewing via that they also answer to baker's questions, like a Q and A of the bake stories. If you need inspiration for creative rewards, I can only recommend the theater category on kick-starters. There are many great that seem to be more playful with the rewards they offer. Also, it always makes sense to scout the category which you are planning to launch your project in and look for inspiration there. Rewards are a great tool to really have fun with your project and do something you would be excited about having someone else support you financially. Use this opportunity, I've said it so many times, but no one needs another t-shirt. Do something that would entertain you, do something that would entertain other people or something that's just really authentically you. Simply something that helps you express who you are. One of my favorite rewards I offered was a freelance at dinner party where I get people around the table. It was in my home, it was me because it was in my home, I get at the people who backed my project. They were all freelancers or trying to become freelancers, and I have them share experiences and cook the dinner myself, I just had such a good time sitting together with a small group of like minds who have never met before but who made for such an incredible group. There was just so much exchange and it was such a good rewards that was probably my most favorite one to deliver, and so it's like use or rewards as a vate to do something that you wouldn't otherwise know how to. I think rewards can be extremely rewarding and really fun to deliver, a t-shirt does really isn't. 11. Calculating Shipping Costs: Shipping cost is what challenges most creditors. Depending on how big your project is going to be, it's not an everyday thing to ship a couple of 100 packages. On one hand, you must think about the packaging material and where you buy envelopes or cardboard boxes to securely transport reward to your Becker's. On the other hand, you also need to calculate the cost of shipping in a sensitive manner. I have personally always used Kickstarter rewards, as a way to help me spread the word about my projects. Most of my projects are conducted in a way that once I've realized the initial batch or picks up there, I'll find a hands of solution. To give you a more specific example, my books are sold, printed, and distributed by Amazon. I don't have any stock. All I do is I receive money from sales via Amazon once a month. To me, the Kickstarter projects have always been a way to produce the print files and to help me spread the word about my projects. I have to say that the way I consider shipping is very much. I just give everything. I probably go into miners with my shipping with the projects. But I don't care because in the long term it really pays off. If you're more curious about the topic of how I self-publish, I have another Skillshare class which is on how to self-publish non-fiction books, so you can watch that. You should now go back through shipping. I really believe it makes a huge difference whether your bakers get just another nondescript white, boring, just like a boring envelope or if what you send to them literally pops in your mailbox. I usually choose envelopes that go with the color of their content. I must say that many of my bakers included the envelopes when they share pictures of the things I sent them on Instagram. I'm saying it here while talking about shipping costs because you should consider buying the more expensive envelopes if somehow possible. Simultaneously, you should also spend some time researching because the prices of envelopes vary a lot. Many times I would find envelopes that would cost about half of what the most expensive offered it. That's a huge difference. Just to finish off this part, rep your rewards in a way you would yourself be over the moon if you receive such a package. It really it is warfare just like the feedback will warm your heart. You cannot even imagine if you haven't done like if start a project yet. Then you also need to consider that you'll have to print labels. Trust me, you want to the print them and not hand write them. It's not that expensive and you will save yourself a bunch of time. In most countries, you'll need return labels for your address, like your own address, and then labels for the addresses of your bikers. I usually create the simple extra sheet, which I then email my local branch up and just have them deal with it. It feels so silly to me now that when I was doing my first Kickstarter project, I didn't think this was an option for some reason. I spend days like maybe more than a week, just like writing more than 300 and then my own address oh my gosh. More than 600 address labels. You don't want to do this, like really not. Let's talk about the actual shipping. You should make your final wrapped package or at least estimate its weight and also its measurement. At least in Europe, it's becoming more common to pay based on the size of the package and not just its weight at, as it used to be a couple of years ago. Then you should talk to your local post office, which is mostly the cheapest option about how much it will cost to ship your package to various countries. In some countries there is a discount of mailing fee for packages that consists of books, CDs, or some other type of medium. You might be lucky and be able to use this discount to your advantage sometimes, and that's another tip, it might be cheaper to ship from another country, especially in Europe. For example, shipping from Austria overseas is about four times more expensive than shipping from Germany. I found out about this also just randomly. If you have the possibility to check on this do so. Shipping really is the hardest and most expensive bit of running a project. I have learned everything, I've said, you should consider this and consider that. It's like I've learned my lessons and it was trial and error and it was expensive and it was unnecessary. You should try to figure things out just like in advance. 12. Tell Your Story: So I've already said that every project is a story. So once you've dealt with all the logistics and foot about Oreo cost, it's time to think about how you frame your project, been telling its story to friends and strangers. We have finally arrived at the fun part of running a Kickstarter project. So whenever I write copy, and this is super detailed. I always tried to emphasize with the reader of my text in my first sentence. I mostly ask questions to paint the picture for what's to come in the following lines. Within the first few sentences, I try to make it clear who I'm craving for, because either a reader can identify with whatever you are saying, and they will read on, or they won't, and they'll click somewhere else. That's perfectly fine because they should not waste their time and the people who are excited about what you're making, they will read on. So your job in the first paragraph is to spark the moment of identification. It's your space to make sure your reader recognizes they are being addressed. Then in the second paragraph, you should clearly mark-out what benefits you offer and what the reader will gain from begging you. Once you've clarified to the reader better, they are the right audience for your project and show them the benefits they'll gain. You can go into more detail. You can explain your personal story and what made you create such a project. You can tell your readers why you're the right person to do such a project. Why it's authentic that you are the creator. You should share the sort of information that's relevant to your reader and spare them all the details that are in. Keep the texts of your projects short and clear. It doesn't have to be pages and pages long because no one reads it online anyway. So show the text to others and ask for feedback and also use the Skillshare project space for that. If you're the first person, if no one else has shared anything, don't worry, just like shared yours and I'll get back to you and you'll just figure it out. So once you're happy with your text, choose images to share in the description of your Kickstarter project. If you ask yourself what that could be. So show pictures of your prototype, of your making process and similar. You need to imagine that the person who just stumbled upon your page, the person who's supposed to beg you is now probably sitting behind a computer at an office somewhere completely different. Your project, your photos is [inaudible] for them to peek into your world, into your city, into your everyday life. That's something that's really exciting. So show and tell people the story that make you wants to be a part of your environment and set up your everyday life the way you did, simply share your passion. I know you've heard this many times, but it's like show to someone what makes you and your life the way it is. Use the space to just tell other people what moves you. 13. Recording Your Video: For many, recording video and speaking into a camera might be the hottest part of running a Kick starter campaign. I remember when I had my very first video, it was absolutely terrifying. It was a New Year's Eve and I called up a friend who had a camera and I asked them whether I could come by for 30 minutes to have her tapes to be doing. She said I could come, but she was cooking dinner for 12 people. I was like, "It will only take 30 minutes." The 30 minutes I promised it would take time for us to be free hours and every time we would begin recording, my mind would just go blank. I just couldn't recall anything I wanted to say. The tapes, older boards on the tripods for me to just read out loud. You can see it on the desk. It was just ridiculous. It might probably be because it was many years. I swore to myself to practice standing in front of a camera that following year, which has been skill shirt conflict than me and I did the first class. This is how all of this started. I would love to tell you that it's gotten much better. But the truth is, I've just learned to use various tricks to make standing in front of the camera miracle for me. For example, I began using a teleprompter and even now, I'm basically reading everything. I'm saying. Of course not everyone is hopeless. Let's give you some practical tips to make taping videos of yourself as smooth as possible. First and foremost, you don't actually need a fancy camera to record to your Kick starter videos as smartphone is more than enough. If you know Amanda Palmer, an incredible singer. If you don't know her, look her up on Spotify. She showed her video on a smartphone. If you remember the hold your phone in landscape format, you'll be sets to make your video look as if it was taken with a normal phone Ruby like all my pictures that I take are just taken with a smartphone. There have been many experiments that have proven what rating meters is a light. Make sure to have enough lighting when you're shooting your Kicks tarter video. You can see this. This is when I was doing a webinar in the picture. I have all these lights and then I have to extra light. It was absolutely ridiculous because I was sitting in a kitchen behind microwave. All that matters is to the background. One crucial thing that makes a huge difference is sound collector, however, I can only recommend to use a microphone or extra headphones to make sure your video sound is clear. You should make sure you're somewhere quiet sort of picture that you can see right now. This is the setup there I'm in my apartment. In the ideal case, your background is interesting. What I've always liked the both Kicks tarter videos is how much of someone else everyday surrounding you get to see. You might want to shoot your video in a place you create your work. The next picture. This picture, I sometimes work with a friend and she turns my entire apartment upside down to make the background look extra pretty. I might pick up fresh fruit from the market and put them in a bowl or buy a bouquet of flowers so that my background looks interesting. It pretty much is just her putting everything in place so that it looks the way she wants it to. Then another important thing is how you tell your story. This is now above not the setup, the video content. Your video should capture your excitement about your project. I totally emphasize with how hard it is to shoot a video, at least it is for me. But you might be natural, and not struggled with it as much as I do. If you struggled with it, if it helps you. Even my frame minutes, videos take me like 1.5 hours to shoot. Just the copy writing. I usually explain how someone benefits from picking my project and want right person to create the project from my potential bickers and benefits from. I don't really like videos where the person talks a lot about themselves. I already finished with B about the person who begs the project and how the project you're making fits in within delights. Your video is obeyed the crate trust and built a virtual connection with someone. After everything I said to you, It shouldn't take more than three minutes. 14. Editing Your Video : Given I've taped most videos of myself, I've also begun editing them. I'm not a professional, but as I've already said, KickStarter isn't about having the most expensively produced campaign, it's about telling your story in an authentic way. A homemade video definitely makes the cut. If you've ever wondered how KickStarter chooses what projects gets featured, one of the criteria is that others might feel encouraged to create such a campaign themselves. It's not about spending €20,000 on a video because that's not the point. I've been using iMovie for editing and I'll show you what I do with the videos, which is really incredibly basic. Anyone who knows anything about editing would do a much better job. But I'm not trying to teach you editing here. I'm trying to encourage you to create without having much of a budget. I believe iMovie is a pre-installed app on every Mac. I usually just import the videos so I drag and drop it like here and then I drop it down here and expand it. I just basically tune in, listen to the sound, and then just cut it shorter on each end. I listen to it again and then cut it shorter here. What I might do is I go in and reduce the background noise preferably by doing this. I might cut it as I just need to cut it. I'm not really doing a good job here now. What I also might do is if it's too slow, I might change the speed in here and just do a 102 percent or a 103 percent. Then I go here and click on file and just export the video as I would want it to be and that's it. 15. Setting Up Your Kickstarter Page: If you followed my class, setting up your Kickstarter page won't take very long. Once you've clicked start the project, you'll be prompted to select the category. You'll be asked to add a short description. Then, you'll be asked to choose your country. This needs to be the country that you are registered and also that you have your bank card registered. This is no more about the contents. Your headline should capture the essence of your project. The headline or the sub-headline are generally a good place to mention who your project is for. If you've seen my projects, it's always for freelancers. If you identify as a freelancer, you know it's for you. That's a system. For your main image, you should choose a picture that captures what you are making. Just avoid any forms on the image. There is so much text on the page already. It's just like doesn't really help. Try to make your visual look so expressive that they don't need an extra explanation into image itself. The basic spark of the setup it also that you determine how long your campaign should be live. Generally, speaking, your Kickstarter should never be live for more than 30 days. Sometimes some people say like, "Oh, but I'll do like five weeks." I can say from my own experience, you'll get so tired, you'll be glad it's over. Plus, if people come to your Kickstarter and there are still free weeks to go, they might click away thinking they've got more time to think about it. They might just drop off, ticking clock is your biggest friend because it's helping you to convince people that now is the time to beg your project and tomorrow is already too late. Of course, the Basics page is also where you determine your project's goals. How much she wants to raise. We've already talked about rewards and how to calculate them. One more thing I should probably say here is that you can set a limit to how many times or for how long. You can see it here on the image limit availability, for how long you'll make a report available. That's very practical if he wants to launch a limited edition or if you want to give something special to the people who will support your project early on. The section for your story is not just where you're asked to share a video, some photo and explanation of what you're creating, it's also where you're asked to explain what risks and challenges you are facing with your project. It's important to be transparent and honest about your shortcomings. This space is also for you to give perspective on how you're going to overcome what's difficult. Again, to just been trust, then the about you is, of course very, you can say more about yourself and why you're the right person to do this project, then you need to verify your identity. This might take a couple of days, I think, up to five. Once you're done with setting up your page, you need to send it in for review, which can also take a couple of days. What I've found very valuable, what's the option to preview your Kickstarter page where you can create your own preview link, you see it's a share, a preview of your project reference. You have to click on it. Then you get this like extra, where people can come, they can visit your Kickstarter page before it being live. I can only recommend to shared a preview link with as many people as possible and ask for feedback even before you go live. Some things might make sense to you in your own heart, they don't make sense to other people. Also speaking from my own experience. That's also what I've asked you to do in your project space here. Share, because we are not friends, we could be, it would be nice but we're not friends. If I give you an open-end, it's probably going to be more honest than someone who really loves you. 16. Prepare before you go live! : Now that you've created your Kickstarter page, it's time to do the actual preparations. Once you go live, your adrenaline go blow your brain so much, you'll be glad you've done all the work upfront. So what do I mean when I say you should prepare? First of all, you should create an editorial plan, which is defensive words for mapping out what sort of content you'll publish on your page every three to four days, that will enable you to post new content about your project without having to constantly shout that you're a Kickstarter and that you want people's money. Let people who help you write a comment, take pictures of your process, and use them for an update. Tell stories, don't say I need money. That's the very blunt thing to describe what I mean. Think of additional reports that you could publish midway through your campaign to have something new to talk about. Like people collaborate for example, one of the things I've done and it's proven to be incredibly successful, was to have my Becker community choose a cover. My graphic designers would usually create free options and put them up for discussion. We would learn from the feedback, and then we would create a fourth version that would have a lot of the feedback they have implemented in it. I'm really happy with all the covers of my books and also very grateful for all the feedback that help us get to such great results. You should not just jot down the topics you want to talk about in your posts, you should also actually break them, and already have older pictures everything just ready before you go life. Whenever I draft these Kickstarter updates, I also draft the teasers I then post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and if applicable, also linkedln. It's likely because I've worked as an editor and this want to have everything ready for her. Also, just like at once, you know that she doesn't get updates from me and is like I need this now, I need this tomorrow, I just like prepare everything up front and it shows like it helped me to be ready, prepared, and also not to panic. I just like knew what I'm doing and then I was able to focus on my normal life, which especially like you'll also have to focus on your Kickstarter when things aren't going well, which is another video later on. But it's mostly if you still wants to function as a human, which I feel like, it's kind of difficult because it's so exciting and it's such a game, you're so in it that the more you have prepared, the better you'll feel about your Kickstarter, running your Kickstarter, and a better you will be as a friend. Another thing you should prepare is a press release, write down the key data of your campaign and highlight what makes your project interesting. There are many tutorials on how to write a press release, and you can even find some really good learners here on Skillshare. The next thing you need to prepare a list of contacts. Write down who of the people you know are likely to support your project. They are probably people who supported because they like you, and there are people who hold you so because they really like what you're grading. I usually scroll for my entire friend list or Facebook to figure out who the people are, who might be interested, or have a network of people who might like my project. Many know someone has stepped into a certain network just like tried to talk to them. I do the same with my LinkedIn and also my Twitter contexts. I just literally look at everyone who I know online and consider if my project is something that they would like. There's some people, I sent them the preview link, even before I pushed a Kickstarter project life, I asked for feedback, I include them in the project, and also I make them co-responsible possible for the success of the project in one way or another. The next thing I do is, I look for online communities that might be interested in my project, Facebook groups, meet-ups and similar. The Facebook groups, you always need to read the rules because you can't post your project in every group. Additionally, you should also become active into groups that you believe fit your project well. Most importantly, you should get involved before you try to convince people to check out your Kickstarter page. Then I look for events in my community there and in my surroundings that could potentially talk about my project. For example, at Creative Mornings, there's always the possibility to do a 30 second pitch. During your campaign, try to go out and talk to as many people as possible. Many times when people see a good project, it's mostly those projects that the creators plan different actual target group in their mind that succeed. 17. PR and how to reach out to journalists: In a previous video, I recommend that you prepare a press release. It's mostly because it's always gets the leverage a project for some press. Don't rely on press bringing you a ton of backers. You should always remember that no one reads the newspaper to go shopping. However, it looks good when you share on social media, someone wrote about your project. It might make some more people in your circle click on the project page and to check it up. Now that they've seen someone leverage your project in a medium they trust. The way I usually look for suitable journalists is that I write down a list of magazines and newspapers that I believe my project would fit in. I didn't go to their website and search for keywords to find specific journalists to look previously wrote about something about the subject. Sometimes I look for a new section on Google. I searched specific keywords that have something in common with the topic of the projects I've worked on. I add all the names of the journalists that I find in an Excel sheet. This is like a load of extra sheet work. I'm making note of domains. I search for their email addresses, I saved the links to the articles, and then I found that I think, correlated with my project. write the comment about why I thought that article was relevant and why my project would be irrelevant to the journalist based on that inside. If you've write them 20, 30, 40 journalists names, you won't remember. You should really write this down and I know it's a lot of work, but it totally based off. If you see your project as a platform to get your name into print media, you need to think of editorial deadlines. Some magazines prepare all content months and months in advance. Don't forget, you need to take that into account as well. If you want your project to be featured, some might not want to write about a project that isn't successful just yet. That's a really hard thing for status. Some journalists only want to have success stories, so they are not going to help you fund raise. Other journalists might, but if it's a medium that you definitely want to get your name in. Try to remember to follow up with them once your project is successful, once you have actually made what you were trying to make. Just like keep a note about this. Don't keep it in the back of your mind. You'll forget, probably. I also look for blocks through which I could contribute myself. I would then write articles on a specific subject that's got to do with my project and then ask them if they would be interested in publishing it. That's also a way to get your name out there. Sometimes I draft a few such articles that I then offer two sides, just like everything up front and before I go live with my project, that is important. Of course, it only makes sense if the article gives value to the reader, which will only be the case if the article fits within the general editorial line of the block. It's not about your agenda, it's about their agenda and if you want to be part of their agenda, you have to follow whatever they are trying to achieve. You need to think about these things even before you start writing the block post, if you want someone to share it, if you want to do PR. You can't rely on approaching a lot of journalists at once. I tried that too. Doing press related work is a lot of one-to-one communication. Don't underestimate the work effort this takes before you send your press release to a pre make list of hundreds of convicts. Choose a few send them a personalized email, try to build a relationship, you'll be so much more successful than if you just reach us to anyone and everyone and I think one of the reasons why my books have been covered in the media so well, was because I just tried to be in touch with different people. 18. Going Live!: If you've done all the things I've walked you through in this class, then you know more than ready to launch your project. However, be very ready because you actually never know what might happen once you go live. To me, every single Kickstarter project I've done was equal to exhausting as it was exhilarating. I've met incredible people and got some great free events assignments because of this. My Kickstarter projects enabled me to place articles I've wrote in various online publications. I would have never, never imagined possible. Because of my Kickstarter project, my books were featured on 99 you, on Girl Boss, creative boom, design taxi and many others. Everything is possible. It's still a lot of work, but once again, totally, totally worth it. Now of course, it's not always just great stuff that comes your way, in the lease you have to deal with a bunch of spam coming from people promising you to help market thing and spreading the word about your project. It might also be that nothing much happens at all. You just simply never know. My first recommendation for your launch day is to go live during the week, never on the weekends. In the ideal launch scenario, you go live on a Wednesday or even on a Tuesday. You wants to launch your project when everyone is in front of their computer. You might think, oh, but everyone is at work and busy? Well, yeah, might be true, but from my experience, most websites go pretty quiet over the weekend and also in the evenings. Once you're live, you should start reaching out to people one on one who you know for sure support your venture. You don't want to make it public announcement until you have 5-10 backers already, because no one wants to be the first person. I've never understood this, but like people really struggled with being the first person to support something. Once that's done, once you have your 5-10 backers, sent out a newsletter, post on Facebook, changed your cover image and your profile picture on Facebook. Don't forget to add a link to your Kickstarter page because otherwise it's useless. Then post on Twitter and make a story for Instagram. Now everyone you meet, you have a perfect life on Kickstarter. Like everyone. Tell everyone why you're doing it and what you are doing. Just like for one month, 30 days, you're literally just repeating yourself and just telling everyone about what you're up to you. If you've collected email addresses of journalists, now is also the time to reach out to them. On the first day, you should simply take lot of time for email conversations, for real conversations, for phone conversations, you'll have a bunch of them. If you do well, you might be able to reach up to 20 percent of your funding goal in the first 24 hours. 19. Running a Kickstarter Campaign: Being live on Kickstarter sometimes feels like you're trying to push a stone up the hill. I'm not going to lie, it's still very rewarding though. Prepare yourself to talk to as many people as possible while your project is life. Go to events if you can speak up and tell the audience about your project. If they ask people to introduce what they are working on, don't hesitate and do that too. Meet friends, especially the ones you know might be interested. Try to connect with friends and strangers and everyone who have a large on each audience that you think might enjoy knowing about your project. Post your camps every three to four days and keep sharing different aspects of your project. Just say, my project is live on Kickstarter, I need money, this is not going to work. Share all news articles that positively talk about your project on social media, so get the leverage from other people. From my experience, projects gets the most traffic in their first 2-3 days and in the last week. The two weeks in between are usually very, very tiresome. It's hard to get people to visit your Kickstarter page. It's usually easier if you have your target group nailed down and people recognize themselves as being part of it. However, making people take out their wallets to pay money for anything is always really hard, so it's not just Kickstarter. I recommend posting so much different content because it's easier to share posts to Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, and other social networks if you can tell different stories. Yet, always link to the page where your friends and supporters can pledge easily, so always never forget the link to Kickstarter. During the entire campaign try to be as loud as you can. You'll see quickly that once you get quiet, there wouldn't be many new Becker's flocking to your page. Just another like this that go back round thing, and usually a 10 percent conversion is considered really, really good. Others say you should have one visit for every euro or dollar if you're in the US. For every euro or dollar, you should have one visit on your page to get your project funded. In other words, be social, as social as is physically possible. You can take a break once your project is fully funded. In the meantime, go out be online, remain visible, stay active, be social, talk to everyone, just like be very visible. 20. What to do when things aren’t going well: Sometimes it happens that a project doesn't take off. You spent months preparing yourself and pouring all your love into the project, only to find out that no one's interested and thinks what you offer is worth their money. It hurts. Out of the five projects I've had like on kick-starter so far, they were really difficult to fund. I know to the outside world it always looks like this was amazing. But truth of they are really difficult. Getting people to do page seems like a real pain with one of them to be more specific, work trips and our trips, it was mostly a timing issue. The project there, I published it shortly after Trump's inauguration, and at the time everyone was talking about politics and no one seemed to interested in whatever I was doing over there, it was like I just couldn't get any traffic. Then the guide to Berlin's cafe scene seems like a difficult one because I've done like literally the same project for Vienna and that one was incredible. Then I've taken the same concept and introduced the Berlin coffee tour guide. In Berlin, because people don't have such a high disposable income and else prefer to spend their money elsewhere. It was also very hard to fund. Usually, when you reflect on what might be happening and why your project's not going well, you'll most likely figure out the reason and can react. There are multiple options of what you can do at this point. If you lose drive like the projects are no longer worth your time, you can always cancel. You can also cancel if you feel like you need to prepare better and want to launch at a later point, all of that is not a problem. The only thing that you should remember is that kicks out of projects can be deleted. Even though kick-starter, unsuccessful or canceled projects from the Google search, one can still find them when looking for them under kick-starter page on the website itself, the option of what you can do when your project isn't going well is also my favorite options. This is when you decide you really want your project to succeed and you decide to do whatever it takes for it to happen. It's not as dress that gets its sons, and this is pretty much all about your mindset. I'll tell you more about it in a couple of seconds, because even though I had a really hard time funding two of the five projects, I still pushed all of them to the finish line because I was just determined to push them to the finish line. Here's my main learning. Once you have people who have backed your project, you have people who stand behind you and want the project to succeed, you can always ask them to share the link with their friends. Do like send it to people who they think would be interested. You can, for example, draft posts for Facebook or Twitter. Just that it's easy for them to just copy paste and share it. My favorite tactic has always been to come up with rewards that would be interesting to people to a degree that they would increase what they've already previously pledged. Just like make their pledge higher. I'll give you a few specific examples here. When funding work trips and road trips, I had to try several things. One of them was that I created them and offered to help other freelancers structured our website and write the contents for all the pages. I may see over fairly cheap to make people think that this was a no-brainer. That was one thing, and then the other thing is, I asked a friend to put in money to make the projects seem closer to its finish line. Then successively took the money out again. But people who visited the page and also backed the project would see that there was still a chance for the project to succeed. Definitely, this strategy isn't against kicks out those rules. I didn't support the project with my own bank account. However, the kick-starter thing with also probably not be very impressed to hear about this. I guess sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Should you decide to try this technique, ask a friend to help you. Also, this only works if you're simultaneously sharing the progress of your kick-starter page to motivate others to watch your video and if they like what they see, they might pledge towards your project at the end. It's like you built up this excitement, there are things aren't going well, but suddenly they are and you allow people to join you on this last sprint. This is also a moment where you might need to overshare a bit to get to the point, I know from my own experience, it's not the most pleasant time, but I promise that you it won't take long for people to forget that you overshoot so much. The second project I had a hard time funding was the deco filling cafe carts. I mentioned that. I needed to do something that would make people pledge not just 25 years, but at least a 100. My plan B for this project was to think about it, what audience I have and what they might be interested in. So not my audience for the project, but generally my audience of people who seem to be interested in what I'm doing. I was thinking about, how they live their lives and how could I help and then charge money for it. My idea was to offer consulting sessions on freelancing over a cup of coffee in Berlin, Vienna, or via Skype. I edited the newer reward, wrote the kick-starter update, posted about the offer to my kick-starter campaigns through like I don't want. I also like send out a newsletter and of course I was a shared it on social media I just like made sure that everyone knows about this. Then once the project was close it's finished line I disabled more people from liking for this option. Because at the end of the day to me to predict most of the cards and not so much about generating revenue or freelance helping sessions. Except it is a great platform to get a proof of concept, it's a great platform to make small projects happen, however, when things aren't going well, which is why this part of this class was so important to me. It's also a platform that challenges you to come up with alternative solutions. If things aren't going well, remember, this is not about pushing through what you have prepared. This is about coming up with solutions that make your project be successful at the end. 21. Project Success!: First of all, congratulations, you made it. From now on, it's time to do the actual work. Once your project's over, it will pick kickstarter evict to collect its payments. Some of them don't work out, and then it's the responsibility of your bekers to get in touch with their banks to have them process the payment to your project. One week after your projects end, you'll see how many pledges have dropped, and then it will take about another seven days for Kickstarter to process the payment. A couple of days later, the money will arrive in your account, and that's usually about 2 and a half weeks later. If you promise money to someone, you should just be aware that it's not in your account the next day. I can only recommend to keep in touch with your followers and post regular updates to let them know what you're up to and how to project that they supported is coming together. It might be that you'll want to do a follow-up project, and for that you should keep people involved in your creative processes. I have always also edit personal notes to my packages and sometimes represented the rewards is presence. You have seen it on the pictures before. I simply did everything to give people a meaningful experience. Of course, it took longer, but definitely also gave me a much higher satisfaction. If you've read a personal cards, try to include a personal hashtag. I always had a hashtag I was using while my projects were life, and often people who received my packages used the same hashtag. Many received it or reusing whatever project. It gave me the possibility to comment on everyone's post, and also now that I go back I can actually still see the pictures others posted, which also gives me a great feeling. To this day, I hold this trunk belief that my books are only still selling because people shared pictures of them online. Without that engagement, it just wouldn't go anywhere, I think. I should probably also talk about something else here as well, and that would bring us back to calculating your projects. Personally, I didn't make a cent from any of the Kickstarter projects. I've always used older funds I raised to pay my team, to print the shipter rewards as promised and over deliver. With the help of my Kickstarter bekers, we were able to create print files that I have uploaded the create space to have the books printed on demand. I don't have stock. I offered a books online, people buy them online, but I don't have any stock. How the system is set up, this is how I earn money from the project. The Kickstarter projects really, there was no money involved for me. I usually re-invest older earnings from my creative projects in making new creative projects is also important. That's also what you might want to do from now on if you want to build your creative career. From whatever creation that you do on the side, you generate an income, you should also put it back into the same ability to create further. As I've previously mentioned, you can also find a class on how to become a freelancer here on Skill Share. I recorded that one some years ago, but you'll learn all these freelance tips there. If you want to know about the self-publishing part, there is a class on that here on Skill Share as well that I've recorded it. Yeah, that's about it. Congratulations again. 22. Project is Unsuccessful : First of all, sorry to see this happen. It's never easy to feel ones creative endeavor is not as well received as one thought it would be. You should definitely take some time and reflect on why your project didn't succeed. Then based on your learnings, you'll be able to come up with a future plan. Honestly, it might even lead to much, much better results. If a project on Kickstarter doesn't reach its goal, nothing actually happens. So Kickstarter only fetches people's money the second a project's deadline is over and you're over your funding threshold. You can always decide to try a second time, try to fund the project in a different way, or you can always move on and forget you tried in the first place. All options are good options because in every creative life, it doesn't immediately mean one succeeds with all the ideas one has. Now that you have tried, people at least know what you've been working on and that is a good baseline to start over and try again and maybe do something much better. 23. Final words : What I personally always find valuable about running a Kickstarter project is that they make you be extra loud about your creative endeavors. Given there's so much content online, it takes time to catch someone's attention. Even though you might have felt like you've shouted out loud virtually for weeks, others might have barely noticed. However, the ones who did, they are the most important people to notice anyway. Your Kickstarter project has probably helped people to remember your first certain thing. With me, many believe I live off writing my books, which is barely true because I've worked as a freelance community strategist now. What's up? Then again, if you've created a project that captures what you want to get paid for and also be known for, then this very Kickstarter project might be your stepping stone to achieving just that. Thank you so much for watching and until next time.