💸 10 Top Tips for a SUCCESSFUL KICKSTARTER! How I made £25k through crowdfunding! Emily Harvey Art

hi guys welcome to my channel my name is Emily I am an illustrator enamel pin lover and Kickstarter doer I have done five kickstarters six one was a collaboration and over the past three years since I did my first one I have raised over 25 000 pounds over there so I feel like I have some advice I could give you I really want to help you with your projects and your campaigns that you want to do I wanted to sit down today while I'm actually in the middle of a current Kickstarter campaign I will leave

a link below depending on when you're watching this you can go and check out a live project and I will get on to it in a bit how that's going but I'm going to sit down today and tell you my top 10 tips for having a successful campaign I'm not going to talk to you about building a page if that's what you're looking for my friend Lucy has a wonderful video which I'm Gonna Leave below she's called Lula rocks she has a full step-by-step of how you could build a great Kickstarter page so go and

check that out so in March of 2020 I did my first Kickstarter campaign it was for an enamel pin and where you'll find that all of my Kickstarter campaigns are for enamel pins some of them have some extra bits I did some prints I've done some decorations other little incentives which I will talk about because it is a top tip last year I did my biggest Kickstarter today we raised just over 11 000 pounds in four weeks there were pins there were Washi tapes there were prints it was such a massive campaign it was so

so wonderful right now I'm in the middle of another campaign I'm actually three days in and I'm fully funded we've raised 5 000 pounds in 48 hours I cannot thank my backers enough it's going unbelievably well so I think I've given you my backstory you can see I kind of think I know what I'm talking about now I've done enough of these so let's get into my top tips the first thing I want to say the first top tip I have and probably the biggest question I get is is my audience big enough do I

have the Right audience to have a successful Kickstarter campaign now what I will say is as somebody that has grown a Following over the past couple of years I by no means have a massive following I believe you can have a successful Kickstarter with a small following the key to it is having a combination of an Engaged audience no matter the size an audience that want to see you succeed love your products and want to be part of it it doesn't matter that can be 20 people but if 20 of those people that are following

you back your Kickstarter you know it can be amazing so don't worry too much about the size of your audience what you need to work on is building an audience that cares about what you're making that they actually like the project you're working on and they like the products you're making you need to find that audience and that can take time so my biggest tip is don't rush to do a Kickstarter don't feel like right I have to get this done I have to get a kick started on this year if you can put time

this year into building a mailing list building a following on Instagram again doesn't need to be big but just one that cares and wants to see you succeed work on that for six months if you don't feel like watching this video right now if you can't sit back and think I I feel like I have an audience no matter the size that actually cares for the products I'm making when I post about something I have those people that come and comment and if you don't have that right now I'm not saying your Kickstarter won't succeed

what I think will happen is you will struggle to build momentum so I would honestly work on it for six months a year um and launch a Kickstarter when you feel confident that people are gonna back it if right now you don't know if even one person would back your Kickstarter it's not the right time to launch it so I say this about Kickstarter I say this about patreon you need to work on those um building that audience and it can take time it's not easy so now you've got your audience and you're looking to

start your Kickstarter you've got your product in mind now I'm gonna say enamel pin as an example because that's all I know but whatever product you have in your head that you want to help get funded on Kickstarter you need to know your numbers you need to know exactly how much it is going to cost to be manufactured you need to know exactly how much it's going to cost to ship it out to people you need to know exactly how much it's going to cost to package that product you need to have all of these

numbers written down and worked out and I really recommend in terms of having the product made go to a manufacturer find your manufacturer get the okay from them check that it's going to work find out how much it's going to cost you you need to have all of your numbers before you even think about doing a Kickstarter page if you are just guessing numbers and crossing your fingers that when the project ends that it's all going to work out you're going to be very very very shocked so I recommend taking some time to figure out

all your numbers and then when you come to put together your Kickstarter page it will be so much easier because you're not doing the guesswork other things you need to think about are Kickstarter fees so Kickstart is going to take about 10 from you so you need to be adding that on to however much you need to make remember with Kickstarter that you need to input an initial goal all and if you don't reach that goal the project is not successful nobody's going to be charged and it it fails essentially I hate that you say

that but if you don't get that figure right see you underestimate what that figure is say in theory you need a thousand pounds to make your product and you put 500 pound in as the goal if you reach 500 pounds that's wonderful your project is don't like Kickstarter are basically saying well done you did it so when it ends and you've raised 500 pounds you have to fulfill those pledges and in theory if you need a thousand pounds to make it your shot so get your initial figure accurate it needs to be accurate can you

imagine getting that wrong and having to fulfill 100 people that have backed it and you can't even afford to have the product made because you messed up on your numbers so please before you do anything get your numbers figured out one little side tip to add to this and I know Lucy talks about this in the video that I've mentioned when people back your project say they pledge 30 pounds say 20 pounds of it is for the reward 10 pounds of it is the shipping 30 pounds comes off your goal okay Kickstarter doesn't say right

well 20 is for the reward we'll knock that off the goal and Tennis for shipping it all goes towards the towards the goal so just bear that in mind that if you hit your thousand pound goal 400 of that might be shipping costs so just bear that in mind know your numbers my next tip is what's the incentive what is the incentive for people to back your project even if people absolutely love you and they love your products sometimes it's really hard to get them to back your projects it's really really hard to get them

to take that step and support you in this essentially pre-ordering of a product on Kickstarter how I've worked it out is by offering incentives this can mean a freebie so you say to people hey come and support me over on Kickstarter and if you support me I will give you a freebie stickers are great for this it's a low-cost item but just the thought of getting a freebie to people is enough to back think about that when you're planning your next project what could you include as a nice little incentive to encourage people to back

the project another thing you can do is offer a discount so for me I sell my pins in my shop for like nine pounds on Kickstarter I do them for eight pounds so people know that yes they could get the pins in the future they could wait a couple of months and get them when they're in my shop but they'll be dearer by a pound but still people like to get discounts and if you can offer a discount with a cheeky freebie it's all going to help now some people will say hey well I need

to this is a business I need to make money yes however if you want to get backers in the masses offering stuff like that is going to help soar so much I found but that by doing a discount and offering a freebie people that are already um support me and have all of my pins anyway then why not like of course they're gonna back the kickstarter and you're doing your numbers and you're planning it add in a cheeky discount now you can do it as an early bird you might heard this term before you could

set it on Kickstarter so that um your discount only applies say for the first 24 hours of your campaign offer the first 30 people you know if you want to call it early bird go for it I have I did early birds for the first two campaigns maybe just the first one instead of giving like a two pound discount for the first 30 people I gave a one pound discount to everybody and I just found that it did better because of it there's no right or wrong have a look at what other people are doing

go and check out Kickstarter because some people might find that early bird is the way to go for me I just like doing a discount that's slightly less but for everybody so even if people find you on the last day of your campaign they still benefit unlike an early bird which basically only rewards people that are there from day one and I just don't think that's really I don't know I don't really like that and the final kind of incentive and one that I love to do which has worked out so so well for me

in past campaigns it's to offer Kickstarter exclusives so these can be actual products that you can only get on Kickstarter which is quite limiting really um I like to do the packaging as Kickstarter exclusive now obviously I do pins the past few campaigns pretty much all of them except the first one I ever did I deliver my pins on a Kickstarter exclusive backing card I realized that a lot of the people that come to my Kickstarter that collect my pins like to have these special elements so that when they display them it kind of shows

that they were there at the start so for example the last Kickstarter I did I displayed my pins on a backing card together and I also offered a Kickstarter exclusive pin um that is not available in my shop so there's just so many like exclusives that you need to be getting the kickstarter while it's on to get them so for example the kickstarter that I'm running right now the kickstarter exclusive and the backing card will not be available in my shop it's a really special Illustrated backing card with the pins on it and if you

have one of those it means you back to the kickstarter I've also done it on this Kickstarter where if we reach 100 backers you'll get a freebie pin so yes that's a cost to me that will eat away into the profits but the idea that my backers almost need to work with me to encourage others to back to kind of build this community and honestly I was on a YouTube live while this was happening and to see people rally together to be like right come on we need to get 100 backers because we all want

this freebie pin people were sharing for me because everyone wants this freebie so why not tell their friends so just kind of think of how you can get the community involved how you can offer incentives to encourage people to back the project my next tip is timings and time frames so you might wake up one day and think right I'm going to launch a Kickstarter today sadly it does not work like that there is a lot of planning that needs to be done behind the scenes and there's a lot of timing issues with it and

I'm going to talk you through it so the first thing to remember when you build your Kickstarter page your Kickstarter page needs to go into review you're going to send it to Kickstarter they're going to look over it and if they find any issues they're going to flag them and you're going to have to fix it now I've never of all my campaigns I've never had any issues my kickstarters have kind of just gone through but some of them have taken a time to get back to me it tells you on Kickstarter that it's like

48 hours I think from um sending it off to getting it back but bear that in mind if you know you want to launch on March 1st and it's like the day before and you still haven't submitted to Kickstarter you aren't launching on Match first so make sure that week before you you have submitted it submitted it because previous campaigns for me have taken days and almost a week I think for one to come back when it was a busy time so make sure you are putting in the diary yes I want to launch on

this day but you need to be submitting to Kickstarter way before another thing to think about is when is your Kickstarter gonna end I think the most important day on a Kickstarter is it's ended not it started end it if you want a Kickstarter to go well I recommend you have it end at the end of a month not in the middle of the month a lot of people get paid around the end of the month I know some people I mean I get paid throughout the month so it's different for me but a lot

of people have paydays at the end of the month so to have a Kickstarter that ends then is is is better for people they can plan their money of what's coming in what's coming out so if you kind of want to work backwards really if you know when you want want it to end then you can decide right how long do I want the campaign to run for and then you can have your start date and then you can plan your Kickstarter submission date now I've seen a lot of people do month-long campaigns I certainly

have done month-long campaigns my last one was month long you need to decide do you need a month and I say this because my current Kickstarter I've done it as a test and it's two weeks long and I was absolutely terrified at the thought of doing it for two weeks thinking it's not going to work I'm not gonna unlock everything and I funded it in 48 hours so I recommend for your first ever one I recommend you keep it small a small Kickstarter and try it try a month but you might find that you didn't

need a month and when you do your next one Do it For Less I feel quite confident now that I'm doing my current one I don't need a whole month for a small Kickstarter now small for me is just a couple of pins if I want to fund like I don't know I like if I want to do a clothing range in the future I'll need a month like that's a big budget but you need to be realistic if you just want to fund one enamel pin you know your numbers you know your audience you've

got a rough idea of how many people are gonna back you know how much they're going to pledge like it's all a numbers game do you need a whole month what I have found with previous campaigns is that I have a really busy launch like the launch night in the first few days are busy pledges come in and then right at the end when people have kind of forgot and put it off you'll get a few at the end but the middle or does it drag it's really hard and if it's a month long you

are talking two to three weeks of just crickets and it's really hard because you feel like you're talking about it too much and you don't want to talk about it every day and you might get the odd pledge every other day but that middle section is really hard and that's why I did it for two weeks this time because I thought I'll have a busy launch and kind of busy end and the middle bit is not going to be this four week long three week long thing it'll be a week and that's something you need

to think about I'd love to hear from you if you've done a Kickstarter before if you maybe did a month before and if you would go less next time I'm definitely thinking two weeks is good for me depending on the project because the other thing you need to realize is that when your project ends you don't get your funds straight away you have to wait another two weeks it takes two weeks for Kickstarter to process all your funds and then it hits your bank account so if you're doing a month-long project from the start date

you're not going to see the funds for six weeks and that's something with this project that I'm doing right now I know that didn't need to happen I know I knew that two weeks fingers crossed was enough so now I kind of wish I could like end the project sooner because I mine will end on the 28th of February I then have to wait two weeks so on like the 14th of March I will get my funds and that's a month after launching because I did two week campaign then wait for two weeks it just

is working out perfectly so have a think about that with your timing just make sure that you give yourself enough time in terms of like planning the page and getting it reviewed but don't feel like you have to do a month because that's what everybody does it you might find that less is better I don't know I think it'll give people more oomph to get it done if if your audience is watching you and they want to support you they'll do it on day one or day two so having a month long doesn't really need

to happen don't come for me if I'm wrong I might be wrong my next tip is stretch goals we love a stretch goal and the thought of stretch goals when I did my first Kickstarter terrified me because I didn't understand it I didn't know what I was doing so I'm here to tell you that stretch goals are wonderful and they're not scary so let me explain it like I said at the beginning you need to input a goal into Kickstarter and if you don't hit that goal the project didn't work out if you want to

make five enamel pins and say you've been told by a manufacturer it's going to cost you a couple of grand two or three grand to do you could put two thousand pounds as the goal to make these five pins but it gets to the end of the campaign and you've raised 1600. you've done really well you've raised 1600 but you've not raised two grand and because you've not raised two grand Kickstarter says that did that was not successful another way you can do it is by using stretch goals now instead of doing the five pins

like that you do a goal for one pin so you do go for one pin and you go is 400 pounds so you hit that after a few days and you have funded the first pin Kickstarter says yep you're it's successful well done this is where your stretch goals come in now you don't have Kickstarter doesn't do stretch goals as in terms of like you can't set them in Kickstarter but you can set them so you can put on your Kickstarter right well if we hit 800 pounds then we'll unlock the second pin I can

get the second one made and then if we hit 1200 we'll get the third one made and so on so like that so you're kind of in charge of like Kickstart is not going to say to you hey you didn't raise enough to make that third pin they're just bothered about your initial goal right in terms of like funding the project so stretch goals is something you can do to do more products but instead of doing like all five and not hitting the two grand and then that project is just kind of in the bin

say you only raise 1600 where you can still get four of those pins made right yes the fifth one didn't work out but you've still got the other four so stretch goals have a look at my other projects I will leave the links below for all my previous projects I introduced stretch goals on my second one and it was such it was perfect it worked out amazingly so I like I've just mentioned I did an ice skate pin as my initial goal and then I had six or seven other pins that were funded because of

stretch goals and that's what I'm doing on my current project all my projects have stretch goals like that so don't be scared by them see them as a way to get your project funded you know don't if you've got all these ideas for products don't put them all in the initial goal hat pick one thing to do as an initial goal and the others are stretch goals my next tip is cover all budgets as somebody who does enamel pink kickstarters I have found that there are people that want to support me on Kickstarter but don't

necessarily collect pins and by creating rewards for people with different budgets and that aren't necessarily interested in your main item but still want to be part of it is a great way to get some extra pledges so for example my current Kickstarter is for some enamel pins but I've added stickers as a really low-cost reward so for people that don't collect pins but want to be part of the kickstarter you can get some stickers in my previous Kickstarter I did it so that if you pledged a certain amount you could have your name in The

Notebook so we had this notebook funded on the kickstarter and in the front I have the names of everybody that backed the kickstarter so even if they didn't want to get anything they could still pledge and have their name put in there um so yeah cover all budgets if it's a high cost item that you're trying to do on the kickstarter have a think right well say it's a 40 pound item whatever it is whatever you're having made why not create some rewards for people that are five pounds 10 pounds um for people that want

to be part of it but can't quite stretch or don't want to have the higher cost item okay my next tip I've titled spam emails but it's not spam it kind of is feels like it as soon as you hit launch you'll start getting emails and messages on Kickstarter from people who claim that they can promote your project for you they will get you in front of others you will see huge growth in your campaigns with them there's been a few times when I first started out where I felt like yeah I'm gonna pay for

this service because they're they're promising me I'm gonna get 20 grand in in backers All I'm gonna say is don't fall for it I haven't ever entertained it and there might be some legitimate companies out there that really do help you with your campaigns if a campaign is not moving as you would like it if it's slow you're not seeing the growth throwing money at the problem and getting people like I don't even know how they get the backers they're definitely not the right kind of backers I can't I just don't know how it's done

please don't fall for it if your campaign's not working out use it as a learning opportunity market research that it's not the right time or your audience you don't quite have the audience for it yet I worry that people will throw off hundreds of pounds at company for for promised backers and it's not the way to do it I promise so just ignore the messages don't stress about it I've had so many this week it's crazy my next tip is spreadsheets don't just wing it use spreadsheets now even if spreadsheets scare you I'm not a

spreadsheet person my last Kickstarter I used a spreadsheet and I think I used spreadsheet on the one before that when you have finished your campaign you will have a list of backers and you'll be able to send them a questionnaire which I haven't really talked about here but you'll be able to send them a questionnaire get their shipping address ask them any questions and once you have all of that information back Kickstarter lets you download it all as a spreadsheet now I really recommend you do this to just manage all of your backers my spreadsheet

was color coded it was organized I could see who was getting what and then I would like kind of color code them when they've been sent or if there was a problem use spreadsheets don't try and scribble on a piece of paper who you need to send what to and like oh no spreadsheets all the way Kickstarter lets you do it they literally show you like where you can download it everybody's information everybody's addresses it ticks off everything they've asked for all the add-ons I then just go through and kind of color coordinate them and

like figure out all of that stuff it's so much easier and then in a couple of months if someone emails you and says hey my package never arrived you can just open your spreadsheet and see what they had and then just ah spreadsheets it's game changer so my next one I've written down promote promote promote and I don't just mean promote once you kickstarters live that's the last step you need to be promoting this weeks months before you even think about starting I find that by talking about my ideas and sharing teasers and little bits

for the months leading up to the project going live by the time I hit launch people are excited and ready to go that's in the success I've had in the past few is by doing that this Kickstarter I've just done yeah I I teased about it on patreon a month before launch and since then I've done seven posts slash polls to get advice and feedback I talked about it on my YouTube channel I put it in my mailing list I made Instagram highlights just talking about it I was just constantly teasing and talking about it

and then on launch night I was live on Instagram and YouTube which I again will leave that video link I hit launch live people could watch me react people could be part of the launch night you want to encourage people to share it and share you and if you see people sharing on Instagram your projects share them acknowledge them say thank you very very much um yeah it's all in the promotion and talking about it and like I say you don't need to have this massive following to do that you just need to have a

following that cares and by talking about the project it encourages people to get involved now I will say one of the projects I did I kind of went against all of this and I kept it a secret up until launch day and on launch day I said surprise I have a Kickstarter going live today and that still was funded but I looking back I think if I had done more of a build up it would have gone even better so just think about that in your promotion in your timelines of planning stuff and you need

to put in some promotion if you haven't started a mailing list start one do it I have over a thousand people on my mailing list like not even 20 of those have backed the project build your mailing list now and start teasing what's going to come and then the final thing that I want to say is if your project fails as Kickstarter because it fails if you don't reach your goal it's okay it's all right and like I said before use it as really valuable information in that it's not quite what your audience wants right

now there's something that's not quite got them to back and that might be that you don't have a big enough audience it might be that it's not quite hitting the spot of what they want it might be that you think right well it didn't work on Kickstarter so I'm gonna fund it anyway but just think about the reasons why it didn't work out take it away with you for six months and try again it could be that there are things that I've talked about in this video that you haven't implemented and you could do that

next time try again don't give up please don't give up I really hope you've enjoyed this video please let me know if you have any tips if you have any questions or anything that I haven't covered feel free to leave them below I would love to chat to you in the comments if you want to check out my Kickstarter that's currently running or any previous kickstarters I've done I will leave them linked below and thank you so so much for watching this video bye guys foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]