Kickstarting Your Kickstarter

The most frequently asked question that I have been on the receiving end of over the past week has to be "What is Kickstarter?". After Zack Danger Brown raised over $70,000 to make potato salad, with twenty-three days still remaining on his Kickstarter, it's no wonder why I am now daily asked about Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website where you can create a project and designate reward tiers for people donating to your cause, the catch with Kickstarter is that if you do not reach your goal then you receive no funds. There are other crowdfunding websites available such as Gofundme and Indiegogo that you may have also heard of, but you may be surprised as to how many more options are available. Since all I keep hearing about is Kickstarter, that is who I will focus on in this post, I am by no means implying that Kickstarter is the best option, they are just the ones I keep getting asked about.
Per Kickstarter, last year over 3 million projects were funded totaling over $480 million dollars with donors living in over 200 countries from all 7 continents. The Top Five funded projects on Kickstarter are:

1. Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android. Total Amount Raised $10,266,845. Pebble Smartwatch is currently available to purchase at Best Buy and Amazon.
2. Ouya Android Gaming Console. Total Amount Raised $8,596,474. Ouya is currently available to purchase, mostly on clearance racks. The best Ouya unboxing review available.
3. Pono Music Digital Music Service. Total Amount Raised $6,225,354. Pono Music is set to launch in October 2014.
4. Veronica Mars Movie. Total Amount Raised $5,702,153. The movie is available now and it grossed over $3 million at the Box Office.
5. Reading Rainbow Series. Total Amount Raised $5,408,916. The Series will return, most likely as online exclusive though no release information has been given yet.

In looking at that list someone may think that Kickstarter is a great way to raise funds, but look closer at the information and see that there is more to just the amount raised. Ouya is considered a huge flop, if you were to web search for Ouya now, you would find more negative posts than positive ones while Veronica Mars crowdfunded more money than it brought in at the box office. I previously mentioned that funds are only available if you meet your predetermined fundraising goal, if you set your goal at $2,000 but only raise a total of $1,999 then you receive no money at all. Signing up for Kickstarter is free, though you need to verify your identity and set up an Amazon payments account before you can post a Kickstarter. I am currently trying to set up a Kickstarter for a friend and we are currently at the final process, instead of launching the project we opted to let someone from Kickstarter review it before we published it.