20 / 148
20
|
ALPACAS
MAGAZINE
a new line of greeting cards, an indestructible sock.
Kickstarter does NOT fund businesses, causes or
charities. There other crowdfunding sites that do that.
Indiegogo,
www.indiegogo.com, funds businesses and
charitable causes, as well as creative projects.
How do you create a Kickstarter campaign?
Kickstarter guides you through the process. Before you
start, be sure you explore a variety of Kickstarter cam-
paigns. That will give you a feel for what a Kickstarter
campaign is, and get your creative ideas flowing for your
current project and perhaps for the next one. (I discov-
ered a campaign for Kevlar/Lycra socks. These socks are
guaranteed never to get a hole in them. It seems to me
they’d be even nicer with alpaca in them. Go to Kick-
starter, then type “Socrates—the Most Clever Sock Ever”
in the “search project” space to see these socks.)
1. Set your financial goal and deadline.
Thirty days
is recommended, and is what we used. State the
amount you need to raise and tell specifically what
you will use the funds for. In our case, we needed
to pay for editorial and book designer services, and
printing and shipping. An entrepreneur who wanted
to produce her very special marshmallows needed
specific items of professional kitchen equipment. A
cookbook author needed funds to travel the world
to sample recipes from different cuisines to convert
to vegan recipes in his international vegan cook-
book.
2. Set up an Amazon Payments account through
Kickstarter.
Your Backers’ credit cards will be charged
at the end of your campaign, if it is successful, and the
funds will go into your Amazon Payments account. If
you do not meet your financial goal by your deadline,
your Backers’ cards will not charged and, of course,
you won’t receive money.
3. Build your Kickstarter page.
This is the heart of
your Kickstarter campaign. It is what the public will
see and it will have all the information about your
project. This is where you explain your project, tell
the world why it is important, describe how you will
use your Kickstarter funds, and explain the pledge
levels and Rewards your Backers will receive at the
end of the successful campaign.
Kickstarter recommends you
shoot a short video
and post it on your Kickstarter page
so people
can actually meet you and hear you explain your
project. I created a Power Point presentation from
which to read my script and my husband, Peter,
filmed it. Unfortunately, as I read the words on
my computer, then looked at the camera and
back again to the computer, I appeared extremely
shifty eyed—not a good thing when you are ask-
ing for money and trying to convince the world
that you are trustworthy. Back to the drawing
board we went. Peter built a simple teleprompter.
(Google ‘teleprompter’—there are several sites
with directions for building a simple and effective
one.) Success! The video went up.
Create your Rewards,
a critical component of
your Kickstarter project page. When creating your
Rewards, ask yourself, “Who are my Backers? Why
would they be interested in my project?” We identi-
fied four major groups for our book: 1) parents and
grandparents, whose children would enjoy the story
and the felting project in the book, 2) alpaca farms,
which would buy the book wholesale and sell it
with their fiber in their farm stores, 3) schools and
homeschoolers, which will tie the book to their
curriculum and might enjoy an alpaca visit, 4) fiber
people—felters, knitters, spinners, etc.—who’d
like to encourage a love of fiber arts in children
they know. We targeted these groups with specific
Rewards. For instance, to parents and grandparents,
we offered the book, a package of roving and pow-
dered drink mix to do the felting project, for $25,
shipping included. For alpaca farms we offered five
stand alone books for $50—the wholesale price—
and again, free shipping.
Graphics from stock.xchng