I have received a lot of questions surrounding my choices with Kickstarter and the Madman of Magic Comic Book project. I figure instead of answering the same questions over and over again, I will share them here for everyone to read.
If you have a question of your own, leave it in the comment section and I will answer them too.
Question
What do you think of Kickstarter?
Answer
Kickstarter is ideal for projects like mine. My wife and I don’t have any way to raise funding for investing in this project or, at least in our case, not to cover all of it. With Kickstarter we can pre-sell and see if people are interested in our work. It turns out they are interested in our project and in a big way.
Question
Isn’t Kickstarter a scam?
Answer
I guess it depends on how you define scam or who’s projects you fund. I am not sure what happens if a user doesn’t fulfill his backer’s rewards. Maybe someone could have a project, collect the money, and run. I am not sure, but the 3 projects I have funded all seem to be fulfilling their rewardsproperly.
Others could consider it a scam that Amazon and Kickstarter both take a cut of the earnings, but any shopping cart company or online sales platform is going to do that. For me they took 10 – 11% (about $115). I think the percentage varies depending on the amount of money you make during your campaign.
Question
Most comic book kickstarter campaigns are for a lot more money, and I was wondering why your goal was so low. I know you’re working with your wife if that has something to do with it, but I was wondering if that was strategic in any way. It seems to have worked either way.
Answer
Good observation. I did a Kickstarter campaign 4 months ago that failed
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/madmanofmagic/madman-of-magic-chapter-1-comic-book
and I learned a lot from it.
Some of the major things I learned was:
- People want to see the creators behind the project as well as the project itself.
- Backers want proof you can deliver what you promise. Meaning it is good to finish some of the project before you launch. You can use this for marketing, it allows backers to get an idea of what the final product will look like, and as proof you know what you are doing.
- Try to get feedback on your images, descriptions, rewards, and video before launching. The more feedback the better and getting feedback from strangers is the best (I used YouTube a lot for this).
- Being active on Kickstarter before launching shows potential backers you believe in the community and not just there to make a quick buck.
- Never cross the streams (sorry Ghost Busters Joke).
I hope to write more articles on my Kickstarter process, information on my funding, and what worked for me in future posts.
Question
Why the price different for the first Kickstarter Goal and your successful Kickstarter Goal?
Answer
We kept working even though we didn’t get funded the first time. When preparing the second Kickstarter campaign I decided (Leah was against it) to personally fund a good majority of the needed capital to get the comic book created. To pull this off I got a loan from family members, maxed out credit cards, and funded out of pocket. The $500 was needed to cover printing expenses, Kickstarters percentage, Amazon’s percentage, the costs of the rewards, and shipping. All the extra will go to marketing when we launch the comic to the public and we put 5% of our profit towards other Kickstarter projects. We did this through Kick it forward.
Question
What’s up with the extended goal?
Answer
When Leah and I launched this second kickstarter campaign we said we would be able to finish the project with just $500, but with more money we could do more. Since we made our extended goal we will be printing stickers and creating a digital mini-comic.
Questions via YouTube
Here is a video I created with a few questions from people on YouTube.
Conclusion:
Thanks everyone for your questions. I hope they help those of you who are working on your own comic book. Feel free to send me a question via email at jasonloveslife (at) gmail.com or just post it in the comments.
