How To Tap Into the Wisdom of Past Projects on Kickstarter
Most independent designers and entrepreneurs don’t fully realize that they have access to an unprecedented treasure trove of insights and learnings at their fingertips.
So, where does this treasure trove live?
On Kickstarter, where you can view almost any campaign that has ever been launched, both successful and failed efforts. Those thousands of product launch campaigns are a powerful source of learning and insights.
Why is this trove so valuable?
Steve Jobs summed it up nicely: “it comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing.” (quote from an interview in the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds)
Ok, our scope here is a bit narrower — we are not talking about exposing you to the best things humans have created, only to the best thing that other entrepreneurs and designers have launched on Kickstarter. Even so, the same principle applies.
By reviewing past projects on Kickstarter, you can uncover patterns, learn best practices, and get inspired. You’ll be able to identify and adopt effective tactics and strategies that have been proven out by others and avoid common mistakes and pitfalls.
This research is essential.
And it should start early in your planning process. If you are past that point on your journey, you should find a way to work it into your schedule because it can still pay dividends.
The work itself is not difficult but does take some time. It involves finding projects that are relevant to your work, capturing key details and observations in an organized manner, and analyzing the data to uncover practices that you want to adopt or avoid.
In this post, we’ll share a few strategies, tactics, and tools that will help you carry out this research faster and more effectively.
How to Find Relevant Projects
Finding relevant projects is the foundation for your research. To build a solid list, you need to get familiar with Kickstarter’s search system and clearly understand what you are looking for.
Kickstarter’s search feature is quirky.
It only searches for keywords in project titles, subtitles, and creator names. So if you are launching a bike accessory, at the very least, you’ll need to run searches using the keywords “bike” and “bicycle” to find related projects.
Kickstarter offers a selection of filters that enable you to narrow your search in useful ways. The most powerful of these are hidden in a pop modal that you can only access on a search results page.
Use filters to find high-quality projects and to research by scale.
The best way to find high-quality projects is to search for campaigns that have been selected as Projects We Love. Here is how:
- Start a search
- Click on the More Filters link on the search results page.
- Click the Projects We Love filter link on the pop-up modal.
To find projects of a specific scale, follow the same sequence, and just filter results using the Amount Pledged drop-down on the pop-up modal. It can also be helpful to sort results by funding amount. To do so, just choose “Most Funded” from the sorted by drop-down on the search results page itself.
Look beyond competitive projects.
Competitive projects can help you benchmark your campaign’s performance, identify countries and cities that are most promising, learn how to bring your product to life on a project page, and gain insights into press and influencers to target.
Other high-quality projects can inspire you to create better videos, compelling project pages, well-designed graphics, well-structured rewards, and more. They can also help find ways to differentiate your projects from competitive ones.
How to Structure and Capture Project Info
Before diving headfirst into the research, it’s essential to create a structure to organize information about the campaigns. After reviewing hundreds of projects, it can be tough to keep them all straight and remember which one had the video, diagram, copy, or whatever else inspired you.
This pre-work will enable you to capture all relevant details and observations about each project in one go. It will also make it easier for you to analyze the data you collect to uncover best practices and keep track of projects featuring tactics or assets that inspire you.
Here is the information that you should capture from each project:
- Basics: title, subtitle, creator name, location, and URL
- Funding: goal, total pledged
- Timing: launch and end date
- Backers: backer count, top backer cities and countries
- Observations: notes about what stood out to you
Did you know that Kickstarter shares the top ten backer cities and countries for every single project?
This data can inform your decisions about what countries to ship to and help target online advertising campaigns. I’m often surprised by how few people know that this data exists. It is available on the Community tab of every project.
Here is a shortcut to help you create your research list.
A big part of the work involved with creating a project list is tedious grunt work — copying and pasting or typing information about a project into a spreadsheet. That’s why we developed a project tracking spreadsheet with a special bookmarklet that makes it easy to copy all relevant data from any project on Kickstarter.
The spreadsheet template has a place for all critical information about a project and provides a column where you can note your observations. The bookmarklet enables you to copy and paste all of the information about any given campaign in under 5 seconds.
What is a bookmarklet? It is a bookmark that contains a snippet of JavaScript code. When you click it, rather than take you to another page, it just runs the code.
Getting More Data
It’s often worth doing more in-depth research on competitive projects and those that share an audience with your own. That’s where tools like Kicktraq and BiggerCake come in handy.
Kicktraq is the original Kickstarter project tracker, and it’s still the best one for researching older campaigns — they have historical data going back many years. It allows you to explore the funding curve and information such as updates and press coverage.
BiggerCake is the most advanced Kickstarter project tracker. It enables you to dive deeper into the performance of live projects and recently completed campaigns. It displays the funding curve and a few other interesting bits of data and analysis on campaign revenue, backer engagement, and popularity.
Time To Put It To Good Use
We can’t stress enough the value of standing on the shoulders of the creators who came before you. It’s one of the main benefits of launching your product on a mature crowdfunding platform with a long track record across multiple product categories.
Give these tactics, strategies, and tools a whirl, and let us know what you think. Leave a comment here, or email me at julio@launchstudio.com.
Launch Studio empowers independent designers and entrepreneurs who make physical products. Our first course, Kickstarter Masterclass, offers step-by-step guidance that empowers creators to successfully launch products using crowdfunding.
Check-out a free preview of the Kickstarter Masterclass. You’ll get access to a few of our students’ favorite lessons. We’ll reveal proven tactics and strategies that will help you get funded.
