After a rough start in which we had to delay our launch by a day, we finally started our I AM BIG BIRD Kickstarter campaign today.
Somewhere in our research, we read that it’s good to launch your campaign with a flurry of activity. It was suggested that building up a steady stream of backers showed people that there was interest and that early momentum could help draw attention to our campaign. We were also told that, if you were in a position to attract a few major backers, which many campaigns are, it’s wise to have them make their pledge early on as having large pledges signals that your project should be taken seriously.
One way we’ve been able to reach people is through our Kickstarter Ambassador program. Basically, we’ve asked dedicated people to go out and recruit ten people who will each pledge at least a dollar to the campaign. We’ve built incentives into this program to make it more appealing: anyone that gets 10 people to pledge will get some swag from the film. Any ambassador that pulls in $1,000 or more from their pledges will be credited in the film as a Kickstarter Ambassador.
I’m happy to report that, less than eight hours into the campaign, this strategy has paid off thus far and we are almost a quarter of the way to our goal of $100,000.
The Kickstarter team has put our project up on their staff picks where it is no doubt benefiting from extra eyes on it. Soon after Kickstarter highlighted it, we stopped recognizing the names of backers. In other words, our campaign is starting to draw attention from people we never would have reached on our own–and we’ve got 29 days to go.
Of course, we don’t know if the other 29 days are going to be successful. Maybe today will be a blip on the radar. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to start strong. So how do you have a great first day? Don’t just spend all of your time and effort to find major backers. Yes, that helps–enormously. But in this world of crowdsourcing, it’s equally important to find loyal people who won’t just support your campaign from the start, but also help spread the word to jumpstart the pledging.
Here’s hoping we have more days like today!