Olivine's Hopefully Helpful Kickstarter Advice

Base: ENAMEL PINS
Why: Kickstarter is the best market for enamel pins compared to simply doing a kickstarter for charms. People know that enamel pins are more costly to make than acrylic charms, so they know that more designs can be viewed on kickstarter. Extremely helpful to use as a base.
What to do with them: Have more than one design. People love being full collectors, and love having more than one design to be able to choose from. Don't have too many designs, do like 6 max so it's still feasible to a lot of people to Collect em all vs picking their top three. (My first kickstarter had 6 pins, 50% of people got all six. Second kickstarter had 12, majority went for 2-4.)

Want+Base: MIRROR ACRYLIC CHARMS
Cost - ~300 a charm, before shipping. List them at 400-500 per tier.
Establish why charms require a kickstarter when most people know they're usually cheap enough to make to not warrant a kickstarter. FLAUNT YOUR NICHE!!

PROS OF KICKSTARTER
- Can contribute significant chunk of advertising.
- Surveys help a lot for crowdfunding.
- Excel sheets export easily to a shipping service like ShipStation (Godsend)

CONS OF KICKSTARTER
- Not necessary after the first one or two
- 10% fees not counting taxes
- The more items you want, the harder it is to organize within survey system. You can either ask people to type out what they pledged for/what design of charm or pin they wanted, or just do a check list system and hope they only pick the options they actually paid for. (For example, nothing is stopping someone from clicking three designs in a survey even though they only pledged 2 for two.)
- They count the cost of shipping towards your goal for some dumb ass reason. Give wiggle room to the best of your ability.

GENERAL ADVICE

GIVE INCENTIVE AS TO WHY THEY SHOULD PLEDGE ON KS: This is most appealing in ks-unique deals. For instance, I don't offer enamel pins on any sort of discount outside of their kickstarter. Even then, I start at full price, but you don't have to do that. You can also toss in other cheaper merch (stickers, charms, etc.) to every pledge.

Don't forget: Add a disclaimer that colors may be modified during production, especially when you don't have a sample. It's okay if you don't have a sample. Be generous with your timeline explicitly so people know that issues can happen with manufacturing, and so delays seem as little as possible.

Mention add on's! You don't want the rest of your collective hosted elsewhere to compete with the money you want to go to the kickstarter. Look into backer kit and see how you can have it so people can pick and choose if they want to add more "ASSURED" goods like normal acrylic charms, sticker sheets, etc. THESE WILL HELP YOU A LOT.

GIVEAWAYS ARE HIT OR MISS, DONT USE PRODUCTS THAT YOURE CROWDFUNDING. USE RELATED DESIGNS (ie I used charms as a giveaway while advertising "HEY CHECK OUT THESE SPECIFIC ENAMEL PINS" and so on so forth.)

Launch around February or March, maybe January but do it late January. Account for the fact that it takes 1-5 days for a kickstarter to be approved. (it's 1-3 business days, and no weekends)

You don't need a promo vid for merch. those are risky unless you really know what you're doing.

Graphics are important!! The more clean and polished you look, the more you seem secure because you're putting all this effort into it.

**** ADVERTISE YOUR KICKSTARTER BEFORE IT LAUNCHES. GO NUTS WITH PREVIEWS, MENTION THAT THE KICKSTARTER IS COMING SOON, PUT IT IN YOUR TWITTER AT, PIN IT, WHOLE NINE YARDS.

Make a !!!! MAILING LIST!!! WHEN YOU ADVERTISE. Make a google form where people can submit their emails for a one time notification so they know when the kickstarter launches! I did this before the kickstarter, and it helped me gauge interest even if not everyone ends up pledging! ****


Keep this motto in your head: "If I was a buyer, what do I keep in mind for a platform that isn't assured as kickstarter when I want to buy something?"