Kickstarter

The site is full of interesting projects but there are also many fraudulent ones so take your time to search for the interesting ones that can be trusted or care to fund those you trust 100%. Thats all

Overall, it's okay. I think you get out what you put in, and some of the things I've supported failed, which kind of sucks. Not sure if I'd trust it with my own ideas though.

Great site, lots of potential, lots of risks but if you wait it out and you pledge smartly, you won't regret it

Meh... ok...

Spent the better part of 3 to 4 days getting the entire thing written, putting it together, etc... for it just to be lost in a huge pile of other kickstarter projects. I did what I could to network and advertise via social networking sites 'n' such & read up on some of their "tips" for making the most out of their site. I basically ended up no further along than where I was to begin with. I even emailed their support for tips & advise, just to blatantly be ignored... The site seems to be useful tool but it's impossible to benefit from unless you excessively advertise the hell out of your project anywhere you can without being flagged for spam & relentless self-promotion. They should have an area for 'newly' uploaded projects to help newbies get exposure. Overall... frustrated & annoyed I wasted my time with it.

The most compelling and candid account of someone's experience during a Kickstarter project is the one posted about the Man Greater Than Money font.

The complete email exchanges between the project creator and Kickstarter are posted.

You should definitely read it before you start a fundraising project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/*******177/man-greater-than-money/posts/*******

. I am an experienced writer and I wanted to use Kickstarter to fund a project about child abuse, but I am legally required to protect the personal identities of the people I would be writing about. I read the KS guidelines to make sure I could protect identities, and then I emailed KS to explain what I wanted to do and to clarify a few issues in their guidelines that would be relevant to protecting people's privacy. NO RESPONSE from Kickstarter.

We are in progress with our Kickstarter Project - our example: http://kck.st/vL281h

We have learned much about spreading the word on the internet for a project. The goal of the project has kept us focused and that has helped our project greatly.

However, we must agree that you need to bring your own backers - don't rely on Kickstarter to do that for you. The projects they choose for promotions is almost always on the eclectic side of the brain. Which is cool, but if you are a rather straight forward product it won't help you much. We also managed to add tracking to our project so we know for a fact where our traffic is coming from and at what levels. We averaged 80 views per day on the Kickstarter page, which is not outstanding by any means. Only about 10 - 20 of those visits click on the video.

Our typical traffic level at http://www.Qubits.com is 100 views per day so many of the Kickstarter views were referrals from ourselves. 87% of the backers were friends - while the rest were from Kickstarter and Twitter.

Note: The front page of Kickstarter averages 40,000 unique viewers PER DAY. Yes getting picked ( CURATED) for a highlight on that page is a boon to anyone. However your chances of getting onto it are slim. They receive hundreds of new project submissions per day.

Focus on your project, your customer or fan base, come up with a plan how to gather your own funding, post a project and perhaps receive the extra touch of the Kickstarter community. The boost your project receives from Kickstarter will hopefully offset the Kickstarter & Amazon 10% - 15% fee

It might be just the right fit for you. If you fail, regroup and try again. If you succeed you have even a greater chance with your second project since you will have an established connection with satisfied customers.