Kickstarter terms you need to know:
Campaign: “Campaign” just refers to the Kickstarter project!
Pledge: A pledge is essentially your preorder. When you have pledged, you have preordered your items.
Rewards: The items you have preordered!
Reward Survey: A survey sent after the campaign ends where you select what rewards you want.
Tiers: There are different tiers you can select (e.g., choosing one pin, two pins, three pins etc)
Stretch Goals: The campaign’s main funding goal is only for the first pin design (Scruffy Looking Nerf Herder). The rest of the designs are considered “Stretch Goals” which will be unlocked when we hit different targets!
Unlocking: When we hit different targets for stretch goals, we will have “unlocked” that design, meaning it has been funded and will be made!
What is Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is a platform that creatives like myself use in order to raise money to fund bigger projects!
Often, if businesses like myself want to create a bulk of products at once, it can be very expensive. Enamel Pins have to be bought in large quantities, which can cost hundreds of pounds! Often, it’s not realistic for myself to be able to pour my own money into large projects, so Kickstarter is a risk free way of raising money to do so.
How does it work?
Kickstarter essentially works as a “preorder” platform.
On Kickstarter, you can “pledge” for rewards – the money you pledge will help to produce the items and you will be the first to receive them after they have been made!
You will notice on the campaign pages, there are different “reward tiers” – these different tiers allow you to choose how many items you would like to pledge for (for example, as I am creating Enamel Pendants, reward tiers have been set to “one pendant”, “two pendant” etc so you can choose exactly how many you would like!
What do you mean by “unlocking?”
When setting up a Kickstarter for multiple products, the first “goal” is £250 to “unlock” the Tangled pendant. This £250 includes the costs of manufacturing, Kickstarter fees, postage costs, packaging costs and any import fees I have to pay to receive the pins.
Because pins / pendants can be so expensive, I will need to pay roughly this amount for each design that is unlocked (slightly more or less for some goals depending on if it’s a piece of jewellery which might cost more etc)
After the initial goal has been funded, we can then start unlocking the next goals! So if we receive £1000 worth of pledges, we will be able to unlock the first four designs for instance, meaning that when the campaign is over you can choose those designs!
It also means that after reward surveys have gone out and I can see what designs everyone has chosen, I can gage which designs are more popular / which are less successful meaning I can tailor the quantities I order.
How do I choose what designs I want?
You do not select exactly what designs you want until after the campaign has ended.
This is because, as a platform, Kickstarter allows you to amend or cancel your pledge while the campaign is live. So, if you have only pledged for one pin, but some designs you really love to have unlocked, you can increase your pledge to add them!
After the campaign has ended, I will set up and send “reward surveys”. This is a brief form you will fill out to tell me what address to send your rewards to and exactly what designs you would like!
There are often additional questions in the reward survey, such as “do you want to upgrade to tracked shipping?” which will let you control how your package is shipped to you!
What are the benefits?
The first benefit is that you’re helping to fund these ideas to come to life! If there is a design you love and you can pledge for it, you will be helping to fund the production so that you can receive it!
You will be one of the very first people to receive these designs. After Kickstarter pledges go out, there can often be times where there are no more A grades left designs are completely sold out and may take a while to restock so you will be able to receive your items a.s.a.p without the wait!
Discounts! The more you pledge for, the more you save, meaning you will receive these items at exclusive discounted rates.
Other important info:
The first 24 hours of a campaign is crucial for success. The more people that pledge within the first 24 hours, the more the Kickstarter algorithm will boost the campaign meaning more people who are unaware of my shop will be able to see it!
Don’t hesitate to pledge – if you are interested in a specific design that hasn’t been unlocked, still pledge! Designs cannot be unlocked without active pledging. The more pledges we receive, the higher the likeliness is that the design you want will be unlocked!