How to succeed or fail on Kickstarter

Great Article! Thanks for the link.

I am guessing Seth Jaffe was too busy disk golfing to complete your survey. Eminent Domain seems, to me at least, to be the poster child for Kickstarter funding of board games, but its nice to see other success stories.

Many important lessons from the article: Kickstarter, regardless of the money raised, is also a great way to build awareness and buzz around your game. Kickstarter is the classic "the battle is won or lost before you have begun" type of enterprise.

Here is my attempt not to fail on KS:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/miniongames/venture-forth-adventure-...

- James

I have been working two months on preparing for Kickstarter on Dragon Valley and I have another month to go but, I feel I am not making the progress I need to make. Building a community is definitely a multiple year, multiple project endeavor.

The article was helpful and reinforced what I have been learning.

To set up a Kickstarter project, you have to set up what is essentially a banking account with Amazon. Both Amazon and KS take a cut from successful project. I'm not sure how it's split between them, but the total take seems to be about 8%.

For example, in the article linked up top, a guy who got $15k from his KS project ended up with $14k after fees.

Building a community of interest is what KS is all about. If your first project fails, you can still bring over whatever following you've built to a new project. It's a bad idea to try to fund your whole project at once with KS, break it up into smaller pieces. I'm going to be starting a KS project for Gladiators soon(tm), but it's only to raise the money I need to get the art done. I may then do another to cover production costs, another to cover web page design costs, and etc. KS helps spread the word about your project even if you don't get the money.

Hey, anyone have experience being a non-American Kickstarter user?

In theory KS is available to anyone, but you have to have a US address to sign up for Amazon Payments. Is having a US bank account enough?

Why do you need the us adress?

There is companies who use a "order to us and we ship it to you" service. Then you have a dress do you think that would work?

The Purple Pawn article is a MUST read for anyone considering KS. Also CW Karstens authored a GREAT post on BGG and he obviously knows what he is doing since Dragon Valley has been successfully funded!

I actually just released a Press Release on BGG about my upcoming KS project. If you find the game interesting I'd appreciate any support in the way of thumbs, signing up at the VRG website for updates, etc!

Press Release:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/683980/van-ryder-games-announces-inf...

CW's post:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/681657/wanting-to-start-a-kickstarte...

VRG website
http://www.vanrydergames.com

Thanks!

I'm ramping up to promote my new boardgame Atomic Earth 2.0 and raise money on Kickstarter. This thread has been very helpful in getting that ball rolling. Thanks!