Some things I’ve learned doing a Kickstarter… it’s a lot
This was initially a Kickstarter backer only update, but I decided to share this out so other folks can learn a bit from my first KS experience.
So you might wonder wtf, why is the invoice so high? Let me tell you for two reasons, well three?
1) For transparency sake so you know where your money is going
2) To see the costs behind a KS that I’d never know about if I had not done one.
3) So if you reader decide to do this? You can go into it with a better idea than I did!
So, there a LOT OF FEES that come with doing a Kickstarter, crimeny. Especially if someone else will be doing your production, and shipping. In this case, I’m using Geekify on the recommendation of a friend who’s used them before.
Right off the bat, $200 set up fee (which I got waived after noting that fee was not mentioned in all our conversations) then your plan is based on a percentage of your KS take. Ours was about $152. So depending on your project? You could easily need another $400 or more for something like Backerkit, cause you might want add-ons which the built in KS survey can’t handle.
Alright, there’s Backerkit (referenced as BK for short going forward) taken care of. But that’s tapping into the money the KS made. You’ve also got to kick KS 5% of your total, and additional payment processing fees. So out of the nearly $7600, between fees and failed pledges; that’s another $1100 down from what you may have expected to hit your account.
Also, KS takes 14 days to pay out and depending on how much money your project made? You may not see it for a few business days; or you might have to deal with a hold on it due to a large influx of money all of a sudden. You finally got your money and you need to start paying for things! Welp, that money is gonna be gone. At least for pins, here’s additional set up costs you may not have factored in.
Note: this is all written out from dealing with my own project your own specifics will vary.
For this project, a mold per pin design is necessary. To the tune of $65 a mold x 20. So there’s another $1300 down.
There are minimums for pins and patches. To make it cost effective, ordering 100 of each pin reduced the cost to something reasonable, versus a really high cost per pin if I got exact counts or say 50 or 75 of each. So there will be stock left over for convention sales, etc. AND there will be a Backerkit store, fulfilled by Geekify once all the KS backers are taken care of.
The minimum for patches was 25, and a $300 ($50 x 6) set up fee for them. Currently there’s no production for any item with a 0 count, and unless anyone chooses them at the last minute; we’re good. As for the actual pin cost now that the molds are done at $65 each; getting 100 of each of the 20 designs was more cost effective; the D20 is a bit more expensive since the glitter to make it sparkly added a bit to those.
So after all is said and done JUST for the pins and patches? The total is $5,319.50. You also have to ship out these rewards, so an additional $1,000 was estimated for shipping. In the case of this KS, I paid the original artist of the emote 10% of the net, so there’s another $675.00. And, pin back cards for each one which added another $245 to the project cost.
Guess what that means, an actual loss when it comes down to the final numbers. Luckily I had a little money in the bank to cover this overage, but the recouped failed pledges & add-ons? That doesn’t make up the cost difference.
Granted your campaign may look wildly different but some lessons were learned. I went from thinking I’d have about a $1400 — maybe a $2000 overage after all was said and done, to actually paying out of pocket. So pad out your estimates from every thing you can wind up doing in a KS. I may get money back if there’s anything left from the money estimated for shipping.
More updates as production kicks off, and we get mockups from Geekify and actual product is available at events once everyone has their KS goods.
Thanks for going along with me on this wild ride y’all.
