5 reasons our Kickstarter project passed its goal in just 12hrs

Having run two previous crowdsource funding projects for Sherlock Holmes books from Petr Kopl we did expect to reach the funding goal within the thirty days.

The Final Problem on Kickstarter

What we couldn't have predicted was that we would do so within twelve hours of launch. By the end of the first day the project was 110% funded. What can we learn from this?

1) Kickstarter has come on leaps and bounds in terms of community of backers that search for projects within the platform itself. 20% of the funds backed (and some of the larger rewards too) come from searches within Kickstarter. Search terms such as 'newest' were used showing that time of day of launch is vital [we set our so that it would be live before the USA wakes up where our strongest fan base is]. So its vital to get your keywords and timing correct.

2) We had a much broader set of rewards on offer this time. The first project had just a few rewards, this time we offered more choice and it is some of the newer ideas (like book bundles) that have been popular.

3) We managed social media better. This time we took a single point of reference and launch and wrapped the other alerts and notices around it - for us the main platform is tumblr, where the Holmes fans are present and love imagery. We then linked across from that to Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

4) We worked with our brand advocates better. Our partners that have great reach - not just in numbers but in links with other influencers - were a key part of our launch strategy.

5) We held back on some of our media channels for phase two rather than just blasting out the details everywhere - this made us more focussed.

Steve Emecz by day works for Powa Technolgies, and by night/weekend runs MX Publishing, the world's largest Sherlock Holmes publishers.

@mxpublishing @steveemecz

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/emecz https://www.facebook.com/BooksSherlockHolmeshttp://www.pinterest.com/sherlockbooks/