{"id":331,"date":"2012-02-03T10:57:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T18:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=331"},"modified":"2012-02-03T10:57:24","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T18:57:24","slug":"lessons-of-kickstartiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=331","title":{"rendered":"Lessons of Kickstartiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/2012\/02\/kickstarterend.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-332\" style=\"margin: 5px;\" title=\"kickstarterend\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/2012\/02\/kickstarterend.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/2012\/02\/kickstarterend.png 340w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/2012\/02\/kickstarterend-300x270.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px\" \/><\/a>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/colinmarshall\/notebook-on-cities-and-culture-season-one\">Kickstarter fund drive<\/a> for <em>Notebook on Cities and Culture<\/em>&#8216;s first season wrapped up this week, earning what I would call a successful $3000. Having entertained many a vision of just staggering over the $999 line by the close of the final day, I look upon the nearly 300% with some satisfaction. Some fun facts about the results, if you&#8217;re collecting experiential data for your own potentially Kickstartable projects:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>46<\/strong> backers pledged <strong>$3000<\/strong> total, so the average backer pledged <strong>$65.21<\/strong>, the price of a reasonably slick Taschen book or maybe a smaller Criterion box set.<\/li>\n<li>The great majority of the backers pledged within <strong>eight hours<\/strong> of the drive&#8217;s launch, which is about how long it took to pass its funding goal.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>$300 <\/strong>pledge level, where I talk about the backer&#8217;s own project before every episode, sold out all three slots.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>$30 <\/strong>pledge level, where I thank backers by name at the end of every episode, sold 23 slots.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>$80<\/strong> pledge level, where I talk about the backer&#8217;s own project before one episode, sold four of 24 slots. Maybe I&#8217;ll retool that middle incentive next season. (Kickstarter suggests offering something &#8220;tangible,&#8221; but I can&#8217;t imagine what that would be. Many projects screenprint up some t-shirts, but when was the last time you wore a t-shirt with words on it? Been nearly a decade for me.)<\/li>\n<li>Since the drive passed its goal so quickly, I declared that, for each <strong>$250<\/strong> raised over the initial $1000, I would add another episode to the season. (I&#8217;ve never found a snappy way to put that.) This resulted in a planned <strong>24<\/strong>-episode season lasting <strong>three<\/strong> months growing into a <strong>32<\/strong>-episode season lasting <strong>four <\/strong>months.<\/li>\n<li>Next season, I might make <strong>$3000<\/strong> the goal and produce an additional episode for each <strong>$150 <\/strong>or <strong>$200<\/strong>. Then again, I might bump up the goal a little bit more to fund recording in other cities. Perhaps an exploration of the West Coast? <em>Notebook: San Francisco<\/em>, <em>Portland<\/em>, <em>Seattle<\/em>, and <em>Vancouver<\/em>? We&#8217;re talking <em>Cities and Culture<\/em>, after all, not <em>City and Culture<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Before the drive had ended, I&#8217;d already recorded <strong>six or so<\/strong> interviews. Glad I don&#8217;t have to explain to those interviewees why the world shall never hear our conversations.<\/li>\n<li>Kickstarter and Amazon (who process the payments) combined take almost a ten-percent cut, and you have to wait almost three weeks for the money to land in your account. So allow for that in your budget! Or, y&#8217;know, keep a budget. Not that I&#8217;m going to lead by example.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now to make sure the show doesn&#8217;t suck. No assurance of quality like the old chorus of &#8220;people paid for this&#8221; running through one&#8217;s mind!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Kickstarter fund drive for Notebook on Cities and Culture&#8216;s first season wrapped up this week, earning what I would call a successful $3000. Having entertained many a vision of just staggering over the $999 line by the close of the final day, I look upon the nearly 300% with some satisfaction. Some fun facts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notebook-on-cities-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}