I’m now on my third Kickstarter campaign and putting everything I’ve learned over the last two to the test. Of the previous two, the last was successful – funded over my target. Part of the success of that one was the scale. I ran a one week campaign to raise funds for a pop up exhibition featuring the same crow drawn as many times as people backed. The first failed to complete – although I had some great press, it came too late in the game.
This time, I’m working with author Sean Walter on a joint project, illustrating an anthology of new horror stories. It’s the first time I’ve collaborated on a funding campaign and I have to say, it’s good to have someone else to bounce ideas off. We both have different skills and have just finished putting two press campaigns together – one targeted to the horror market, one for general press.
It’s a big risk in terms of time and effort – the goal is to fund our work on the project itself but that’s actually not the biggest portion of the money we need to raise. That goes on the production and shipping of the rewards themselves, plus of course there are the Kickstarter and payment processing fees.
Like many artists/authors, our campaign is basically a pop up shop, allowing backers to pre order copies of the book in return for exclusive content. It’s a tough sell so we’ve gone all out on content – showing previous work to demonstrate we are capable of delivering a high standard, animating my desk models in stop motion and filming myself drawing one of the reward tiers.
Now it’s crunch time, sending press out and crossing everything that it’s seen by enough of the right people – most traffic to a crowdfunding campaign comes from off site so as with everything else promotional, it’s down to the creators to drive traffic.
To see what we’ve put out there, visit Tales in Somber Tones at http://kck.st/2keCliz
If anyone is considering running their own campaign, feel free to post any questions you might have here.
