The Kickstarter Handbook Part 3

"Engaging the backers is a big thing. We spent a lot of time with that," says campaign member Brandon Walley. "We framed it to them that they're co-owners of the RoboCop statue, making constant updates and keeping them happy. They're part of this, they're along for this journey. Someone in Sweden who's willing to donate $100 doesn't really care about the RoboCop statue in Detroit-but it's the idea that he was part of something really cool and different, and he got this cool RoboCop Detroit T-shirt, and we were constantly sending updates. We have a really active Facebook page, and backers are on there. From what I see from unsuccessful Kickstarters, that's usually one of the indicators. If people approach it like, Oh, I'm an artist and help me do this, it's not gonna be as successful as: Come on this journey with me."

Besides being active with updates, you'll want to be online responding to comments people post on your project page on the very day they come in. And you should update your FAQ liberally whenever you feel there are unanswered questions about your project or its aims.

"You get this extraordinary instant feedback from people during a campaign," says filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein. He had been using the canned trailer for his planned doc.u.mentary The American Revolution as his Kickstarter video, but midway through the campaign he had received enough advice that his team decided to recut the trailer for Kickstarter, making it clearer what the film was about.

Grinding through a campaign Speaking with someone who is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign can be a little like talking to a crazy person. They often are frazzled, distracted, overwhelmed. "It's a little bit scary," Pete Taylor said two days after the launch of his SAVORx campaign. He had raised only $175, barely more than 1 percent of his goal. "Say if I get one hundred bucks a day now, I'll make it-no, I won't," he said, correcting himself. "Hold on, I gotta do the math. Like I say, I haven't slept. I cannot express how nerve-wracking-I think I'm gonna have a heart attack. I just spent two months of my life perfecting this pitch, for my dream. I think we're gonna hit it, though. I really think that."

Challenges may arise completely out of the blue during a campaign. The Detroit RoboCop statute project in March 2011 ended up encountering unantic.i.p.ated resistance in the real-life, offline world. The city of Detroit had mixed feelings about the project. Detroit Mayor Dave Bing (yes, the former NBA basketball player) publicly said that a statue of RoboCop was not on his agenda. Residents of some communities were put off by the idea of honoring a robotic law-enforcement-machine.

"We were going to community meetings where people were standing up in outrage, yelling and screaming at us: You can't put this in our neighborhood," says Brandon Walley, one of the partners behind the RoboCop statue campaign. "Some people felt insulted. I heard a lot of crazy things-that it was an oppressive image. It's not the right representation. To me, that wasn't a really thought-out stance. But we would listen to them and explain what our motives were."

Zach Crain of the Freaker team says that their 60-day campaign experienced "a nice little start, and then there was a big, really slow period. I think we had only, like, $13,000 [of a $48,500 goal] with two weeks left to go, so the pressure was on! Everybody was getting a little nervous. But it pushed us to keep pushing it. We kept doing videos in the slower time, to keep providing for the people who had already donated or were coming on. I was always really confident that it was going to work out. Definitely just keep moving, keep going forward."

THE MEDIA CAN PLAY a gigantic role in a Kickstarter campaign. It's really an X factor and often, to uncork another cliche, a game-changer. One minute you're struggling to get even your dear friends to pay attention to your campaign. The next moment a blogger proclaims that your project is groovier than Greg Brady, and you're getting thousands of people from all over the world taking a look, maybe hundreds of pledges, maybe tens of thousands of dollars. It can happen fast, and it can s...o...b..ll when still more blogs, always hungry for news and links, pick up an original post about your campaign and reblog it, pa.s.sing the buzz along to an even wider audience.

"We sent a note to the Pen Addict blog. Then we sent an e-mail to the blog Swissmiss. It just exploded after that," says Taylor Levy, who, with partner Chei-Wei w.a.n.g, raised $281,989 in August 2011 for Pen Type-A, a stylish pen holder. "The spike from Swissmiss was like 600 people a day for two days."

The press played a big role for Scott Thrift and his elegant one-year clock, The Present. "It got press pretty quickly, because it's such a strange idea, and fun to talk about, and fun to think about the season and time," he says. "There was a Fast Company article that was pretty elaborate. They had written a couple of other articles about us, and I had built a relationship with them. The Fast Company story came out the day after we launched. That hit, then the next day Creativity magazine. It's been in a lot of publications all over the world since then."

The media attention you'll get during a Kickstarter campaign is unpredictable. What will excite any given member of the media is impossible to know in advance. This chapter relates the experiences of many Kickstarter campaigners, offers advice from bloggers who have covered Kickstarter campaigns, and includes lots of other tips and tools to take some of the guesswork out of the wondrous world of media relations.

Plan for the future Despite the difficulty in predicting how (or if) the media will respond to your Kickstarter effort, you ought to have in place a media plan before launching your campaign. Compiling a list of media outlets and bloggers that you'll reach out to is a solid start. You'll want to begin a.s.sembling this contact list before your launch so that, when your campaign does go live, you can send immediate alerts to targeted media, announcing your arrival while the news is still fresh. No news outlet likes to be late to a story, and they like it even better when they can be the first to tell readers that something truly awesome is about to break. Kickstarter's all-or-nothing deadline system provides a built-in story of struggle that you can relate to the media, too, and the approach of your deadline toward the final days of a campaign can be another moment of media interest, a selling point for your story.

"In a month you're able to generate a large amount of PR heat," says filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein, who raised $114,419 for The American Revolution, his doc.u.mentary about a pioneering Boston rock-radio station whose frequency was 104 on the FM dial. "Suddenly, if you call the newspaper and say, We're trying to raise $104,000, it becomes a news story."

Though no one has measured it scientifically, media coverage of individual Kickstarter campaigns likely tends to follow the same U-shaped pattern as for pledges: peaking at the start and the finish, with a lull in the middle. (See the graph on this page.) Of course, we all have our own media networks these days, right? You'll need to reach out to contacts through social networks, and today there are more tools than ever for doing so. The goal isn't to repeatedly badger your close friends but to use the resources available to reach a broader audience. "It's all been through social networking for us. Facebook and Twitter," said Abbey Londer, creator of the RIOT comedy festival, during her January 2012 campaign. "We have a list of blogs that we haven't even tapped yet. Laughspin [a big comedy website] wrote us up on day one or day two. The video did go a little bit viral-Megan Mullally [a comedian in the Kickstarter video], her fan site posted it, and I think that brought in a lot of attention. All the comedians have been tweeting about it, which has been awesome."

Social media and traditional media can work in concert for you. A writer may notice a Facebook post about your project and write a story; the story then becomes a link that you can post on social networks. They call it a news cycle for a reason!

"I had lined up a couple things beforehand to announce the project launch," says Joshua Harker, whose Crania Anatomica Filigre campaign in October 2011 became Kickstarter's most-funded sculpture project (it raised $77,271). "I sent out a newsletter and the obligatory Twitter and Facebook stuff. Social networking was huge. I've got a fairly large following on Facebook and extensive contacts through LinkedIn that I tried to mine. I posted multiple times per day and submitted to blogs endlessly throughout the campaign. No spam, though. The vendors I used for my rewards got in on it and posted about the project and did inclusions in their newsletters as well. The project went viral about the third day and just went silly-time from there. There were articles, interviews, blogs, and repost after repost across the Internet. Success in anything, I suppose, is a perfect storm of chemistry, hard work, and timing. I tried diligently to do all I could to get myself centered in front of the train coming down the rail. After that, you just need the resources to help jump aboard-and not get run down!"

Leverage social media and other online tools Here's a rundown of the major Web-based avenues to get your message out.

Build a website: Though your Kickstarter project page is central headquarters for your campaign, creating a separate website for your art/project/venture can add a lot of legitimacy to your effort. There are different approaches. Most artists, designers, writers, and entrepreneurs have already established websites, and at minimum you'll want to update your existing website to let people know about the fund-raising campaign. Kickstarter provides a useful tool: code that allows you to embed your Kickstarter widget (that little onscreen baseball card summarizing the project) and your project's video onto any website or blog. On every project page under the video there's an Embed b.u.t.ton. Click that b.u.t.ton to get the HTML code and then paste the widget or video onto a website or blog.

You might also set up a separate website just for your Kickstarter project. Comedy-festival organizer Abbey Londer has her own site for her comedy-booking business, but she established riotla.com for her effort to create the RIOT comedy festival. While she was raising funds on Kickstarter, she set up that URL to redirect to her Kickstarter page. After she met her goal, she turned off the redirect and began building content on the riotla.com site, adding video from the campaign and links to media coverage of her Kickstarter project. Eventually, riotla.com evolved into a resource for scheduling and other information about the fall 2012 festival.

Musician Allison Weiss used a bit of both approaches. She kept her own website but set up the address alisonw.com/donate to redirect to Kickstarter-it would automatically send visitors to her first, and, later, her second Kickstarter campaign.

Facebook: Facebook posts can highlight your latest Kickstarter updates and link to the media coverage your campaign has received. Just as with websites, it may make sense for you to establish a separate Facebook presence for your Kickstarter project. You'll certainly maintain your own personal Facebook page as a way to keep your friends posted on your Kickstarter campaign's progress (and you'll do plenty of that), but the people from around the country and the world who may want to receive Facebook updates about your project are a different set of people. It's a good idea to give these helpful strangers a way to "like" your Kickstarter project without forcing them to see photos of your nieces.

Facebook is more than just your own wall. If you have a food-related Kickstarter project, find foodie pages on Facebook and post to those walls to reach existing ma.s.ses of potential backers who have congregated around their special interest. You'd be surprised how many results come up with a Google search for, say, "Facebook foodie pages." Some celebrities, local radio and TV stations, newspapers, subject-matter experts, a.s.sociations, and clubs and special-interest groups allow anyone to post on their Facebook walls. Think about your audience and find out where they find out about stuff they think is cool.

Another possible way to use Facebook's reach is via ads, those little sponsored links that show up along the right-hand column of the screen. Yes, anyone can buy those. Maybe you just ignore them. But they are well-targeted, and apparently they do get clicked on. "They're relatively cheap to do," says Josh Hartung, a partner in the successful Kickstarter campaign for Loomi paper lamp kits. "We spent about $200 or $300 on those and got some click-throughs."

Twitter: Just as with Facebook, and for the same reason, you may want to set up a separate Twitter feed for your Kickstarter project. Followers who like your project may not much care that you spilled coffee on yourself in a taxi, so keep your personal Twitter feed separate. As with Facebook, people who connect with you via Twitter stay connected beyond the duration of your campaign, so they can be informed of future projects. One tool that's useful for publicizing a Kickstarter campaign via Twitter is the shortened URL made available for every project. It works like bit.ly and tinyurl but begins with http://kck.st. You can find the short URL for your (or any) Kickstarter campaign in small type underneath the project's video.

YouTube: If you're making more than one or two videos for your campaign, building a YouTube channel for your project can be a great idea. It's free. YouTube is part of the Google empire, so it requires you to set up a new Google user account, and that will give you a new Gmail address connected with your Kickstarter campaign, which isn't a bad thing to have (even though most of your messaging with Kickstarter backers will go through Kickstarter's own messaging system).

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a network for people, not projects, so you won't be setting up a separate account for your Kickstarter campaign on this site. But your personal LinkedIn feed can be a way to let your professional connections know about your Kickstarter campaign, including links to media coverage you receive.

Reaching friends of friends Keep in mind that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, photo-sharing sites, and other social media aren't just about reaching that first level of your friends and connections. If you're working it hard, you're also asking those people to repost, retweet, and pa.s.s along your Kickstarter campaign information to their own networks of connections, thereby multiplying your reach exponentially. If you're asking your friends to pa.s.s along news of your campaign by reposting and retweeting your Kickstarter news, it's also a way to remind them about the campaign without explicitly asking them for money. The partners behind the March 2012 Kickstarter campaign for The HuMn Wallet, a minimalistic wallet that blocks radio-frequency identification signals, inst.i.tuted a formal referral system to promote pa.s.s-alongs: "If you can help us spread the word and are able to pull in 2 people to back our project (at any level) we will give you a free aluminum HuMn Wallet in your choice of color (including strap color)," they promised. "To get credited for the referral, the backers you referred will need to mention you by name in the *Comments' tab."

Working with the media Though contacting people in your own social networks is essential, few things kick-start a Kickstarter campaign more reliably than a positive mention in a popular blog or prominent news outlet. Many people who undertake Kickstarter campaigns have experience working with the media. Many work in the media. For others, "media relations" is an all-new experience and can be daunting. How does some random person go about getting mentioned in a blog? How do you get in touch with the local newspaper or with TV news people? How does it all work?

Of course, there's a whole industry devoted to getting good media coverage: the public-relations business. Some ambitious Kickstarter creators have gone so far as to hire PR agencies to help them get press for their campaigns, though that's not always a great idea. First of all, it can cost big bucks (it's better to have a PR-savvy friend help as a contribution to the project). Having an agency out there pushing your project can also run a little counter to Kickstarter's I-did-this-myself ethic. "I've heard some blowback about people hiring professional PR firms for their Kickstarters," says Matt Haughey, an Internet entrepreneur who has backed many Kickstarter projects. It may be hard to present yourself to the press as a struggling artist or underdog if you have a publicist.

Besides, you can do it yourself. To help you, we've interviewed several Kickstarter creators who talk about their strategies and experiences getting press. We've also talked to other people who spread the buzz: a professional publicist and some bloggers who cover Kickstarter campaigns. What turns them on? How should (and shouldn't) you approach them? Here's what to think about.

What's your story?

The media is in the business of telling stories, whether those stories are news items, upbeat features about compelling individuals, investigative pieces, or fun roundups of the latest gizmos. Nathaniel Hansen, a filmmaker, is in the business of telling stories, so he knows what he's talking about. After being involved in more than a dozen Kickstarter projects that together raised close to $350,000, he blogged some advice about how best to approach the media. He suggests that, before launching a Kickstarter campaign, you should consider crafting a story "treatment" that explains your saga and why it is a compelling tale, the way writers do for movies or novels. The story of your project becomes a useful narrative not just for getting media attention but for attracting backers as well.

"Feature film treatments that get shopped around might be sixty pages long," Hansen wrote. "Does your pitch need to be this complex? That depends on your personality and what you're trying to accomplish."

Realistically, sixty pages is probably overkill to explain the rationale behind a Kickstarter project. But Hansen is right in saying that you need to explain yourself: why should people care about what you're doing? Just the fact that your campaign exists isn't a story. The mere fact that you are using Kickstarter may have been novel and newsworthy to a journalist in 2010 or even in 2011, but "Area Man Uses Kickstarter" is not the stop-the-presses story it used to be. We've already done a Kickstarter story, a reporter will likely reply. What's new about yours? What's compelling?

Are you a struggling artist who was living on the streets and now is in the process of raising thousands of dollars? Are you honoring a cherished or forgotten local inst.i.tution with your effort to create a film or book (or statue) about it? Everyone has stories. Figure out yours.

Who are your people?

After tapping your friends and family, and then your online friends and followers, you will need to reach out to the communities of shared interest that are likely to support your project. Some of these communities you may already be part of; others you will need to find. Aurora Guerrero is a filmmaker who used Kickstarter to raise money to finish making Mosquita y Mari, a quiet dramatic feature film about two Latina girls who have a romantic relationship. She reached out to the LGBT community and its media outlets. She reached out to Latino cultural organizations and their websites and newsletters. She reached out to the independent filmmaker community. All of these groups pitched in as she neared her fund-raising goal.

Identify your media Once you have a good idea of who your audience is, the task is to get news about your campaign into the media outlets that your audience consumes for information. Are you making a folk-music alb.u.m on which every song is an ode to bacon? Find the blogs, websites, and Facebook pages for bacon lovers and folk music. A doc.u.mentary film about a boxer from inner-city Baltimore? Check into indie film sites, boxing sites, Baltimore news outlets. There's plenty of media to choose from: TV stations, radio stations, daily newspapers, weekly alternative papers, blogs affiliated with print magazines, blogs created by pa.s.sionate individuals.

"A big part was to identify our market," says Josh Hartung about the Loomi paper-lamp-kit campaign. "We did the standard in terms of publicity, which is to cold e-mail a whole bunch of blogs. We sent out a lot of cold e-mails and at first got a lot of nothing back. We started out with the design market, but we found that wasn't super effective for us to target. We kept trying to get around the idea that people who are into design don't necessarily want to build their own lamps. We kept trying to hide it-it's really easy to build! What we discovered is that crafty people and DIY-design people were really into the idea that you build it. They think it's really cool. Once we identified that those are the people who wanted the product-which was something the Kickstarter campaign really helped us do-then we were able to target blogs in the crafts s.p.a.ce, which were a much better fit. We were on Futuregirl and a few other blogs. A blog called Colossal [thisiscolossal.com] was huge for us, generating maybe $5,000 in funding."

Wes Garrett of the Park City, Utah, design firm Swarm, which ran two Kickstarter campaigns to fund the Nectar and Elixir bicycle accessories, says, "We had a long list of bicycle blogs that took us a long time to develop. We did a lot of posting to people's Facebook pages and walls. Any time we would get something posted on somebody's website or blog, we would then submit that to the curated news sites. The break was the blog Boing Boing. They did a post about us [on April 8, on a project that ended April 16], and on that day our traffic more than doubled. Once we got on Boing Boing it just went viral; tons of people posted it. I think we were on ten different blogs and Web pages a day. We were in the Wall Street Journal. It's kind of funny. We didn't know who the contact within Boing Boing was, and we sent a bunch of e-mails, repeated e-mails, over and over. There was at least one gentleman who had an affinity for the product. I think we got lucky that way."

At the risk of becoming out-of-date as the years go by-but with the reward of being helpful right away-a list of some of the online media outlets that have been friendly to Kickstarter projects, circa 2012, appears on pages 132a33. It's easy to update this list for yourself. Click over to these sites and search for "Kickstarter." See if they're still covering Kickstarter projects, how recently, and which writers' bylines are on the reports (those are the writers you may want to contact).

Also, look at recent Kickstarter projects that seem similar to yours and see where they are getting media coverage. If they're not listing their coverage prominently (they ought to be), you can Google their names. For example, type "Kickstarter Elevation Dock" or "Kickstarter Pebble" into Google, and you'll get links to dozens of websites and blogs that covered those wildly successful gadgets. Make sure to note whether a publication is covering the product (as in, "here's something really cool that readers might desire") or the business story (as in, "another Kickstarter campaign breaks a record"). In the latter case, they may not be interested in your campaign unless it brings some new wrinkle to the crowdfunding phenomenon.

Keep in mind that these sites may have other outlets for letting people know about your project, aside from their editorial coverage. Many sell small ads that could be appropriate for a Kickstarter campaign. They may also have discussion forums, where you can try to get people excited about your project by posting information and a link. In addition, some of these publications may hold events that you might attend or partic.i.p.ate in. For example, if the timing is right and you're trying to get funding for a cool tabletop game, maybe you can share your idea with an audience of hardcore gamers at the annual Board Game Geek Con. You get the idea.

Kickstarter-Friendly Online Media Ars Technica (technology, video games) Autoblog (automotive) Bicycling (bicycling) BoardGameGeek (games) Board Game Info (games) Boing Boing (tech, pop culture, odd news) Business Insider (tech business, gear) Colossal (art and design) Comics Alliance (comics) Complex (gear, games, pop culture) Designboom (design) Design Sponge (design) The Dice Tower (board games) Engadget (gadgets) Escapist (games) Fast Company/FastCoDesign (business ideas, design, gadgets) Film Courage (indie film) Film Independent (indie film) Film Threat (films; has also begun selling $50 "crowdfunding cla.s.sifieds" ads) Filmmaker (films; curates a Kickstarter page) Flavorwire (music, film, culture) Futuregirl (crafts, DIY apparel) GearHungry ("stuff you'll want") GeekDad (parenting) Geekosystem (all things geeky) GigaOM (tech/business) Gizmodo (gadgets) Gothamist (New York happenings; there's also Chicagoist, SFist, LAist, Austinist) Inc.com (small-business stories, ideas) Indiewire (indie film) Inhabitant (eco-friendly design) io9 (science/sci-fi) Jalopnik (automotive) Joystiq (video games) Kill Screen (video games; promotes a "Kickstarter of the Day") Kotaku (video games) Laughing Squid (trends, gadgets, odd news) Laughspin (comedy) Lifehacker (gadgets, design, housewares) MAKE (DIY projects) Mashable (gadgets, tech business) Mediabistro/Galleycat (publishing projects) Neatorama (neat stuff) Nerdist (comedy, pop culture) PaidContent (publishing, media) Paste (music) Pitchfork (music; curates a Kickstarter page) PSFK (design, fashion) Purple p.a.w.n (tabletop games) SlashGear (gadgets, tech) Swissmiss (cool designs and ideas) TechCrunch (tech gear/business) The Cla.s.sical (sports) The Verge (tech gear/business) Twitch Film (indie movies) Uncrate ("the digital magazine for guys who love stuff") Wired/GadgetLab (new concepts, design, gadgets) Can publicity stunts help?

The answer is yes, but not always. A grizzled newspaper journalist or hip website editor may see through an obvious gimmick that isn't focused on the quality of your product or project. On the other hand, a local TV station looking for timely, offbeat, visual stories may embrace a zany, attention-begging component of your Kickstarter campaign, and that could be its way of explaining the Kickstarter phenomenon to its viewers.

For example, a January 2012 report on the KLXY-4 TV news in Spokane, Washington, opened like this: Anchorwoman: "A Spokane man is offering to place a permanent advertis.e.m.e.nt on his body for just $5,000."

Anchorman: "Yeah, listen to this. Pete Taylor is the owner of SAVORx, that sells whole spices. He says he's tried every venue to jumpstart his company but he's been unsuccessful. Taylor says he'll get a person or a company's name tattooed on his back . . ."

Pete Taylor, a chef in Spokane, had cooked up a c.o.c.kamamie stunt to bring attention to SAVORx, his Kickstarter project to deliver fresh spices and spicy recipes to backers. For a $5,000 pledge, he offered to tattoo any person's or business's name on his body. (He put the same offer on eBay.) He didn't get the pledge-but he got the publicity.

"Unless you know someone in the media, it is hard to find someone do a story on your Kickstarter project," he says. "So I added a couple elements to my campaign that would hopefully stick out like a sore thumb. The *Ghost Pepper' [another stunt in which he had a video shot of him eating a painfully hot pepper] and my *human billboard' got me in the local newspapers four or five times, on the local news, and on a few blogs. It was a ton of investigating, cold calls, cold e-mails, follow-ups. But we did get attention. It was worth it, too. I had so many people get in touch with me from it. One guy called the restaurant I work at as a chef, asking for *Pete the spice guy.' He wanted to send me a check for a hundred bucks and wanted me to keep it no matter if my Kickstarter succeeded or failed. He sent the check that week. So the moral is: add an extra element to your project so the media might pick it up."

Public events work, too It may be easy to overlook one obvious idea. Even though your Kickstarter campaign is online, you can still create a fund-raising event that happens in real life, a.s.sembling actual human beings in a real place. You know, like a party. Many successful Kickstarter project creators have staged fund-raising events during their campaigns. You need a local const.i.tuency who will attend, and you don't want to add too much cost to the project, but it can work.

There are two approaches to running a Kickstarter fund-raising event. Either offer the event as a reward, meaning that everyone who pledges a certain amount receives a ticket to attend. Or organize a free event where the plan is to excite attendees about your project and get them to pledge afterward (or during). For Jekyll and Hyde: The Music Video, the music group Theoretics set up a free party in Seattle. The band played all night and hung out with attendees; they also, conveniently, had a computer opened to their Kickstarter donation page. For a Kickstarter doc.u.mentary film project called A Sustainable Reality: Redefining Roots, creators required a $20 fee to attend a party in Chicago that featured many performers.

Some people who are moved to give you financial support at a fund-raiser may want to hand over the money directly rather than pledge via Kickstarter. That's perfectly legal (it's not like side deals between eBay buyers and sellers, which are prohibited). This offline interaction avoids the fees subtracted by Kickstarter and Amazon, but it won't count toward your Kickstarter goal. To support his SAVORx food project, Pete Taylor boosted both his Kickstarter pledges and his outside donations by holding an event called Spiceology 101 at a wine-tasting room in Spokane, near the end of his campaign. "I put a reward on Kickstarter: pledge $15 and receive a ticket. We sold about thirty-five tickets," he says. "At the event, I think five or six people wrote me a check for $100 because they liked what I was doing."

And don't forget that you can become involved in events that someone else is throwing: block parties, beer fests, conventions of enthusiasts, Occupy rallies. Target the most appropriate ones-those whose attendees will most likely relate to or be interested in your project. Then contact the organizers and see how best to partner for mutual success-they may appreciate the buzz your partic.i.p.ation will bring, and you will benefit from reaching their built-in audience.

The chosen ones: Is there a way to be featured by Kickstarter?

Being featured by Kickstarter's own gatekeepers-as a "Staff Pick" or "Project of the Day" -can be a huge boon to a campaign. Then again, it may not make one iota of a difference.

"I think we got funded about two-thirds of the way through, mostly because Kickstarter featured us on their main page," says Josh Hartung, cocreator of the Loomi lamp-kit project. "Once that hit, it was like a fire hose. For the last third of the project, we were making approximately $2,500 a day."

By contrast, Abbey Londer, whose campaign raised money to start the RIOT comedy festival in Los Angeles, says that being featured as Kickstarter Project of the Day created "hardly any b.u.mp" in her fund-raising. Why? She figures that her project had so much purely local appeal, that having the world know about it might not have been a big deal.

Either way, there's no point in worrying about a factor you can't control. There's really nothing you can do to get Kickstarter's staff to choose to highlight your campaign, short of having a cool, popular, and successful project that's worthy of attention and already bringing in pledges. Even then, you need to get lucky.

What Do Bloggers Look for When Covering Kickstarter Projects?

Tina Roth Eisenberg, Swiss-miss.com New Yorkabased designer Tina Roth Eisenberg started the Swissmiss blog (swiss-miss.com) in 2005 as a way to save visual ideas from around the Web. "I wanted to sort of archive my findings in a visual way, because I couldn't find stuff in my bookmarks folder," she says. "It started as a personal visual archive, and it has grown into something ma.s.sive that I could have never imagined." The site now has about 900,000 unique visitors a month. Eisenberg frequently highlights Kickstarter projects that intrigue her, often simply posting their video with a little comment. Campaigns such as Pen Type-A and Freaker blew up after a nod from Swissmiss. Here are a few words from Tina about her approach to featuring Kickstarter projects on Swissmiss.

What catches your attention in a Kickstarter campaign?

Eisenberg: Well, there's an art to making a good Kickstarter video. The first few seconds are crucial for me to stay and watch it or not. There are definitely people who have it down. Sometimes I see an idea that's good, but the execution of the video is horrendous. But really it comes down to a gut reaction: Is the idea strong? Is the intention of the people good? Sometimes I get a sense when makers are really pa.s.sionate. Then I get really carried away in my enthusiasm for the campaign.

Do you do a "Kickstarter of the week" or regular feature like that?

Eisenberg: No. It has to do with me browsing the Kickstarter site or getting pitched via e-mail.

You browse a lot?

Eisenberg: Our running joke, here in the coworking s.p.a.ce I started, is that going on the Kickstarter site for me is way more dangerous than walking into Soho. Most of us are not really interested in acquiring more stuff-we're interested in ideas and makers. So I'm much more p.r.o.ne to leave way too much money on Kickstarter, backing way too many projects. It's been around thirty. Then I get my credit card statement at the end of the month! Walking into a mall I wouldn't care so much about shopping. I just want to support good ideas.

You must get a lot of people approaching you about featuring the Kickstarter campaigns . . .

Eisenberg: At this point the rate of Kickstarter projects I'm getting pitched by e-mail has gone up to between five and ten a day. Even as someone who helps promote them, I'm starting to get tired of being pitched. And I'm a big fan of the site. Usually when people who have Kickstarters e-mail me, it has this other layer of personal note. It says, Here's why I really, really care for this to succeed, and can you help me? If I sense the enthusiasm, the pa.s.sionate spark for what they're doing, then I'm also more intrigued to look at it.

Are you cognizant of the impact Swissmiss has on some Kickstarter campaigns?

Eisenberg: Having the ma.s.sive readership I have now, which is so mind-boggling, I feel I need to put it to good use and help people who are starting out. When you have readers like I do, it's amazing what kind of impact you can have on someone's life. I have posted a lot of other things-not just Kickstarter-people who have an idea for a product, maybe they start making a product selling on Etsy, and I pick it up, and I get an e-mail a day later, like, Oh my G.o.d, I was sold out in an hour; now I'm considering making this my full-time career. To be honest, I kind of get a high on all that. And it's a little scary.

The Tech Perspective Seattle-based writer Devin Coldewey has been a contributor to TechCrunch since 2007 and been featured by one blog as a "geek we love." He has written about multiple Kickstarter projects.

How do you find out about the Kickstarter stuff you write about?

Coldewey: It's kind of a mix. We tend to scroll through the newest Kickstarter entries. We get pitched sometimes, into our e-mail inbox. We have a "tip line." Sometimes stuff is directed just to me, if it's something I've covered. I think I've written up a few camera accessories on Kickstarter, so those kinds of things. Sometimes we know of the people involved, heard of them before, and they're like, Hey, I'm about to launch a Kickstarter campaign!

Sometimes you hear about stuff after it's already starting to blow up, and the story is more that it has momentum, rather than the story being, here's this thing, let's give it some momentum. But we're always sc.r.a.ping the Web for interesting stuff, on Kickstarter and other sites. There isn't a dedicated story-finder on the staff for these bubble-up stories. We look around and are aware of what's interesting to our readers, what will bring traffic, of course, what's a good or bad Kickstarter.

What is a good or bad Kickstarter-from the perspective of a tech blog?

Coldewey: Well, another iPad case? Not so much. But something that's really interesting is worth posting, no matter what. Just being on Kickstarter isn't enough. It used to be, Ooh, so you're trying that whole Kickstarter thing? Nowadays if you're an entrepreneur, if you've got an idea, it's almost weird if you're not considering putting it on Kickstarter. There are plenty of things that you'll see and think, wow, that is a really great idea. A lot of things like gadgets or software that has a sort of niche audience, you can see why they're not being manufactured en ma.s.se, but there is a global audience. If someone's trying to offer it and they've got a good design, a good team, a good pedigree, that's a good example of what Kickstarter is for.

Is there a good way for someone to pitch a Kickstarter campaign to you?

Coldewey: It depends a lot on the quality of the product. The best way to pitch it is to make it seem most like a Kickstarter project.

In what way?

Coldewey: Not just, we're using Kickstarter, but, this is a project that's suitable for Kickstarter. Where it's like, we've got a cool idea and we want to make it, but we have no ability to make it, and all it takes is $20,000. That's the purpose of Kickstarter. If you can't convince me that Kickstarter is the right way to connect with people for your product, then it seems wrong. If you're trying to make a hundred hand-quilted iPad cases or whatever, why don't you put it on Etsy and make them on demand? There's a marketplace for doing that.

And Now a Word from a Professional Publicist Jennifer Sherlock, founder and president of Jenna Communications, a public relations and media training firm in Philadelphia, has spread the news for start-up companies, planned and publicized events, and trained clients in the use of social media. She also worked as a full-time on-camera TV news reporter for seven years. She shared her advice about getting publicity for individual projects.

If I'm just a guy with a Kickstarter project and I don't know anybody in the media, where do I start?

Sherlock: Look at press-release templates and create a release. You need to explain the project and make it newsworthy. You may not have access to reporters by personal acquaintance, but you can easily use Google to find them. You can Google five TV stations in each market and hit the relevant newspapers. [Google can help with press-release templates, too: "Kickstarter press release" turns up quite a few examples.] E-mail the press release to them. Don't be afraid to be persistent. When you find the right reporter to write to, be personal. A reporter likes you to say, I watch you or I know someone who knows you. Don't be afraid. It's just like sales. Once you send the initial pitch or press release, don't be afraid to call.

So, if I know the person I'm trying to reach, should I e-mail, then call?

Sherlock: E-mail first nowadays. So they're familiar with the story. Then call.

How about a TV station? Do I just cold-call them?

Sherlock: For TV, I would recommend cold-calling the station first and asking for the news desk. The news desk is the hub for all incoming news. An a.s.signment editor can direct the caller to the right producer or reporter for the story. It's important that the caller targets the person who is most relevant to their story. A consumer reporter may be helpful if the person has a product and is trying to get publicity.

How are people using social media to get PR buzz?

Sherlock: Any time you get a press. .h.i.t, you should put it on your website, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. That gives credibility and is another opportunity to remind people that the campaign is going on. Even create a YouTube channel. Add videos there, and then post them on Facebook.

How important is it for someone to make their project into a story?

Sherlock: It's 100 percent the biggest thing to do. The best thing to do is to make it personal. I know just from being a TV reporter in my past, we always tell the story through the people. If they can personalize it, show a success story. If it's TV, you want to make the story visual-why is it a good TV story? If it's print, you can still paint the story visually to make it compelling. For example, I had a hypnosis center as a client. You know, it's hard-he does hypnotism! We had to think outside the box. Last year we contacted Fox TV and said, We can show how he helped someone with their golf swing. So we could take them to a golf course, they could see how he hypnotizes a client. They had something to show on camera.

"The best statistic-I hope you put this in 72-point type across two pages-is that once you pa.s.s 50 percent of your funding, at any point, you have a 95 percent chance of reaching your goal. There's a human psychology element where people go, yeah I'll kick in more, this guy's so close. Only a handful of projects have finished unsuccessfully having reached 85 percent or more of their funding. The people who are at like 60, 70 percent with a week to go, it's gonna be OK!"

-Matt Haughey YES, IT CAN LOOK BLEAK in the final days of a Kickstarter campaign if you haven't yet pa.s.sed your goal, if even spitting distance seems like many miles down the road. But if you've set a goal that's anywhere near realistic, you still have a shot. Here's the pep talk you need. You're not out of this thing, kid. Just a few more days of effort and you can achieve something incredible-everything you've been working for. Need more inspiration? Here are four real-life Kickstarter stories of incredible final-days comebacks. They'll surely provide motivation, and great ideas, for your final kick.

Frantic Finish #1 In early December 2010, filmmaker Lucas McNelly launched a 31-day Kickstarter campaign to raise $12,000, for a project called A Year Without Rent. His exact creative plans for the project were a little vague. The basic idea was that he was going to travel across the country for a year, working on diverse independent films, and he'd doc.u.ment his travels. Weeks went by after he launched, and it wasn't looking good. The response, pledge-wise, was close to crickets. He said in his appealing video that he was more interested in the crowd than the funding, but he was drawing neither. As the new year arrived and the deadline crept close enough for Lucas to feel its cold, clammy breath, he was still nowhere near his goal. He steeled himself for a final climb up a steep mountain. It took a Hail Mary post-Christmas miracle (and lots of eleventh-hour work) to pull off what may be the biggest late-inning rally in Kickstarter history.

How far away were you from your goal, how close to the deadline?

McNelly: We were 73 percent away with twenty-four hours to go. Which is a little nuts.

Some might see that as a good time to throw in the towel . . .

McNelly: Yeah. Well, I mean, sure. But you've already invested, like, two and a half months of your life in it, so why give up now? My family would call and say, What are you gonna do if it doesn't make it?I'm like, Can you maybe ask me this tomorrow? Can we put that conversation off for, like, a day, until we know for sure? I think the minute you say this probably isn't gonna happen is the minute it isn't gonna happen.

So what did happen? What did you do? What can people learn from your experience?

McNelly: Well, the biggest thing is, I screwed up and I ran the campaign over Christmas. I thought Christmas will knock out three or four days when nothing will happen. But it's really about two weeks. So that stunted the normal growth. The campaign ran through the second Friday after Christmas. I remember because, when I scheduled it, I said to myself: that will give everybody at least one paycheck after Christmas.