Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bleeding cool, Comics, entertainment

Here's Why Your Kickstarter Failed, Or At Least Why Ours Did

Published Sat, 23 Apr 2016 09:00:52 -0500

Edward Ellsworth writes,

Some people might argue that a failed Kickstarter is a sign that your idea just isn't good enough, and you should try something else. That may be true in some cases, but after obsessing over the Kickstarter platform for the past 6 months one thing I've learned is that there are many reasons a campaign can fail. Lack of talent or poor story concepts seem to be pretty far down on that list.

You might think I'm just saying that because I don't want to accept my own failure as a creator. You could be right, but here's why I think you're wrong: the overwhelming majority of feedback we've received about our comic, The Black Suit of Death, has been very positive.

After our last Kickstarter failed to reach its goal, Ben and I discussed our options. Neither of us was ready to just give up on this story or this character. So we looked at what went wrong, did a lot of research, and made a detailed plan for a 2nd attempt.

One of the first things on our agenda was to prove that we weren't the only ones who loved our concept. So we submitted Ides of March, our zero issue, to several comic book review sites. The reviews were positive, but more importantly, the reviewers seemed to "get" what we were trying to do, which to me is one of the best validations a writer could hope for.

So, if our idea didn't suck, why did our Kickstarter fail? There were a number of factors:

Not enough art

Ben and I are writers, not artists. We have to hire an artist to bring our script to life. We have very limited funds, so beyond a couple of concept drawings, we had nothing to showcase from issue #1. Kickstarting a comic based almost entirely on an idea is a tough sell. People want to see what the artwork is going to look like.

For our relaunch, Ben and I scraped together every spare penny we could find, and with a little help from a generous friend, we were able to get the first 3 pages penciled and inked by our amazing artist Dexter Wee, and colored by our also amazing colorist Bryan Magnaye.

Not a big enough fanbase

When we launched our previous Kickstarter we had around 100 "likes" on our Facebook page, and we didn't even have a Twitter account. When I look back, I'm actually impressed at the amount we were able to raise with such a small following.

For the past 6 months we've aggressively grown our social media presence. A few 5 dollar Facebook ads here and there, along with a lot of networking on Twitter has done wonders. We've increased our Facebook following over 500% and went from 0 to over 900 Twitter followers.

Not enough pre-promotion

One of the keys to a successful Kickstarter is early momentum. "Expert" opinions vary, but at least 15% funded the first day, and 30% within the first week seem to be good targets to show excitement about a campaign. Early momentum also gives you a better shot at being featured by Kickstarter, which is pretty much the Holy Grail of crowdfunding. Last time around, we talked up our campaign for a couple of weeks before launch, but with our small audience, that was not nearly enough.

Aside from 6 months of growing our audience, this time around we ran a Thunderclap campaign for roughly 30 days. This let us gather over 100 people who would post about our Kickstarter on launch day on their social media accounts.

I also spent the days leading up to the campaign live tweeting an imaginary expedition in the desert to find the Black Suit of Death.

On April 19th we re-launched the Kickstarter for our comic book Black Suit of Death #1. We reached 20% of our target in the first 24 hours, and soon after we became a "Project we Love", meaning we show up in the coveted New and Noteworthy section.

So, as they say in the memes, I guess you could say, things are getting pretty serious.

If you want to check out our Kickstarter, you can find it at http://fund.blacksuitofdeath.com

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