[onerng talk] We're off!

[Paul Campbell]

On Wed, 04 Feb 2015 23:22:48 ianG wrote:
> $48,551  !!! well done to Paul!
> 
> Paul, it would be really nice if you could share any good & bad 
> experiences with the kickstarter program.  I have a number of ideas, etc.

mostly so far they've been positive - we  don't actually have the money yet 
(the last person who's credit card initially bounced was resolved today - 
tomorrow's a bank holiday here so I expect to see something Monday or 
Tuesday).

I chose KS for a number of reasons:
- brand name, something people know and understand
- international, but with a NZ presence (means I can mitigate some currency 
risk)

Other open source projects have gone to places like Crowd Supply who have the 
advantage that once you've met your funding goal they send you the money so 
you can get started (I don't mind ploughing in some of my own money to do 
this), KS wait until you're done.

Good things:
- great web site, they talk you through stuff pretty well, I tweaked stuff for a 
couple of months before we started - you try all this out by starting to 
create a KS without going all the way
- they're well integrated into the real world, in NZ my existing trading 
company gives me instant identity - KS's web site interfaces to the NZ 
companies office web site to validate that I really exist and aren't just making 
myself up, they'll direct deposit the money into my bank account 
- they will have someone check my site before I go live to make sure I'm not 
being stupid
- I was able to add new rewards while we were running to meet people's 
requests (you can't take them away though)
- they let me create a product with different shipping costs for NZ customers 
and rest of world ones

Bad things:
- making a movie sucks, it's kind of mandatory
- spam - I wasn't expecting all the spam from people offering to promote my 
kickstarter (for a fee of course) .... and now the people who want to help me 
with fulfilment 
- I couldn't create a 'joint' kickstarter account that included Jim as a 
separate person
- they limit the number of hardware items you can offer in a single reward and 
limit customers to choosing just one reward (something I didn't really 
appreciate up front) I understand why - Crowd Supply don't have these same 
limits
- posting updates can be depressing (since it seems to result in some people 
changing their minds, you see things getting smaller rather than larger) - 
then again I don't really want unhappy customers
- I can't offer prices for rewards in multiple currencies - I'd have loved to 
have been able to offer nice round numbers of $US like I did for $NZ

I haven't worked with the back end stuff yet - pulling the orders into a spread 
sheet so I can start shipping is something I'll be doing next week

	Paul