He knew his campaign for Espresso Detective #3 needed to raise more money than he ever had before. With a goal of $10,000, Eric was ready to jump into the deep end of Facebook ads.
But he couldn’t help but wonder:
Would he be throwing his money away?
Eric initially planned to run a 15-day campaign in order to shorten the emotional rollercoaster the dreaded Kickstarter dead zone brings. In the end, he says he "chickened out" because with such a tall ask, he felt he needed more time to get the word out.
And in this case, "chickening out" was the right call.
“I’m so glad I did a 30-day campaign...
As the first wave of Covid forced entire countries into lockdown and social unrest roiled the world, he was getting ready to launch his latest Kickstarter campaign for his sci-fi series DIGITOPIA.
With the world falling apart around him, he couldn’t help but wonder:
Would anyone care?
Like most successful Kickstarter creators, Farhan had been putting in the work long before he launched his campaign. He took time to build up his email list, although he admits he found this difficult to balance with all of his other duties as an indie creator.
“This has been a really tough one for me to make progress on as I...
Her course on “How to Start a Comic” was ready to launch, but she didn’t have a lot of case studies to examine. There weren’t many other courses offered on Kickstarter, and those that did well already had a massive audience.
So Henrike took a leap of faith that all her hard work over the past few years would pay off…
And hit launch.
Before she decided to create her course on making comics, Henrike tried several different things: she created a webcomic, she wrote a blog from 2013 to 2017, and she tried to grow an audience using social media.
“I...
For Bitsy Tandem, the Kickstarter dead zone was “emotionally crushing.”
She found it hard to think about anything else, let alone keep up with any work. And as her campaign for Maiden in Disguise Manga #1 dragged on, she couldn’t help but think…
How would she ride it out to the end without going crazy?
Many creators know the pain of Kickstarter burnout: your campaign becomes all-consuming, and the feeling that you should be doing something to promote it at every possible moment overwhelms you. For Bitsy—like most creators—that promotion didn’t come easy.
“There was a lot of pressure to promote...
In the lead up to his Kickstarter, he couldn’t find a printer to take on his glow-in-the-dark comic, BREAK:RUN. Then he lost his day job amid the Covid Crisis. And once he hit launch…
It seemed like every possible distraction tried to derail him, including his mother breaking her ankle halfway through the campaign. (Maybe he shouldn’t have called his comic Break?)
Then his son developed health issues that needed immediate attention, and Nima knew that moving forward while staying positive was going to be a challenge.
Did he have it in him to see the campaign through to the end?
Despite all...
It was his first campaign, and he wanted to keep his costs down. Lucky for him, he was an artist as well as a writer, so he could mostly produce the book—and various rewards—by himself. But with the bulk of his mid to high level tiers built on original artwork, the campaign’s success depended on how people reacted to his art.
And if people didn’t like it?
He was going to have serious problems.
For Michael, it all started with a plan—a business plan.
“My goal here was to be able to kickstart not only this comic, but the second half of my career, one where I could do nothing but focus on my own...
They’d just hired a new art team to help relaunch their flagship series, THE LAST EMBER, and the costs were mounting. This time, the husband and wife publishing team would need to raise far more than they ever had before.
As they set out to hit their highest goal to date, they couldn’t help but wonder…
Would they make it?
Like many indie creators, Lisa and Brant took on far too many projects in their early days as publishers of Last Ember Press. And while they are still struggling with some of the choices they made when the company was young, one benefit is that it allowed them to grow their audience over...
He’d launched multiple campaigns on Kickstarter, slowly but surely growing his audience. Cross promotions with other creators helped him reach people who are already active on Kickstarter, and he was adept at scheduling podcasts to promote his projects.
But Shaun couldn’t shake the feeling that he could be reaching more people. He didn’t feel comfortable with Facebook ads just yet, so he knew he was going to have to try something different in order to expand his reach.
That’s when he decided to go live.
Shaun decided to test a “live launch” strategy as part of his Talos of...
He’d added an “I’ll Write Your Comic” tier to his Kickstarter, and it was immediately picked up by a stranger. Now Andrew was worried about where his words would end up, and what kind of market it might be pushed to. He hadn’t anticipated the stress the tier would cause—or how much a hotly-contested presidential election in the U.S. would suck the oxygen out of his campaign.
As his Kickstarter for DAMSEL FROM D.I.S.T.R.E.S.S. entered its final 48 hours, he wondered:
“Did I make a huge mistake?”
Despite his concerns, Andrew had set himself up to do well with his latest campaign. In the lead-up...
His campaign for ROBIN HOOD: The Legend of Sherwood had hit the dreaded “Dead Zone”, and now, not only was his project not seeing any new pledges, but backers were cancelling, sending his funding total backwards.
With his Facebook ads not doing much to bring in new backers, he had to wonder:
Would his campaign make it?
As with anything, the seeds for Jeff’s ultimate success were planted well before he hit launch. When it came time to prepare for his latest campaign, Jeff made an important decision:
“This project was not aimed exclusively at kids, like my first one, even though they share the same...