The only problem?
Unlike his other work, UNIKORN would be all-ages friendly. And the subject matter—unicorns and grief—was so far outside his usual genre, he had no idea if he could pull it off.
With a short time until launch, how on earth was he going to reach an all-new readership?
Don works in the film and TV industry, producing material aimed at a grown-up audience. His previous comics work has tapped that same vein. But something was nagging at him.
“I have two children, 10 and 8, that mean the world to me. They can’t really fully enjoy my other work because it’s made for adults,...
She’d filled out her spreadsheets, worked carefully to build her sales page for the "Leif & Thorn" Kickstarter, and come up with a guiding philosophy that would see her through all phases of the campaign.
Now she just had to execute.
Like many successful business owners, Erin knew that before she even made a sale, she needed a guiding principle—a philosophy she could always fall back on in the face of difficult decisions. So she settled on what would be her mantra throughout the Kickstarter:
Keep it Simple.
“The philosophy is, the more variables you introduce, the more opportunities you give yourself to screw up. Since this was my first time fulfilling a Kickstarter, it...
After two successful Kickstarter campaigns for his children’s horror comic, House of Fear, James felt the time was right to get his stories out to a wider audience. Before, he’d been too scared to pitch his work to a publisher. What if he wasn’t ready? What if they could tell he didn’t know what he was doing?
But now, armed with the confidence gained from crowdfunding success, James was ready.
It was time to submit.
James knew that he couldn’t just spray his pitch around to every publisher in the game. His experience with Kickstarter told him that having a specific, targeted plan was important to success.
“I made a list (a...
With two campaigns running at once, he felt pressure to make both succeed. But as a collaborator on one project and "just the writer" on the other, Travis wasn’t fully in charge of either.
How was he going to get through this month?
Both of Travis’ campaigns were a challenge—for very different reasons.
“One of those campaigns (DOG DAYS) was run by another publisher. It was challenging because I couldn’t build the campaign as I saw fit. I didn’t have complete control of how much we needed to raise. I didn’t know all the backend numbers, and I didn’t get a lot of pre-campaign planning in. I also...
Like many creators, he’d had an idea for a comic, which he successfully funded on Kickstarter. But by his own estimation, about 90% of his pledges came from friends and family.
For his next campaign, Andy swore he’d expand his fanbase and get that percentage down. There was only one problem.
He didn’t know where to start.
Andy decided he needed a support system, so he joined the ComixLaunch MasterMind, a group of creators who meet once a month to help each other grow their creative businesses.
“Being around like-minded creatives gave me a sense of reassurance. I’d picked people’s brains before and received loads of help, but this was a forum where everyone...
After years of Kickstarting his own series, Margo: Intergalactic Trash Collector, Jim was now faced with a different task entirely. His latest project, DarkARTS, was an oversized pin-up book featuring work by various artists. He knew he couldn’t rely on his established audience to come out and support it—and there was no guarantee the audience for a book like this even existed.
Before hitting launch, Jim wondered, “How the heck am I going to market this?”
The first challenge Jim faced was deciding on a Kickstarter category. It didn’t fit neatly into any of the available options, so he had to decide:
Would this be a “book”...
With only four days before the big Kickstarter launch for his webcomic, “Crescent City Monsters,” Newton was about to go under the knife for knee surgery.
He’d spent a year posting his comic online, working through the ComixLaunch Course, and meticulously planning his campaign.
But now, facing surgery and a painful recovery, he had to ask himself:
Should I postpone?
So: did Newton postpone his launch?
Before we answer that question, let’s talk about the well-crafted plan he was thinking of putting off.
Because Newton is a member of the ComixLaunch...
It was his first-ever Kickstarter campaign, and there were a lot of unknowns. But he’d methodically worked his way through the ComixLaunch Course and felt like he had a solid plan in place.
Now it was time to put it into action.
Rene knew that in crowdfunding, the crowd brings the funds, but YOU have to bring the crowd.
He had been following the YouTube channel of creator Jason Brubaker (reMIND, Sithrah), a Kickstarter veteran who recommends building an audience by posting your comic for free online. A quick check of the most funded comics Kickstarters of all time reveals that—yes, posting for free online helps.
...By Clay Adams
After his last Kickstarter failed to fund, Jerry knew he needed to expand his marketing efforts if he wanted his new campaign to succeed. So, heeding the old Henry Ford maxim that “Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping a clock to save time,” he decided to go all in on Facebook ads.
The only question was: “Would it work?”
Before he launched again, Jerry took a long, hard look at what went wrong last time.
“The biggest lesson I learned from my last failed campaign was that you can't launch with no audience. I thought that the same people that backed me in 2012 would come out to back me five years later. I...
It was the final week of his campaign for DIARY OF NIGHT, and the funding total sat at a seemingly insurmountable $2,000 shy of his goal. With the clock ticking, Will had a difficult choice to make: cancel the campaign and try again later, or double down on his efforts to secure a win at all costs.
Will dug deep and doubled-down.
Will had already tried—unsuccessfully—to fund DIARY OF NIGHT once, so the thought of cancelling didn’t appeal to him. But the task ahead seemed daunting.
“That last week was brutal. By this point, I was nearing exhaustion, and still had around $2,000 to go to meet the goal. I still had hope, though. I had a backer that I knew I could depend...