We are a Kickstarter success story. Not the biggest campaign or the most organized… but Kickstarter paid for our first production run and successfully got tents shipped to 38 countries around the world. We raised $98,452 which blew away our initial goal of $10,000. So yes, it was a success 😊
Our second campaign had even more traction. With our previous experience, we were able to iron out some of the kinks and set ourselves up for a bigger raise and a lot more visibility.
The money was great, but Kickstarter also gave us heaps of experience. So if you’re thinking about launching a product or idea on Kickstarter, here you can learn from my experience.
I’ll start with a quick aligator story:
A tycoon filled a pool with alligators and threw a party. As his guests crowded around the whirling pool he announced, “I will give anyone $1,000 if they swim across this pool.” There were no takers, so he raised the stakes. “Ok, $10,000!” This pool meant death, and no one was getting in. “Alright,” He said, “$100,000!”
They heard a splash. At the far end of the pool, a man was struggling across the water, swimming with everything he had. By some miracle, he reached the other side and pulled himself out, with a gator still latched onto his pant leg.
The tycoon was astonished. Impressed by this display of bravery he said, “Forget the $100,000, I will give you anything you want. Just name it!”
The swimmer replied, “Hey, I just want to know who pushed me in!”
My dad has been telling this story since the 1980s. I grew up on the alligator story and lived it with our Kickstarter campaign. Launching a company on Kickstarter is basically just asking people to push you into a pool of alligators… and you gotta swim!
Before launching, I had spent about a year and a half developing the Haven Tent. I had a prototype, a patent filed, and a factory on deck to start making tents. More on our product story here. With the product pieces in place, I went to work on the campaign.
One way we were able to end up with a profitable campaign was by running lean. I basically… did everything… I made our video, took the pictures, and made the (super junky) infographics for our story. It was a lot of time and effort. But on September 10th, 2019 when I pushed that launch button I didn’t have any marketing partners onboard to divide my profits.
Thank you to my wife (below), friends, and sisters for being my first product models!
I can break my campaign into 3 phases.
1) Organic
2) Affiliate
3) Marketing Partner
The Organic Phase:
To start my campaign… I went live on my personal Facebook. At this point, only my close friends and family had seen the Haven Tent, so it came as a big surprise to those who knew me on other professional or personal levels. “Hey guys, I made a hammock tent!”
My dad, the ultimate salesman, taught me to sell the sizzle not the steak. So in the video below I don't really go into the particulars of the product, but invite them to see it for themselves... where they can actually purchase!
The first two days of my campaign were actually the biggest… These sales were organic as my personal circle of influence learned about my campaign and started sharing the story. Other Kickstarter referrals started checking us out too, which is one of the beauties of the platform.
Before launching, I also developed a rapport with different Hammock-related Facebook groups. When our campaign went live I had a few target audiences that I could share the Haven Tent with. My posts were not spammy and I always had the moderator's endorsement before posting.
These efforts along with my own circle helped get the ball rolling. And we were able to collect our biggest days of funding right at the onset. In hindsight, I probably should have hired a graphic designer from Upwork to handle the infographics. 😂 They look so junky!
The Affiliate Phase:
On day one or two of my campaign, I introduced our project to the affiliates on Kickbooster. There are a few other programs that offer similar services, but Kickbooster was great. I offered an affiliate commission and Bloggers, YouTubers, and Instagram pages started promoting my project!
To this day (more than a year later) our Google search results are full of great posts and content. This is one of the reasons why we rank so well with terms like “lay flat hammock”. Thank you affiliates!
As we introduced affiliates to our campaign, our piece of each sale started to get diluted. Not in a big way, but it’s important to remember as sales and costs start to grow.
Around this time I learned about BiggerCake.com. Kickstarter’s back office does a decent job of tracking sales as they come in, but Bigger Cake displayed our day-over-day information in a way that made it much easier to see what was happening.
Looking at our campaign (below) and comparing it to other (same-industry) campaigns, I could see that ours was starting to lag… or not really growing in energy and momentum. This is where I brought on a marketing partner.
The Marketing Partner Phase:
I’ve always been amazed by how much money some Kickstarter campaigns are able to rake in. We’ve all seen campaigns backed by nearly unlimited ad spend that follow us around Facebook and whatever page we visit.
When I started my Kickstarter I had the goal of paying for my first production run. Simple. Anything beyond that would be gravy, giving us a bit of a cushion on our first few months after the campaign.
As I looked at marketing partners I started to see a potentially dangerous situation where I would sell a lot of tents... but not really make any money. Let me explain. Marketing partners are incentivized to generate sales, as they earn a percentage of the total raised by the campaign. They give access to their networks, which can be huge. But they also run ads with your money to help generate additional sales.
With an increase in ad-spend, you sell more but earn less on each sale. You have to break down each sale into parts. What’s going to the cost of production and shipping, Kickstarter fees, marketing partner commissions, and what is going to the ad budget that generated the sale.
There are other positive effects of working with a marketing partner, larger social media presence and a better crowdfunding story. But if ad spend gets out of hand, it is possible to lose money with each sale. That can and does happen. To make sure I never got upside down, I tracked daily ad spend compared to daily pledges received… always making sure I was profitable.
In the third phase of my campaign, I did bring on marketing partners. But it was after my organic sales had slowed down and I was able to exclude any sales that came through the Kickbooster affiliates. So their commission was more closely tied to their individual contribution. I didn't know anything about running Facebook ads so I did need help.
For the last two weeks of the campaign, I was given the opportunity to work with Jellop. The largest Kickstarter marketing partner in the world. At first, I was super excited that such a major partner was interested in working with Haven Tents… but then I ran the numbers.
They probably would have doubled my number of pledges, but in the end, I decided not to run my campaign through Jellop. With the additional commission and money spent on ads, my profit margin would be greatly reduced while my obligations to backers would skyrocket. It just wasn’t worth it. I was tempted… who doesn’t want a million-dollar campaign, but I am so happy I kept focus on our original goals.
Here are my profit margins from the various phases and marketing channels during my campaign. Keep in mind, we ended up having some production issues which made the whole process more expensive than we anticipated (and ultimately ate into these margins) The pandemic didn’t help either!
Organic Sales - 46% Profit
Kickbooster Sales - 31% Profit
Marketing Partner Sales - 26% Profit
Jellop Sales - 14-9% Profit (Depending on ad-spend)
With such a lean profit margin, we probably would have lost money on each Jellop sale after actual production costs. Ouch!
Kickstarter absolutely gave us more exposure and introduced us to some of our most loyal customers. I'll be forever grateful for the lessons learned and the people I've met along the way.
Let us know what your launching on Kickstarter. I'd love to see how we can support each-other. Just watch for the alligators 🐊
Derek Tillotson
Haven Tents Founder - Kickstarter Survivor
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