LAUNCH DAY! It’s all come down to this!
In my previous post, I’ve described how I’ve adopted the Agile development methodology to keep my focused and maintain my productivity as I churn through all the tasks needed to launch a successful Kickstarter campaign and start my publishing journey.
This Sprint finished right on my launch day and I can’t think of a better Agile release than a Kickstarter launch. With the game finished the last three weeks of this have been focused solely on marketing and finalizing the Kickstarter page for Quickdraw.
So before we get into the stories finished this Sprint, some good news…
Hopefully this gives me a little more credibility in your eyes as I share how I got here in these past few days.
- Prepping final manufacturing files: After some light revisions for clarity, and minor changes to match my manufacturer’s processes, the final files were ready to be sent to the manufacturer. This final review makes sure that if the campaign funds, we’ll be able to immediately start printing. The goal is the best customer experience with minimal time from campaign to receiving the game.
- Finalizing Authorized Representative: I got quotes from several and it looks like I’ll be going with EU Verify. Getting this decided was important for finalizing the files since there are labeling implications, as I covered in my EU regulations post.
Kickstarter page stories:
- Decide on final tier pricing: Pricing is an art and a science. People have written books on this topic so I’ll just cover what you need to be considering so you can go down the right rabbit holes. The price you set needs to balance your costs on the low end and the market expectation on the high end. Kickstarters can easily fail if a scalable cost is forgotten. A negative margin can and has sunk businesses. So when you’re tallying up your costs, don’t forget things like shipping, Kickstarter’s fees, the cost of packaging, etc. To figure out how high to set your price above your costs so that you have a comfortable margin start by finding games that are equivalent to yours It have been successful. You don’t have to stick to their price, but be aware what the market is used to so you can explain why you might be above or below market price. Since I have a small 18 card game, both sides of this calculation were relatively straightforward for me. I don’t have a ton of components and there’s not a huge range of acceptable prices.
- Final component decision: The two remaining decisions I had on components were if I wanted plastic/PVC cards and if I wanted rubber backing for the neoprene mat. I should have thought about the plastic cards sooner so I could have gotten a sample from the manufacturer. Luckily my manufacturer makes a game with plastic cards that’s in Barnes & Noble. This led to a late night Barnes & Noble scavenger hunt so I could have the cards in hand to make a decision. While durable, I didn’t like how thin and bendy the cards were. It no longer felt like a “card game”, it felt like cards in a board game. A weird distinction but that’s what I love about publishing. The overall look and feel of my game comes down to me so I think high quality black core cardstock fits my game and the experience I’m trying to foster better and plastic cards.
The rubber mat was a decision that came down more to cost. I’m not anticipating a bunch of people buying payments, therefore I can’t buy them at a large enough scale to get a big discount. I got a sample and the basic neoprene without the rubber mat is still very nice and doesn’t slide at all on a table. But I know rubber backing is a premium component that people appreciate. I thought it could be an option for a stretch goal. However, from my playmat manufacturer, the bulk order discount actually got less with rubber backing added. This means I would have to sell upwards of 1000 playmats to reach the cost per unit equivalent to selling 10 non-rubber backed playmats – making the stretch goal so high it’s not worth even including. - Submit “Projects We Love” form: Ever wonder how projects get on Kickstarter’s “Projects We Love” list? Well, there’s a form for that. I crafted thoughtful responses to the form questions and we’ll see what happens. From talking with other creators it seems almost random which projects do and don’t get chosen so I won’t take it hard either way.
Update: Kickstarter recommends reaching out 6 weeks pre-launch. - Update page to cover core game hook: One of my main revelations from 2 days of demoing at a convention and driving 5 hours listening to board game design and publishing podcasts was that my Kickstarter page wasn’t selling the reason people love Quickdraw. I was explaining the rules and the mechanics but not highlighting the central tension and why it makes the game so fun and unique. I spent a while working on a quick way to get this across which took some time and some new visuals but was definitely worth it.
- Finalize Kickstarter video: On my video in animations were solid, similar to my page the video was basically a light rules explanation. I ended up adding a brief intro to provide the hook before diving into the rules. Funny how much time it can take to write two sentences.
- Find answers to and write shipping section: After the price of the game the next question backers have is what is the cost of shipping? There are two ways to handle this 1) charge for everything up front when the backer makes their pledge or 2) charge for shipping later during the pledge manager. Some backers may be hesitant if shipping is added later since they want to know the total cost of the game. However, Kickstarter doesn’t have a way to calculate shipping costs at the time when the backer makes their pledge. This means if I want to collect shipping up front I have to build that into the pledge tier. I live in the Chicagoland. The cost for me to ship something to Milwaukee is very different than to ship something to LA, and even more different to ship something to Germany. This means I now have to have a bunch of different pledge tiers for each shipping price. It’s not reasonable to have one tier per shipping zone, so I’d have to likely group them into like a US tier, Canada tier, EU tier, Australia tier, etc. Within each tier I’d then have to average the price to account for how many packages I’m shipping to the West Coast versus the Midwest. Since there can only be one price per tier, some backers are going to end up subsidizing the shipping of others.
So while it’s not ideal to charge later for shipping, doing so means I can charge a fair price and not have to guess – hurting either me or the backer. To help backers who are hesitant without knowing the shipping price, I put together a table with regions and estimated shipping ranges in those regions for my base tier and deluxe tier using Pirate Ship. These might be a dollar or two off when it comes time to collect the shipping but it should give backers a decent idea of what they’ll pay. - EU VAT section: Similar to shipping costs VAT is complicated and variable per EU country and the UK. If I were working with an EU fulfillment partner, they would likely be able to handle VAT for me. I’m expecting very few backers from the EU though, so the up front and variable costs of fulfillment partners are not worth it. This means VAT will be collected by the EU/UK backers’ carrier at time of delivery. This is definitely not unheard of but most major businesses take care of VAT so end customers don’t see it. To avoid any surprises for any backers, I made it clear in the shipping section that VAT would be collected at time of delivery. Hopefully all EU backers read this so they aren’t surprised when their game shows up alongside with a bill for VAT. Not ideal but it’s a trade-off I have to make for this campaign.
Update: Kickstarter’s Pledge Manager will handle VAT if the product is <$130. - Update Reviews section: I got in contact with three small reviewers several months ago. I shared my launch date so they’d have time to complete the review and post it right before my campaign launched to help drive momentum. If I had gotten earlier reviews I could have had those on my preview page to make it stronger. But that’s tough with the logistics of getting reviewers a finalized demo copy and fitting into their schedule. I reached out to my reviewers a few weeks back to check in on timing and two of the three confirmed. The third, I still haven’t heard back from. I’ll admit as the final days before the campaign were counting down I was getting a little nervous that I wouldn’t see any reviews in time. But right on schedule both of my reliable reviewers posted very excellent videos just before launch, Which gave me time to add them to my page and also help with my launch momentum.
Pre-launch marketing stories
- Optimize ads for Kickstarter launch day: Pre launch marketing is all about getting the most people to back on day one as possible so that you will draw favor from the Kickstarter algorithm gods. Therefore, as it got closer to the launch, collecting emails for the long term became less important then getting people to the Kickstarter page. So about two weeks before launch I redirected the ads from my website to the Kickstarter page. My email signups disappeared but I saw a very steady rate of new people following my Kickstarter.
I also set my ad manager up to significantly increase my budget starting at the time of my launch. I used my monthly budget as my daily budget to again drive as many people to pledge on day one as possible. - Email update cadence increase: Up till now I’ve been sending one email update to my followers per month. Add about a month out from the launch date I switched to an email once a week. I don’t like to bug people with spammy emails so I made sure that each email was including new and important information and for the campaign. It helps that I was also Finalizing my page at this time so I had new graphics and info to share on the pledge tiers, pricing, add-ons, etc.
- Increase FB/Insta page activity: Trying to get as many people aware and ready for launch day as possible, I focused on more card previews launch teasers, links to review videos, etc.
- Posting my campaign everywhere it’s allowed: Momentum, momentum, momentum. This is more of that. The key here is not spamming people and posting in groups that don’t allow or accept self-promotion. I searched out groups that ask for crowdfunding launch updates, or marked my calendar for the days other groups have self-promotion mega threads. I also got it added to the Board Game Geek Crowdfunding Countdown page which is nice since as campaigns close they show up on the BGG homepage.
If you’re interested in the final form of all this work you can check out the Kickstarter page as a reference.