Ever wondering how to structure your Kickstarter pledges? Here's a short analysis of what worked for other, successful campaigns. Hope you'll find these statistics useful.

1. Kickstarter
Pledge/Rewards
Analysis

2. Real FX: Race Cars with Artificial Intelligence
Reached: £69,545.00 with 508 backers

3. Game with remote controlled robots over Internet
Reached $5,287 with 236 backers, 7 days to go

4. AutoPi - Makes your car intelligent
Reached DKK 512,923 ($77,917.62) with 312 backers

5. Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game
Reached $2,437,429 with 9,522 backers

6. Quantow Gear: World's Smallest Smartphone Controlled Car
Reached $30,694 with 308 backers

7. CarWink - Making the road a more connected place
Reached $102,255 with 679 backers

8. Hexiwear – a wearable development kit for the IoT era
Pledged $46,150 with 556 backers

9. RoboCORE: the heart of your personal robot
Reached $58,079 with 311 backers

10. Woolet: The Slimmest Smart Wallet for the Modern Man
Raised $58,079 with 311 backers

11. Learn from others’ failures
1. You can't edit the rewards after just 1 backer.
2. You can't edit your project after it closes.
3. Kickstarter stops calling them Reward #1, #2, etc... after the project begins, so I wouldn't refer to
previous rewards by their number.
4. Start your company's paperwork MONTHS before your Kickstarter. We had to rush order through
LegalZoom, which cost us some cash. Thankfully it all worked out.
5. A Kickstarter needs upkeep! Be prepared to get questions and messages and to answer them
quickly. We were able to handle the influx, but it took us by surprise!
6. Prepare artwork and promo materials in advance. We happen to have an amazing artist who works
quickly, but if we did not, we would have been in a world of hurt!

12. 1. Limit your Reward Tiers to 10 or less.
Too many reward levels can be confusing and people may opt out rather than not select the "right"
one.
Also, differentiate each Reward Tier by a significant amount $10, $25, $50, $100, $250, $500.
Having reward levels within 5 or 10 dollars can be too confusing or complex.
2. Don't create swag.
T-shirts, mugs, prints only add addition cost and shipping costs to your project and not value. Make
sure upgrades are upgrades to the project and not additional products that you are creating. The
caveat to this is if you already had the swag produced prior to the KS campaign and have it as
inventory. Even then, it creates additional shipping costs.
Less is more

13. Bonus tips - #1
Don't create $1 "Thank you" rewards. People can pledge $1 or any amount and not select a
reward tier. Thank you rewards are rude and patronizing. I really don't believe in reward levels
less than the physical product that you are creating (that includes PDFs). I publish books so
anything less than the physical book is distracting from my goal.
I don't believe in PDFs because I create books with the physical parameters in mind. If people
view my book on a phone or tablet or even computer screen they aren't getting the experience
that I intended. Also, PDFs facilitate piracy.
K I S S - KEEP YOUR REWARDS SUPER SIMPLE
More this & that:
1) https://www.kickstarter.com/campus/questions/what-three-things-do-you-know-now-that-
you-wish-you-knew-before-you-launched-your-project
2) https://www.kickstarter.com/help/handbook/rewards

14. Need some reward ideas? Here are 96 of them.
https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/need-some-reward-ideas-here-are-96-of-them
1. Personalized mixtapes. Yes, on cassettes! (Or be like David Cross and do it on CDs.)
2. A creative-process bike tour. Take backers on a roll past your favorite thinking spots, studios, or production
facilities.
3. Flash-drive roulette. Fill flash drives with your work, outtakes, pictures, music, scripts, designs, code, or other
goodies that came out of your project. See if you can make each flash drive unique!
4. Studio visits. Invite backers into the studio to throw in some handclaps on a track (like Paula Cole did) — or even
some backup vocals.
5. Food photography. Not everyone loves to cook, but that doesn't mean they don't love food. Make a collection of
all the photos in your cookbook (plus a few bonus shots!) — it will make a great coffee table piece.
6. Script scraps. Mail out autographed pages or scenes from an actor’s on-set script.
Bonus tips - #2

15. Thank you!