Hi everyone! I've been reading these forums for ages but only just joined up. My first kickstarter is finally live right now. It's a game about growing fruit to fulfill orders at the market, and involves area control and resource management mechanics. If it sounds like something you'd be interested in please check it out. Thanks
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flyingcarpetgames/orchards-a-compet...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flyingcarpetgames/orchards-a-competitive-fruit-farming-game-for-2-4-players
That has a lot of stuff in it.. do you have a weight estimate and a shipping cost estimate? Your shipping values look very precise.
Did you do pre-marketing?
That's not really a thing any more :(
But still good luck!
I'll give you some actual numbers from my just-shipping-now product that's only about 2 lbs, for "Euro-friendly" shipping from the US (all costs included)
US shipping: $13.
Canada shipping: $31.
EU shipping: $40.
I charged too little on my first project, but I nailed this one :) (I had free US shipping, $20 Canada, and $30 EU)
Guessing you've played Photosynthesis.
I hate to burst your bubble, but for a KS campaign to SUCCEED, on average you need to do sufficient EARLY marketing to attract about 33% to 50% of your backer audience by end of Day 2 (first 48 hours). Then comes a lull over the period of 25 days where backers come organically through self-discovery and searching and that's about 25% to 33%... Lastly on the LAST 72 hours of the campaign you should get a minimum of 25% and higher depending on the popularity of the campaign.
So your optimism is fairly "un-found"... You should be very worried that you got only a handful of backers on the days that matter THE MOST for a KS campaign!
Note #1: From your current results (48 hours) I project that at the most you'll get is about $5,000 AUD in funding "through-out" the KS campaign.
I don't know about how it PLAYS, but you certainly managed to make something that looks like a real, professional game.
You just need marketing.. before the KS starts. I posted elsewhere here about this, but if you can't say concretely how 1000 people will hear about your game within the first hour (not including "people will look on the 'new games' page on the KS site and see it", etc), then you're in for a tough fight.
Get 1,000 people to share their e-mail. This could be a combined strategy such as going to Con, meeting and speaking to people and encouraging them to ONLY share their e-mail... Using a smartphone you can VALIDATE the e-mail right there and then (so no phony addresses).
Another strategy would be to use Facebook (FB) to direct to a website that ASKS people to sign-up for Game Notifications... Again this is not 100% but still can encourage FB users to "take action". I know signing up for "notifications" sounds like something not very relevant... But if you can calculate the volume of FB conversions you could see how EFFECTIVE targeting FB users is for your "pre-marketing" campaign. Plus you can BOOST the effectiveness of a FB message to reach as many people as possible... This is also a valid pre-marketing strategy. You may get LOW conversions ... but still you've REACHED more people (like 1,000+ people).
Awareness is also a POSITIVE "pre-marketing" strategy. Sometimes all you need in "pre-marketing" is to SPIN the "Name of the Game" with a nice image... Like saying: "This is my game 'X' and it's about 'Y'...!" This would be VERY LOW conversions but breeds "Branding" and recognition. You'd rather have someone say: "Yeah game 'Z', I've heard of it..." instead of "I've never heard of game 'Z'..." Again low on the conversion rate... But that's not the purpose of the audience, it's a question of building a "Brand" and getting the word out that game 'Z' exists.
I noticed that you have a Board Game Geek (BGG) page... That is also important... You should maybe promote an URL/LINK to the BGG page (a redirection). Like http://www.orchardsgame.com and re-direct to the BGG page... And EVERYWHERE you put the URL/LINK to try to raise awareness about the game using the URL/LINK.
So these are some "pre-marketing" ideas about how to effectively build awareness concerning your game.
Best.
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Thank you!
Re: shipping Yes I have the weights and have quotes to deliver the shipping at those approximate amounts.
I didn't do much in pre-marketing - that's not really something I'm good at, so pretty much relying on Kickstarter exposure to start.
As for having a lot of stuff, that's true and is a bit of a risk for a first project because it makes the funding target higher. If it doesn't fund I think I'll try again with a card game, but since it's only day 1 I'm still optimistic.