Good day, habrazhiteli!

In the fall in St. Petersburg, the NextCastle Party gaming festival will take place and the fundraising campaign on the Bumstarter crowdfunding platform is nearing completion. And if raising money for developing games has long become commonplace, then raising money for such a festival is more the exception. Therefore, in this article I would like to talk about why we decided to use crowdfunding, what mistakes we made and what experience we got.

Immediately make a reservation why I decided to write this article, when the campaign itself was not over yet. For several reasons. Firstly, the campaign itself lasts 30 days and after it ends, as the experience of colleagues shows, the amount of work only increases, so most likely we simply will not have time for analysis. Secondly, perhaps the idea of ​​our festival will seem interesting to some of the readers and he will want to support him. Well, the third reason is the simplest - the experience with the heat of the heat is much more interesting.
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Disclaimer
The experience and conclusions in this article are the personal experience of the author, based on the experience of organizing a campaign to raise funds for the NextCastle Party gaming festival and information obtained from open sources. The findings described in this article do not claim absolute certainty.

Findings are marked in italics. Perhaps, they will be useful to someone, but to someone they seem to be commonplace.

About the festival

First, a little about the festival NextCastle Party. This is a non-profit gaming festival, which will be held in St. Petersburg for the second time on November 2, 2013. His main focus is on independent developers and retro games. For gamers there will be competitions, a retro show, board games and other entertainment programs. Game developers, game contests, seminars and other interesting things will be organized for developers. Events imply the constant involvement of visitors, thereby uniting the exhibition, conference and cyber-sport into a single harmonious whole.

The festival’s uniqueness lies in the fact that it is non-commercial. Those. All proceeds beyond the required amount go to prizes, to support independent developers and to fund the following festivals. In addition, we want to change the format of events, crowded with annoying ads, which in fact only prevents players from getting acquainted with the products, and independent developers - to convey their idea to gamers. That is why we decided to use the crowdfunding system.

Preliminary preparation

Before launching the campaign, we analyzed a huge amount of information and, based on the experience of others and our vision, did the following preparatory work:

Website and pages in social networks

We updated the information on the site, put the general view in order, slightly updated the styles, began to announce competitions and increased activity in public. The main content in the public is now poured through the time2post service (pictures, entertainment part) and with the help of a special plug-in from the blog of the main site (the main information on the festival).

Be prepared for the fact that after the launch of the campaign, the number of visitors to your resources will increase. And some people will make decisions about assistance based on them.

Date and place

Trying to raise money for the festival is not yet known the exact time and place, it would be quite risky. In the Action Zone, in which the festival was held that year, we really liked it - there are great guys and atmosphere there. But this year it did not suit us by the number of expected visitors. In addition, we, of course, very strongly rested on the financial threshold. Because of this, we even had to postpone the date from the end of September to the first days of November. As it turned out later, this is even for the better.

Work for crowdfunding platform

This block includes recording of the video appeal, preparation of texts and awards. We tried to make the text and video concise enough so that on the one hand it was clear what was going on, on the other, so as not to overload the person with information.
According to our observations, the authors of the projects very often make the awards trivial and not particularly interesting. In our campaign, the player party receives a special rank, depending on the amount of money invested. From Citizen and Soldier to Prince and King. Part of the ranks is limited by the number and, for example, the King can be only one. All this is equipped with interesting descriptions and prizes. Apparently, we managed to do something not particularly hackneyed.

Awards are one of the most important steps for visitors to make a decision about helping your project. Come up with something not trivial. It does not work as a prize - draw a description. And in any case, do not be greedy.

Many projects overstate the required amount, thereby repelling potential investments. The logic is simple - the higher this amount, the less confidence the visitor that you collect it. And that means a desire to take a chance and help. And when you have already collected the base amount - you can specify the following goals and motivate people to help more. Well and, accordingly, it is simpler to collect a smaller amount and the dynamics of interest growth is better.
By the way, this is exactly what most of the projects that have collected hundreds of percent of the base amount on Kickstarter do. In our project, we indicated 130 thousand, while adding in the description that this is not the whole budget, but the amount that will go to cover the rent and part of the awards.
When working on Bumstarter, 23% is deducted from this amount as a physical person (taxes + commission). Do not forget to take into account the overhead when calculating the required amount.

Specify the minimum reasonable amount necessary for the implementation of the project.
This may not be the entire project budget.

Also, do not expect that collective funding is manna from heaven and you, having done a little work, will cover your expenses and get rich. Firstly, there will be a lot of work, and secondly, most of the money raised will go to work and rewards.

Crowdfunding is a good platform for advertising a project and for pre-selling tickets or another final product.

Preliminary work errors

The main mistake, in our opinion, is with a good text and awards, not a high-quality movie. At the time of recording the video, we were in Kiev and it turned out, to put it mildly, of not very good quality. In particular, we had to record the sound separately, which led to a not very good impression of it as a whole.
According to Bumstarter, the presence of a roller in the project increases its chances of success by approximately 20%. Appeal is what most will see even before reading the description that you have compiled for so long, and a close inspection of the awards. Yes, that cunning, many do not even reach this. Later we came to the conclusion that not enough high-quality video not only does not increase your chances, but also reduces. Especially if we talk about people who found out about your project a few minutes ago. And, of course, the video must carry the correct message.

The video message is the main face of your project, where potential assistants will meet it. Give him special attention.
Try to keep within two minutes - few people will look longer.

In addition, at the time of the launch of the campaign, we had an agreement to publish only with three media. The newspaper “New Petersburg” , the gamer portal RiotPixels and the Internet newspaper fontanka.ru . The publication in the first was published in the August 21 edition, the second supported our action immediately, and Fontanka eventually refused to publish information about the fundraising and offered to make the announcement closer to the festival.

Try to enlist the support of as many media as possible before the start of the fundraising campaign. It will save you time and nerves during its passage.

Campaign start

After the preliminary work, we received site approval, corrected comments and prepared for launch. On the 31st of July at 20:05 we pressed the cherished button and our festival appeared in the “New projects” section. The evening time was chosen in order to get to primetime visits to the bumstarter and not to be shifted by other projects. Wednesday with the emphasis on the fact that two days before the weekend, we will be able to see the largest number of people.

Carefully choose a time to launch a campaign based on your target audience.

Simultaneously with the launch on Bumstarter, we wrote the corresponding news on the site and in public. After that, they began to write letters to friends describing the project. We wrote to friends without interruption for the first 4 days. The letter that we sent on the first day was big, bulky, described all the features of the festival and therefore many immediately took it for spam. In the following days, we reduced this message as much as possible, leaving only the most important thing - a cool festival, money and repost are needed, and the number of replies, likes and reposts of the main news increased in relation to the number of written messages.

Feel free to write to your friends - these are the first people who will support you and your project even if it has not yet gained anything. Write a personal message to everyone, but be concise - otherwise your message will look like spam!

Further activity

As can be seen from this table, bumstarter has most of the visits, then the public goes, and then the site goes a little behind. Let's analyze what causes the ups and downs on these diagrams.

The second day (31st) in analytics - the campaign starts in the evening and in the first days we most actively write to friends about it. From the evening of the first day of launch until the middle of the second, the project is in a new one, and then falls into the record breakers. By the ratio between the boomstarter and the public / website, you can approximately determine how many visitors came directly from the site, and which attracted us. On Saturday and Sunday, we did not publish any news or invite friends, so the activity from the 3rd to the 5th fell sharply.

Personal messages have a big effect at the beginning of the campaign!

The next surge in visitors (the 6th and 7th) was first triggered by posting on RiotPixels and then putting us on the day’s project. By the way, these days the attendance of our site significantly exceeds the attendance of the public.

By the 8th, we already had about 30% and we relaxed a little. In addition, at this time we helped organize another interesting festival Chaos Constructions , which was held in St. Petersburg on August 10-11. For these reasons, weekly activity has fallen dramatically, visits to our pages have also decreased. And, as a result, fees have dropped dramatically these days.

Never, under any pretext, send your pages to float freely during a fundraising campaign.

It is interesting that from the 2nd to the 3rd of August our site was unavailable for almost a day. The reason for this was the massive attack of bots on sites on Wordpress. Article on Habré .
We quickly threw a dns-record on the stub, hung a video on fundraising, and wrote to the public that technical work was underway. Apparently, most of the visitors did not even notice. Now, if the public Vkontakte fell ... I hope Durov will not allow it.

The site in such an event is informative in nature and the collection of money, if it affects, is not much.

Current situation

At the time of this writing, we scored a little more than 40%. The main difficulty we faced at this stage is the lack of understanding of the media, why should they write fundraising for the festival. Journalists, unfortunately, do not see the point in the article two and a half months before the festival. For example, several prints promised to publish an announcement, but shortly before the festival date. At the same time, the main number of new interested users comes just after such publications.

Media publications are the main tool for attracting the attention of a new audience to your project. Do your best to draw the attention of journalists to you.

Just a little spoiled the picture that we relaxed in the middle of the campaign. This can be clearly seen in the graph above.
According to statistics collected by the Kickstarter portal, the main activity and depositing money occurs at the beginning and at the end of the company. The first surge is caused by help from friends and fans of the project, and the second - by the infusion of money from those who waited until the end of the project, and by advertising from those who have already invested and want the project to take place. Personal communication with users confirms these statistics - a lot of people are waiting until the last. For this reason, in spite of the strong slowdown in the aid to our project, we believe that we will have time to collect the base amount.

And the last tip I wanted to leave in this post:

First of all, be honest with your audience. It is appreciated!

Ps I will be glad to hear the opinions and comments of readers.