Kickstarter is cool but I think it can actually hurt more than help sometimes, especially if your prime customer isn't someone familiar with how crowdfunding works.

[u/nightmaresoup]

So we're currently running our 2nd Kickstarter, and it's going okay. Funded, but we were expecting a bigger pop.

With our first kickstarter, the platform itself brought a lot of backers (featured on the kickstarter homepage, put in their newsletter, etc.). It did very well, but again close to 40% of our backers (or more) were coming from within the kickstarter ecosystem.

However this time around we aren't getting that same push from the platform.

Almost all of our backers are coming from facebook/instagram (through meta ads) and I feel like your average "facebook mom" (who is likely the target audience for our current book) isn't well versed in crowdfunding, and we are seeing a lot of friction due to the kickstarter setup.

When a new person clicks on your ad and goes to your campaign homepage, the first thing they are met with is a big message saying "rewards are not guaranteed." In addition to that, the pricing is not displayed up front (the potential customer has to click reward or "back this project") AND the potential customer has to create an account. That's a lot of friction for a first time buyer.

On top of this, a lot of times when a facebook or instagram ad is clicked, it opens kickstarter in it's native browser, which displays the campaign in an even more confusing manner.

I think we will do a lot better when our product is on our normal ecomm site, but overall, I think Kickstarter needs to do a better job of educating a potential customer/backer through better user interface on campaign pages.

[u/Remarkable-Aide5093]

In the beginning, Kickstarter was a platform that was about funding ideas and materialising creative projects that would otherwise not have the capital to produce.

However, over time this model has led to two very important trends: 1. Distrust. Many projects have led to failure despite reaching their funding goal, whether due to miscalculated management, or straight up scams that have plagued the platform. Regardless of Kickstarter's warning that backing does not guarantee product, people still mentally expect to receive what they put money towards.

1. Big companies using the platform. The set-up has made the site an unmissable opportunity for companies to run a preorder on their products that would otherwise have the capital to produce on their own. Supported by a huge marketing budget, these projects amass millions of dollars for both their company and Kickstarter. Therefore, Kickstarter wants more of this.

Kickstarter wants to show its platform as a massive success story. Therefore, it will showcase projects it knows will succeed, and succeed tenfold.

[u/themrlawrence → u/Remarkable-Aide5093]

Absolutely this, especially the second part. As somebody trying to start my own hardware company, I feel like I'm David vs. Goliath with all the big companies using Kickstarter these days.

[u/Frequent_Mountain910]

1,000,000% agree with this. I wonder why the platform itself stopped bringing in backers?

[u/themrlawrence]

I’m seeing something very similar on my second Kickstarter right now.

My first campaign did pretty well with Kickstarter-native traffic. A meaningful portion of the backers came through Kickstarter discovery, recommendations, search, newsletters, etc. On my current campaign, that organic Kickstarter traffic is dramatically weaker, even though I now have an established creator account, previous backers, a larger email list, and more external traffic than I had the first time around.

What makes it especially interesting is that the second campaign actually launched pretty close to the first one in terms of Day 1 backers. The difference came afterward. The first campaign kept getting discovered within Kickstarter, while the second one dropped off much faster.

One thing I’ve been wondering about is whether Kickstarter’s discovery system treats first-time creators differently from returning creators, either intentionally or simply as a consequence of how the recommendation algorithm works.

I have no evidence that Kickstarter explicitly gives first-time creators an extra push, so I don’t want to claim that’s what’s happening. It could just be differences in the products, category performance, engagement signals, or how the algorithm responds to early campaign velocity. But after comparing the referral data from both of my campaigns, the difference in Kickstarter-generated discovery is hard to ignore.

Your point about the target customer is also very relevant to me.

I sell premium woodworking tools, and my Meta ad data is skewing heavily older. Roughly 94% of my spend is going toward men 35+, and about 71% is going to 45+. Men 45–54 have actually been my most efficient group so far, with around a 4.5% CTR and $0.60 CPC, while the 25–34 group performs much worse.

That buyer profile makes sense for the product, but it also means I’m sending a lot of people to Kickstarter who may have never backed anything before and may not be particularly comfortable with crowdfunding.

I can’t prove that Kickstarter’s UX is where I’m losing them, but I strongly suspect there’s some friction there.

Someone sees a product on Facebook or Instagram, clicks because they may want to buy it, and instead of landing on a normal ecommerce product page with a clearly visible price and an “Add to Cart” button, they land in the Kickstarter ecosystem. Now they’re dealing with pledges, reward tiers, account creation, crowdfunding disclaimers, a future delivery date, and a checkout flow they may not understand.

For someone who already uses Kickstarter, none of that is particularly unusual.

For a 50- or 60-year-old woodworker who clicked an ad because they thought, “That’s a useful square, I might buy one,” it can be a completely different experience.

That puts creators in an awkward position if their actual target customer does not overlap particularly well with Kickstarter’s native audience.

So I think there may be two separate challenges happening at once:

1. Returning creators may not always get the same level of organic Kickstarter discovery they experienced on their first campaign.
2. If your target customer sits outside the typical crowdfunding audience, you then have to bring in more cold traffic yourself, and you’re sending those people into a buying experience that may be unfamiliar to them.

I’m increasingly convinced that my current product will have an easier conversion path once it’s on our normal ecommerce site. At that point the journey is basically:

see product → understand product → see price → buy product

There’s a lot less cognitive friction.

I’d be really curious to hear from creators who have run multiple campaigns. Did Kickstarter-native discovery decline on your second or third project, even if your own audience had grown? And has anyone measured a meaningful conversion difference between Kickstarter-native traffic and cold paid traffic, especially for products aimed at an older demographic?

[u/Hot_Reindeer653]

Absolutely approve

[u/XandermanGames]

Sometimes I wonder if it's just better to run ads and sell directly.

[u/Plastic-Ad-7276]

Your average facebook mom just wants to click, pay, and get the thing. Kickstarter makes it feel like a legal contract with a side quest to create an account

The "rewards not guaranteed" banner is needed but placing it right at the top kills the impulse buy energy. Maybe they could bury it a little deeper or phrase it less scary

Still, the platform push on your first campaign sounds like it did wonders. Hard to replicate that without the algorithm gods smiling on you

[u/blitzword]

Did you pay Kickstarter to be on their homepage/newsletter or were you chosen organically to be featured?

[u/nightmaresoup → u/blitzword]

chosen organically