Toolkit: Krowdster

“Big Data” can be incredibly helpful. It can allow us to see things from a very high view and recognise patterns, make assumptions, and work out our next steps.

The data you get from Krowdster isn’t like what you’ll get from Kicktraq. Kicktraq provides data from individual projects. Krowdster takes data from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Rockethub, Pozible and Tubestart to show high-level trends by platform and category.

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to use one particular example to show what Krowdster can do. In this case, I will be “researching” raising funds for a short film that needs to raise $15,000.

What is Krowdster?

Krowdster aims to be your all-in-one research tool. It pulls its data from top crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Pozible, Tubestart and Rockethub.

What are the benefits for my campaign?

Firstly, the ability to view statistics by category is incredibly helpful.

This allows you to see the trends for projects like yours over several platforms. Let’s have a look at the “Campaign Analytics” for our example, and how that can help you fine-tune your own campaign.

As you can see, the chances of this project funding are considerably higher on Kickstarter than on Indiegogo.

This is a general theme with the data. Because a successful project is defined as one that meets its funding goal.

On Indiegogo, you have the chance to run a “flexible funding” campaign. This means that even if you fail to meet your goal, you will still receive funds. On Krowdster, if you run a “flexible funding” campaign and do not meet your minimum funding goal, you are defined as having failed.

On Kickstarter, 80% of the projects in the Film & Video category that are raising $10,000-$19,999 fund successfully. So let’s look a little closer at those results.

 

 

Graph 1: Video

The first graph on the left shows how many campaigns had video vs how many did not. While it’s nearly 50:50 for projects that failed, projects that succeeded overwhelmingly had a video.

This shows that while projects can succeed without a video, they are more likely to succeed with one.

Graph 2: Word Count

Word count does matter. People want detail of what you’re doing. However, we already know that Kickstarter projects have the highest rate of success.

On average, Kickstarter projects in this category contain 739 words. This gives you an idea of where you should aim.

Graph 3: Campaign Updates

Updates are one of your best promotional tools. Asking people who already believe on your project to share it with their friends is more likely to generate results and keep momentum going through the campaign.

If you are updating every 2-3 days of your campaign, you’ll be hitting the Kickstarter average of around 11 updates.

 

I tend to recommend a campaign duration of 27-34 days.

In general, this reduces the negative side of the Golden Gate Bridge Effect.

This is mostly based off research by Michael C. Neel, but it’s backed up by Krowdster.

The average successful project on Kickstarter in this category ran for 36 days. Whereas those on Indiegogo (who have a lower success rate) have to work longer and harder.

 

 

One of the most helpful analytics, however is the supporter numbers.

This will give you an overall idea about the number of backers you’ll need to convert to get your project over the line.

In this case, you’ll need at least 130 people to back your project and make it a reality. This gives you a clear place to start your crowdbuilding activities.

You can further combine this with Krowdster’s Supporter Analytics.

These go through supporters over all projects in the category and let you know how many of them there are, how much the average contribution is, and how many people have backed more than 10 projects.

Together, this data will help you make informed decisions on how to run your campaign.

Reward Analytics

For those planning a rewards-based campaign, you’ll get a lot of really useful data here.

This includes the most-popular reward amounts, the average reward amount, how many rewards were sold, and what the minimum and maximum rewards are in your category over all the available platforms.

Why upgrade?

All of the stuff covered above is completely free. It’s quick, easily-understood data based on thousands of successful campaigns.

But you’re able to upgrade your account if you wish. This dramatically increases the data you have access to for only $49/month. Let’s look at the things you get for this.

1. Crowdbuilder

Talk about reducing the headache associated with finding blogs and influencers to approach.

No spending hours trawling Twitter and Google. Simply plug in a few details and find the followers, Facebook pages, G+ circles, Reddit users, blogs and websites who may be interested in hearing about your project.

As someone who has done this research dozens of times, I can tell you that this feature alone will save you at least 20 hours of work – and probably does a better job.

2. Media Outreach

Want to get a press release out to more than 500 media contacts? Krowdster makes that easy too. Premium users get to send one release every 30 days to a list that includes Mashable, USA Today, Wired, Tech Crunch, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes and more.

Does it work? I don’t know. But it’s a very fast way to get word out about your project, and is covered in the overall pricing, so it’s worth a shot if you’ve upgraded.

Remember, Multitude has templates and hints for writing your crowdfunding press release.

3. Social Capital Gauge

Take this one with a grain of salt.

It asks you to enter the number of Twitter followers you have, and the number of Facebook friends. It then tells you what kind of money you can make out of that network.

What it DOESN’T take into account is who those followers and friends are. It also can’t judge the quality of any email lists you have, Facebook fans, or any influencer/media outreach you do. It is purely an estimation based on numbers.

4. Campaign Optimiser

Once you’ve used all the data (and hopefully harnessed the information you’ll find on this website), and built your page, Krowdster’s Campaign Optimiser will be able to tell you how you’ve done.

Again, take this with a grain of salt, but I’d highly recommend you run your project through if you’ve upgraded your account.

Overall, the data is fairly accurate, and what I would expect, but you don’t have to make every change just because Krowdster says you should. Consider your individual circumstances and your Ideal Backer before making big changes based on the data.

Things to know

Be aware that, as with all campaign analysers, you need to recognise that the data isn’t always 100% accurate. Always use tools like Krowdster as a guide, rather than as a bible.

My experience with crowdfunding (right now that’s over $500,000 raised from 30+ projects over 4 platforms and 14 months) tells me that crowdfunding is more than an art than a science.

I have seen projects that have hit all the data points fail. And I’ve seen projects that hit very few of the data points succeed. More than anything, this comes down to how much work you are prepared to put in, as well as your passion and your heart.

The data will help to optimise your campaign. It will give you a guide from which to start, but it can’t fill in the detail, or convince people to back you. Check out this example, where I tested Krowdster on a real live campaign.

Bottom line

Krowdster will help you gain insightful data based on your category. It’s currently the only tool that dives as deeply as it does to provide usable data that you can use to optimise your campaign.

Upgrading to a paid account is worth it – especially to take a lot of the work out of promotion. However most of the research functionality is provided in the free account.