200 backers & climbing!

The REDEEMER Kickstarter has reached 200 backers and is still climbing! In fact, it’s at 205, actually, and just a whisker under €6k!

It’s got 10 days left (or will by the time most people read this), and I have a dream of reaching 300 backers. It picked up about 25 last Friday alone, so it’s not impossible! But it’s tricky, because reaching new people–

Okay, before I go on, I want to say that what follows is not accusation or frustration or anger or anything. It’s just one of the interesting things not only I, but lots of others, have found about crowdfunding, and it’s one of the things we generally can’t figure out how to squeeze past.

–well, it’s funny. I mean, theoretically reaching new people shouldn’t be all that hard. Between Facebook and Twitter and my blog and G+ and Tumblr and my mailing list (gawd, what a lot of places), I have access, in sheer straight-up numbers, to possibly as many as 10,000 people. A lot of them are probably following me in more than one location, though, so I tend to figure it’s probably more like 3K in actual numbers. So I reckon I’m aiming for about 10% of the audience I can reach with relative ease.

10% doesn’t sound like that much, but it is! It has to be the 10% that hears about the project, is interested in the project, enjoys supporting crowdfunded projects, and is in a position to be *able* to support a crowdfunded project. And probably other variables I’m not able to think of right now. :)

And then from the creator’s point of view, you also want to reach that 10% without driving the other 90% (or even worse, the people you’ve already got!) absolutely bugnuts. Better yet, you want to reach more than 10%! You want to reach ALL of your readers! You want to get them ALL as excited about your project as you are! Without driving anybody bugnuts.

You have no idea how worried creators are that they’re going to drive people bugnuts with their reminders and promotions and all of it. And then the flip side of that is you feel like you’ve been tweetingfacebookingbloggingplussing INCESSANTLY and then three people suddenly say “OMG you’re doing a crowdfund I had no idea!” and run off and pledge and you realize that you’re doing your best and still missing people! So a great many thanks are due to those who *do* see the incessant blogs etc and are patient with them. ♥

And while all of that is going on you’re also trying to figure out how to reach *beyond* your core audience. People signal boosting can make for a great day (like last Friday, with the 25+ new backers! that was so cool!), but there are projects that go viral, and clearly everybody wants *that* to happen. It’s just–how?! Promotion is hard! It’s exciting and interesting, but hard!

(Viral obviously also has to do hugely with emotional appeal on the project’s part–the potato salad guy made people laugh, the Tesla museum made people proud, Amanda Palmer’s stuff makes people feel connected. Believe you me, if I knew what project would touch people like any of those, I’d be running it!)

Anyway, I’m not sure any of this has a lot of profound meaning behind it or anything. Mostly it’s meant to say that I’m having a wonderful time with this project and I’m excited and can’t wait to see it tip over the Magic Funding Number, and that I’ll keep trying to bring backers in and I hope you all can bear with me another ten days! ♥

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