Publishing lessons

Running a Kickstarter can be a thrill, between social media, emails, direct messages, and the Kickstarter page itself, it can be easy to get wrapped up in the buzz. Then suddenly it stops, the notifications die down and you return to the before times.

It took me a couple of Kickstarters to get used to the sudden shift in engagement the day after a campaign ends and I’ve learned to make sure I have plenty to keep me busy. It is important not to see this as a negative or to let it impact your mental health, it is only natural the number of notifications will decrease as your project leaves the limelight and you have done nothing wrong!

While the number of notifications will decrease you will still get some messages that you must keep on top of, specifically:

• People who missed your Kickstarter. I like to create a pre-order notification page so I have somewhere to point them and collect their details.
• People who have payment issues. My default response here is to ask them to work with Kickstarter as I don’t have access to the payment tools. However, I do like to confirm that if they can’t fix their payment in time that I’ll be happy to help them afterwards via the pledge manager.
• People who want to cancel. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of a campaign so don’t be alarmed if a few people suddenly want to cancel.
• People who want to know about the pledge manager. I always write a detailed update about pledge managers straight after my campaigns end so I can point people to the information.

With your Kickstarter finished, take some time to celebrate with friends and family – You’ve just done something fantastic! Make sure you have people around you to help battle the drop in notifications so you can ease yourself back into normal day-to-day life.

Once you are back into your normal flow it is time to make sure your pledge manager is ready and to start getting all your files ready to send to your manufacturer.