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An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

mrteacup.org

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Re: An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

#11

Post by ScottBurson »

sp332 wrote: post #9
tomwalsham wrote: post #7

a) Trusted space for collecting backed pledges. Try doing that with PayPal and see how quickly you get shut down. b) Well branded name with first-mover advantage which brings higher CTR on social campaigns. c) Centralization of PR - contacts with traditional media which increase chance of mainstream coverage. d) Volume of curated content makes it interesting to third-party developers, increasing 'virality' (see Twitt…

A) is a thin wrapper around Amazon Payments. B) gives KS an advantage in the market. But as the article mentions, it doesn't justify gouging your customers just because you can. D) Is "curating" content really worth 5%? Would you pay e.g. HN 5% for 6 weeks for linking to your site?

5% is nothing, if using Kickstarter more than doubles the amount you can raise.

> Would you pay e.g. HN 5% for 6 weeks for linking to your site?

Hell yeah!

Re: An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

#12

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

I don't want to feed the troll, someone that calls kickstarter a web host company could not even discern between hosting web pages and videos.

It's only six orders of magnitude...

I won't lose more time with this, hats off for what the kickstarter guys had done. One of the good things in a free society is being able to choose who you want to help and who you don't.

Re: An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

#14

Post by nhangen »

Kickstarter is awesome. It helped bring light to this newly born industry in a way never been done before, and it's been responsible for scores of people being able to raise money to build really incredible things.

But then you have the people on the other side - those that might have raised 10, 20, 50, or even 80% that didn't meet their mark, and did all of that work for nothing. At the end of the day, the only thing they have left is a dead dream, and a burned out list of supporters.

I imagine it would be incredibly heartbreaking to walk away with nothing after a failed campaign.

On the money side, yes it's expensive, but that's not what I didn't like about it. My beef with Kickstarter is that I don't want to fill out an application and wait weeks before getting approved. I also don't want to send all of the SEO benefit to them.

Yes, I agree they should curate their marketplace, but it does filter out a lot of worthy projects.

I wanted to be able to raise money for a variety of projects, each in my own way and in my own time. I worked with my co-founder to build IgnitionDeck (http://ignitiondeck.com) to be able to do that.

It's actually doing pretty well, which I don't think would have happened without Kickstarter's popularity. In many ways, I view them as the MySpace of crowdfunding. It will certainly be interesting to see how they adapt and evolve as people get burned out from crowdfunding...or will they?

Re: An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

#15

Post by tomwalsham »

sp332 wrote: post #9
tomwalsham wrote: post #7

a) Trusted space for collecting backed pledges. Try doing that with PayPal and see how quickly you get shut down. b) Well branded name with first-mover advantage which brings higher CTR on social campaigns. c) Centralization of PR - contacts with traditional media which increase chance of mainstream coverage. d) Volume of curated content makes it interesting to third-party developers, increasing 'virality' (see Twitt…

A) is a thin wrapper around Amazon Payments. B) gives KS an advantage in the market. But as the article mentions, it doesn't justify gouging your customers just because you can. D) Is "curating" content really worth 5%? Would you pay e.g. HN 5% for 6 weeks for linking to your site?

I hardly see it as gouging customers when they are happily, voluntarily entering into the agreement with full awareness of the terms and alternatives.

All of these poor souls were perfectly capable of setting up 'bobsdiyproject.org' and attempting to get popular support. Individuals trying to do this would have fixed up-front costs for developing all the 'little' stuff that KS does, zero access to an existing base of people interesting in paying, and no access to mainstream media to promote their idea.

The curation aspect is a large part of what creates value in KickStarter. The notion of 'SelfStarter' proposed in the blog completely misses the benefits to the community provided by centralised screening. If any and all projects were approved it would be chock full of scammers and opportunists with poor ideas - the SNR would be so low as to drive interest away.

Would I pay 5% of all cash raised specifically from HN members donating through a 6-week link to my project with no money upfront? Yes, absolutely. Zero-risk, $0 down traffic which only pays out if you hit your own projected goals?

Is Etsy a scam? Is eBay a scam? I'd say KickStarter has more favourable terms than these (still valuable) sites as they require money upfront regardless of the success of your listing.

Re: An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

#16

Post by Aqua_Geek »

swalsh wrote: post #13

Does anyone know if Kick starter subtracts credit card fees from their 5%, or is that an additional fee?

Kickstarter takes 5%. Amazon takes another 3-5% for payment processing.

http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#F...

Re: An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

#17

Post by powertower »

sp332 wrote: post #9
tomwalsham wrote: post #7

a) Trusted space for collecting backed pledges. Try doing that with PayPal and see how quickly you get shut down. b) Well branded name with first-mover advantage which brings higher CTR on social campaigns. c) Centralization of PR - contacts with traditional media which increase chance of mainstream coverage. d) Volume of curated content makes it interesting to third-party developers, increasing 'virality' (see Twitt…

A) is a thin wrapper around Amazon Payments. B) gives KS an advantage in the market. But as the article mentions, it doesn't justify gouging your customers just because you can. D) Is "curating" content really worth 5%? Would you pay e.g. HN 5% for 6 weeks for linking to your site?

A 5% fee is not what I would call "gouging".

Re: An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

#18

Post by sp332 »

tomwalsham wrote: post #15
sp332 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) is a thin wrapper around Amazon Payments. B) gives KS an advantage in the market. But as the article mentions, it doesn't justify gouging your customers just because you can. D) Is "curating" content really worth 5%? Would you pay e.g. HN 5% for 6 weeks for linking to your site?

I hardly see it as gouging customers when they are happily, voluntarily entering into the agreement with full awareness of the terms and alternatives. All of these poor souls were perfectly capable of setting up 'bobsdiyproject.org' and attempting to get popular support. Individuals trying to do this would have fixed up-front costs for developing all the 'little' stuff that KS does, zero access to an existing base of…

I hardly see it as gouging customers when they are happily, voluntarily entering into the agreement with full awareness of the terms and alternatives.

This seems like the exact same defense the banks were using when they were foreclosing on homeowners. Of course such behavior is "allowed" by a free market. The question is: is this behavior morally defensible?

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