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Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders (or: Why we pivoted)

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Re: Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders (or: Why we pivoted)

#12

Post by forrestthewoods »

I strongly do not approve of having a website that lists "pre-orders" and then links Kickstarter projects. As has already been mentioned repeatedly in this thread Kickstarter is not pre-orders even if users, and sometimes projects, treat it as such.

Treating it as such is not only incorrect but actively hurts the Kickstarter concept and brand. You are literally causing direct harm to the service which your website is largely dependent on. That's very uncool. :(

Re: Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders (or: Why we pivoted)

#14

Post by eaurouge »

Are you still planning on taking 35% of markup? I commented in a previous post on HN that I thought that was too high for the value you're adding. I don't see this discussed on your website. There is mention of a "wholesale price". What factors determine the wholesale and retail price? Also how do you handle returns/refunds/exchanges?

I still think this has the potential to become a great service, but I'm not convinced you understand (yet) the pain/problem that you've built a solution for.

Re: Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders (or: Why we pivoted)

#15

Post by lanthe »

eaurouge wrote: post #14

Are you still planning on taking 35% of markup? I commented in a previous post on HN that I thought that was too high for the value you're adding. I don't see this discussed on your website. There is mention of a "wholesale price". What factors determine the wholesale and retail price? Also how do you handle returns/refunds/exchanges? I still think this has the potential to become a great service, but I'm not convinc…

Don't tell anyone but we're going to switch to free listings soon. Sellers still have to use our fulfillment, though -- it's the only way we can guarantee delivery.

Re: Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders (or: Why we pivoted)

#18

Post by Bradosaur »

noonespecial wrote: post #17

Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders ... ...because Kickstarter is not for preorders. Also, my car is an awful boat. http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store

I thought that blog post didn't live up to the title. It mainly said two things: 1) no renderings and 2) no offering multiple quantities, and they're not even enforcing the second part (Lace Anchors, eg).

The post itself says, "The new guidelines only apply to [projects] that are developing new products ... that backers are expecting in their mailboxes." They're not disallowing such campaigns at all. But we are offering an easier alternative.

[Edit: clarity]

Re: Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders (or: Why we pivoted)

#20

Post by dkoston »

lanthe wrote: post #8
NoPiece wrote: post #5

Are you sure you are solving an actual problem? I've backed a dozen projects, and never gone to to the kickstarter.com home page looking for a project. I'm not sure many people spend time browsing for things to back. People just hear about interesting projects via HN, twitter, reddit, facebook, etc., and then transact via Kickstarter.

Creators tell us that around 30% of their traffic comes organically from Kickstarter. There are some people browsing on Kickstarter -- but it's not really set up to help them browse. We just want to make it easier :)

So, in essence, the problem is that KickStarter is noisy at scale and you're essentially selling a filter. Maybe the title of the post should have been "KickStarter Sucks, Long Live KickStarter"
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