Live data from Hacker News

Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

videopixie.com

21–30 of 57 posts

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#21
post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

I saw your product, and the price is good. I would have considered buying it but the requirement that it's tethered to your phone is not a good idea.

I don't carry my phone around with me at home. And the second I leave my house it's useless to everyone else.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#22
post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

I saw your prototype at a HDDG meetup in SF. I think your campaign was very well done. If you fell short of your internal goal, it might be price related. You are in impulse buy territory, but the product might be too niche for that price.

I ran a failed crowdfunding campaign back in July. We raised ~$25k of a $100k goal. We spent $7k on the video and another $500 on google, FB, and twitter ads.

The ads didnt seem to do anything. I felt our other marketing efforts were more fruitful. We wrote some guest articles for various tech websites and got written up by a few more that we reached out to.

In the end, we felt the price was too high, so we cut some features and dropped the price by almost half for a recent relaunch [0]. We also launched with no goal to remove all customers' doubts about receiving a product.

[0] https://www.crowdsupply.com/aeroscope-labs/aeroscope-wireles...

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#23
post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

I saw your prototype at a HDDG meetup in SF. I think your campaign was very well done. If you fell short of your internal goal, it might be price related. You are in impulse buy territory, but the product might be too niche for that price. I ran a failed crowdfunding campaign back in July. We raised ~$25k of a $100k goal. We spent $7k on the video and another $500 on google, FB, and twitter ads. The ads didnt seem to…

Oh nice, I just bought it because it looks useful. I would have liked to see more photos of the oscilloscope hooked up to boards, esp. with clips on both the probe and ground pins. I plan to hook up probes to it and not have to hold it in my hand as it runs. I have a small office and I bought it to replace my much bigger oscilloscope, since all I use it for it to hook up a voltage graph to my boards. And I already use the µCurrent Gold to measure current.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#24
post #3

Author here! happy to answer questions, and curious to hear about your own crowdfunding video stories.

Awesome article!

It says you asked 100 campaigns. Does that mean you got 100 answers or you only 100 campaigns? I'm curious as to how the bias of who responded to you would affect your data.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#25
post #3

Author here! happy to answer questions, and curious to hear about your own crowdfunding video stories.

Awesome article!

It says you asked 100 campaigns. Does that mean you got 100 answers or you only 100 campaigns? I'm curious as to how the bias of who responded to you would affect your data.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#26
post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

To start I'm probably outside the usual IoT demographic - it mostly doesn't deliver what I'd like. I looked at your campaign and thought it interesting, but didn't back it. Here's some entirely personal thoughts, make of them what you will - I don't expect to be very representative though! :)

I don't care to have my phone always around at home, couldn't care less about most apps. I even turn the phone off! Have always wanted not an Internet of Things but a local net, with a miniscule subset allowed near the net or usage slurping phone apps.

Was interested seeing MacOS app, hoping for a Pi or similar app further down. I liked that you can have say 3 remotes doing entirely different things or switching functions etc. Oh, bluetooth, iMac is usually in the other room to us in the evening (when I'm more likely to want a remote for something), so we're mainly out of Bluetooth range, and the Thinkpad is either on standby or being used.

Would have been more interested if a) the remote tethered to wifi to talk to the iMac, or better a low power Pi or similar hub so I don't need to care about iMac, phone and their apps just to remote music or lighting and b) there was a cheap n cheerful plastic option for the kitchen etc too. I'd probably look at a couple of plastic cheapies (to get dirty or lost etc) and one nice premium wooden one for the coffee table in main room.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#27
post #24
post #3

Author here! happy to answer questions, and curious to hear about your own crowdfunding video stories.

Awesome article! It says you asked 100 campaigns. Does that mean you got 100 answers or you only 100 campaigns? I'm curious as to how the bias of who responded to you would affect your data.

That's great to hear! We contaced many campaigns, and received answers from 100 of them. We are very grateful to the companies who shared their video info. This kind of transparency is much needed, in particular in video production. In terms of methodology, one third of the sample is from randomly selected campaigns on Kickstarter / Indiegogo, one third are campaigns that made videos with Videopixie creators (I am a co-founder), and the remainig third we targeted specifically to cover the full range of campaign sizes. Obviously we'd love to do this with even more campaigns. This was kind of a proof of concept for us. People seem to benefit from the data, and we have a methodology in place, so I hope we get to do more of it!

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#28
post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

Have to concur with most; while there's some stuff I didn't like about the video (overall still a great video) - those wouldn't have held me back from buying the product.

If I wanted the product.

I have light switches everywhere I want light, and they have light switches close to them, or in sensible places. Putting them all on a remote seems useless to me, since then I'd lose it all the time, or it'd be in the other room, or whatever.

So nope; just not excited about the product itself.

What's interesting though, is that your data point wasn't in the data, and it might've changed the conclusion a fair bit. I wonder how many more outliers there were, and if 100 videos is even close to being enough data.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#29
post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

What was your mailing list size before the campaign?

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#30
post #16
post #3

Author here! happy to answer questions, and curious to hear about your own crowdfunding video stories.

Did you do any studies on any pure software products, such as a videogame?

Only a few datapoints, but that's a good area to explore next. My hunch is that the findings will be quite different because there's a wider range of video formats for games. In particular much longer intros to set the stage.
Post reply on HN