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Tyler James's avatar

I’ve been wanting to do an analysis of the success rate of first time Kickstarter project launchers in comics. Because comics has the most repeat creators, and past success is the best predictor of future success on Kickstarter, it may skew the numbers. Curious what that first timer success rate number actually is right now.

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

Man, I could work that up from the spreadsheets I manage, but it will take some doing. Maybe I'll mark the first timer projects in July rather than work backwards at this point, see what it looks like for that month. I suspect it's not good.

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Tyler James's avatar

Not good is relative though. The thing I’m most dubious of is the idea that it was easier for first time creators to get funded on Kickstarter in the past vs today. I think that first launch has always been hard! : )

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

Gotcha. And no doubt about that first launch difficulty level. Wading into these waters now has to be harder than back in the day.

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

Just based on the volume of competition for eyes.

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Jonathan Hedrick's avatar

Kevin, are you seeing a better day to launch in your data?

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

According to @John Ward's analysis on that very topic, and supported by what I see week-to-week, Tuesday is THE day. However, strangely, ending on the same day of the week on which you launched tends to yield better results. The causation there is unknown, but the trend is apparently real.

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Jonathan Hedrick's avatar

That’s what I thought. I wonder how much of that is because people have seen those stats so they keep launching and ending on the same day.

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

Great point. Data analysis & implementation perpetuating the same data...makes sense to me.

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Martin Kupski's avatar

This both scares me but also ensures me that I am on the right track. Spending a lot of time to prep the KS page and to present it nicely. It is in a matter of speaking a storefront so you want the "product" to stand out and look enticing!

Really looking forward for my debut graphic novel to hit your eyes and hear what you say on 3rd July ^_^

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

You're 100% right on that page presentation, and definitely hit me with a reminder when you launch!

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Andy Nordvall/Narwhal's avatar

Yikes. I hope the recent struggles of first time creators doesn’t become a trend. For reasons both selfish (gearing up for first launch) and altruistic (glad this community exists)

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

It’s a trend, but one that can be bucked with training and preparation, for sure.

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Melissa J Massey's avatar

I am amazed that in this day and age, Kickstarter has been unable to implement any kind of genre tags. This should be low hanging fruit that can be used not only in the comics category, but also novels and film. Every other site that sells books/comics/movies has a genre search. It would immensely improve discoverability for creators not doing NSFW, and would be friendlier for users who would prefer not to see that content.

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

100%! It only makes sense, right? I've heard rumblings that change is coming, but we'll see if it's the elegantly simple improvements, just as you suggest.

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Dane Benko's avatar

This raises the question for me why you no longer include the "Comics not quite there but you may be interested in" section. That question is asked assuming it's a lot of tiresome work to list every comic like you used to. Respect.

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Kevin LaPorte's avatar

Thanks, Dane! Yeah,, exactly. I cut back on the rote content because I found myself getting too far behind, too often, and I want to spend the time on commentary and analysis instead of cutting and pasting. Plus, I just want to give the spotlight to the best of the day.

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