BEING ANNOYING!

How to lose friends and gain Kickstarter Backers. Maybe.

How do you get backers on a Kickstarter campaign? I’m hardly an authority on the subject, but I have ONE tip that has helped me: Be annoying.

Okay, that’s a little reductive, so let me elaborate. As a cartoonist, I think I fall squarely in the cliché of being an introverted nerd who has been culturally conditioned to take up as little space in the world as is possible. This is an AWFUL mentality to have when you also have stories you want people to actually SEE.

And, here in the 21st Century, one way that we have to get our stories in front of the eyes of potential readers is crowdfunding. In this case, Kickstarters. I just completed one that was successful, and I made a lot of observations of how it was going. And when I looked at those observations and added them to prior observations from past campaigns, I came to a conclusion.

Being annoying helped. A lot.

What do I mean by “being annoying”? Well, there’s a mentality that we should let the work speak for itself. That the QUALITY will being people in and keep them, and while that’s not UNtrue, it really doesn’t do it all by its lonesome. We need to shout, and a LOT of us REALLY hate doing that.

“I don’t want to be obnoxious.”

“I don’t want to spam everyone on my feed!”

“Everyone will get so sick of my constant posting!”

These are just a few of the thoughts that scream back at me from the assholes that manage my subconscious, and they are all ignoring a basic reality of social media: THE ALGORITHM!

The farking algorithm throttles back posts with links, and posts that say words like “Kickstarter” or “LINK” in them. It makes it very tricky to get the folks who already like your stuff to even KNOW that you have a campaign. As such, you have to TELL them. A LOT!

I have no budget for these things, so paid ads aren’t really an option. And the couple of times that I’ve tried, they have yielded zilch.

So, getting yourself in front of eyeballs is a requirement. If you can get on a Podcast, do it. If you can have friends share your links, do it. If it means sitting, and designing DOZENS of different social media ads so that you can make posts on ALL of your social media accounts, multiple times every day, DO IT!

As for the fear that you will annoy someone by constantly pitching, I can say that yes… that is possible. You might annoy some followers. But I can also tell you that in my own observations of my campaigns over the years, that 90% of the time, whenever I make a new post reminding folks of an active campaign, I get at least one new backer. I can also say that I only lost 2 backers on this last campaign at times that corresponded to a promotional post over a month-ish long campaign.

It’s a pain in the butt, and I hate doing it, but you HAVE to talk about your campaign. Post memes. Make silly jokes. Design adds. Be annoying. Because after about a dozen or so campaigns, I’ve had maybe TWO friends tell me that my constant promotions were getting on their nerves. But I have had COUNTLESS friends tell me, “Oh crap! I didn’t know you had a Kickstarter going!” after weeks of constant posting.

The blunt reality is that thanks to the algorithm… the majority of your followers aren’t SEEING all the posts you’re making. So MAKE them.

Get out of your comfort zone.

Take up space.