Question about the preference of crowdfunding platform...

[hecrob]

Hi guys

Im really close to launching a crowdfunding campaign for a brand new deck of cards that ill be revealing in a few weeks here in this forum FIRST.

But before that theres a question i have been asking myself for too long and that one is...

Why the hate towards Indie Go go?

I have been researching for a while and the main problem some people have is that indie gogo takes the backers money immediately.

i understand that theres some discomfort over having to pay in advance for something you don't know if its going to be made or not, specially if it doesn't get made.

Im interested in learning if there are any other good reasons why people prefer kickstarter over indie go go.

I know the traffic over each platform is very different too but i believe that good marketing and publicity can make up for the difference in "base users", at the end of the day, your main market are the ones that are going to support you the most.

Anyway if anybody has some insight on this please share it.

thanks!

[bhong]

The best answer besides the payment thing is probably familiarity and inbuilt audience numbers.

People are use to Kickstarter now. It's big. When you think about crowdfunding, a majority of people think of Kickstarter as the first thing that comes to mind. It's something a majority of users are so use to know. It's like the whole PC vs Mac thing. People will defend each one and say it's definitely better and all that, but a majority of the reasons is simply what people are use to.

A lot of people know about Kickstarter so there's a lot of in-built traffic due to that. That's not to say you don't have to work, but you're going to get Kickstarter backers that are randomly browsing the site that might land on your project and pledge. I don't know hard numbers and I'm going to use the internet for this, but look at both their Alexa Ranking:

Kickstarter USA : 214

Indiegogo USA : 628

A lot more people are visiting Kickstarter over Indiegogo and that adds up over time. It's not a bad platform to use, from what I can see, and they have their own success story.

For a lot of people, I think they want to go where they're use to, where they know things better and where they think they've got a higher chance of success.

[hecrob]

Thanks for your reply

I understand what you are saying.

Unfortunately in my research i have found that for somebody that is not on the list of countries that can use kickstarter running a campaign on it can be a big problem, it means delays, money and incremented costs to the project.

Indie go go offers a far more flexible option, (Mantecore and some other projects have been successful over that platform), like any other person interested in running a crowdfunding campaign i want mine to succeed with out any problem at all and im trying to understand the consequences of choosing one platform over the other (this also might help somebody else in the future)

[bhong]

It's understandable.

It sucks, for whatever reasons that Kickstarter is still limited in certain countries. I know they've expanded as they use to be solely US based only.

Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. And I just forming a partnership with someone just to use Kickstarter can be very very risky.

Good luck!

[leangyan]

Hope the following helps.

https://www.quora.com/Which-is-better-and-why-Kickstarter-or-IndieGoGo

https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2xaefw/kickstarter_vs_indiegogo_pros_and_cons_my/

[Don Boyer]

Hecrob, this is something we've discussed before - and that I've discussed in the recent issue of CARD CULTURE as part of the article "Card Creation 101," where I talk about an experienced designer, Sarah Ferone, and show how she created and promoted her first deck design, "Cocktail Hour," using Kickstarter.

Kickstarter has more eyeballs, period.  There's more chances for "serendipity," a person trolling around looking for cool stuff to back stumbling on your project and dropping ducats on it.

IndieGoGo has a few drawbacks.  One is Flexible Funding - people don't like the idea of backing a project, watching them miss the goal and still paying them.

They also support more "charitable" projects, making them appear a little less reputable - some of the "charities" are a bit dubious, the digital equivalent of a faux-bum kid on a street corner in a trendy-hip neighborhood with a begging sign reading "NEED MONEY FOR BEER."

For me, the worst drawback is that IGG makes some of its money on float - when you back an IGG project, they IMMEDIATELY take the money from your account or charge your credit card, rather than waiting for success or failure.  They park that money in a bank account and make interest on it (while if you charged it, you're PAYING interest on it) and only refund you if it's not Flexible Funding and doesn't succeed.  A project creator can "cancel" the project prematurely and you still won't see your money until the project's end date arrives.  Compared to KS, it just feels more sketchy.

[Bucky]

I will also say that in addition to all the things already said (which I ditto, and agree with), I've encountered many contributors/backers who complain about how the selection of perks (tiers) and how the checkout process works on Indiegogo.

So basically while Indiegogo acts more like a store in that they charge you right away, there is no shopping cart like an online store so when a user picks a perk to purchase they complete that checkout and if they want to also get ANOTHER perk they then have to select that perk and complete the checkout process AGAIN.

This can be very redundant depending on how you structure your crowdfunding campaign. I've had someone email saying they would have bought more had they not had to go through the check process a dozen times. One could also argue the other direction, that this is a cool feature since backers/contributors CAN pick more than one tier/perk whereas on Kickstarter you can only back one tier per KS account, but from my experience on both platforms this seems as more of a hindrance then a feature. 

Yet another side effect of this whole checkout process is that with Indiegogo if a new tier is released mid-campaign or a new stretch goal, you can't manage your "Perk" and change it to a different tier/perk. While with Kickstarter you can easily click the manage my pledge and change to a higher or lower tier and adjust your $ accordingly. (Yes you can contact the creator and work something out manually to change it, but that can be a nightmare for the creator(s) to keep track of, especially in larger campaigns).