Kickstarter Diary (Montezuma)
Follow along as we Kickstart The Halls of Montezuma
This is my daily diary for the Kickstarter campaign for The Halls of Montezuma. I will be making daily entries and then publish at the end of the campaign. My prediction is that we will have ~1000 backers and raise ~$70,000. In comparison, The Shores of Tripoli had 695 backers and raised $44,204. The games are the same price ($50) but we are including the shipping on Kickstarter ($10 for US) instead of charging it via a pledge manager. Here we go!
June 12, 8am: 0 backers, $0 pledged
The campaign has been launched! I am going to break a number of rules with this campaign in order to gather more data for future campaigns. The rules say a campaign should launch on a Tuesday and try for the biggest splash possible. Instead, I am going to launch on a Monday and do… nothing. No emails, no social media, no paid advertising. I want to see what kind of traffic Kickstarter brings on its own.
June 13, 8am: 202 backers, $12,746 pledged
Not a bad start! It is nice to know that our efforts to distinguish Fort Circle as a maker of beautiful and accessible games has found an audience.
Today is social media day. Of course, some of today’s traffic will be from the Kickstarter emails that went out to backers of The Shores of Tripoli and Votes for Women, but we will see how things go.
June 13, 2:30pm: 239 backers, $15,131 pledged
Just a quick note to post this:
It was nice to hit our goal with zero advertising and minimal marketing. As much as I roll my eyes at the term “brand management” I do think we are carving out a specific space in the hobby - and that is being rewarded in the marketplace.
June 15, 6:30pm: 374 backers, $24,999 pledged
It’s my birthday! I spent yesterday shipping the last of the Votes for Women from our “warehouse” and now I’m a bit sore today. I did send the first email ever to folks who subscribed to our email list, so today has been a good day for the campaign - but I was expecting more backers by now. We’ll check things in the morning.
June 20, 10:00am: 458 backers, $30,714 pledged
I let the campaign run on auto-pilot over the long weekend without any marketing or advertising and it seems to be clipping along at better than $1000 a day. I think I made a mistake in running a campaign of three and a half weeks that covers two federal holidays (Juneteenth and Fourth of July) and two conventions (AwesomeCon and Origins). I drive to Origins tomorrow with Jason Matthews and while it will be a wonderful eight hours of brain storming for the future of Fort Circle, it will be another lost day as far as marketing on the campaign.
This Kicktraq projection might look good - hey I predicted $70,000 and the campaign is trending toward $85,000. But the trend is assuming $3413 per day - and unless I invest in some advertising next week, the final numbers are going to be quite a bit short of that. If the campaign only raises $50,000 it does not mean it is a failure - it just means I was a little too hubristic in my original projection.
June 26, 12:30pm: 519 backers, $35,001 pledged
So much for a daily diary - here it is six days later! But we - me, Jason Matthews, Tory Brown - all journeyed to Ohio for Origins and had a great time. We were tucked into the Armchair Dragoons section and had sessions for Votes for Women, The Shores of Tripoli, and, of course, The Halls of Montezuma. The reaction to Montezuma was overwhelmingly positive - and we were able to tweak one or two small things that had been bothering me and Gilberto. But now this week is focused on getting the word out about what a great game Montezuma is.
June 27, 7:00pm: 527 backers, $35,726 pledged
Well, just my luck to come down with a cold or something that I picked up at Origins. I have not been particularly productive the last two days - let’s hope tomorrow is a better day. Now I am really regretting the compressed schedule - only 25 days for this campaign versus 41 days for The Shores of Tripoli and 31 days for Votes for Women - plus the convention time and two national holidays.
June 28, 2:30pm: 540 backers, $36,821 pledged
I am watching the “Crowdsurfing” show on The Dice Tower and now the project has 666 followers. Coincidence? I think not.
June 29, 9:00am: 560 backers, $38,476 pledged
Yesterday was a solid day - 30 new backers and $2570 in pledges. Something useful for future Kickstarters: When the campaign launched, Kickstarter sent a Kickstarter message to all prior backers. A few days in, I sent a Mailchimp mailing to our entire mailing list, a list that includes prior backers. But yesterday I sent individual emails to the prior backers of The Shores of Tripoli and a significant number thanked me for sending the email because they did not know the campaign was live. This confirms to me that lots of people ignore Kickstarter emails and that some Mailchimp emails get routed to spam folders. Of course, sending individual emails is a slow process - but I think it is more in tune with the philosophy of the firm.
June 30, 5:00pm: 580 backers, $41,901 pledged
We have had a few retailers jump in to back The Halls of Montezuma - so only 20 more backers but at an average of over $170 per pledge. I definitely made a mistake and should have scheduled the campaign to run another week so I had time to reach out to more retailers. With the Fourth of July next week and so many people on vacation, our numbers will be a little lower than hoped. But yesterday’s highlight was our retailer friend in Japan putting in a pre-order for 36 copies.
July 3, 10am: 603 backers, $44,046 pledged
The nature of Kickstarter has changed and this campaign was good to remind me of that. Neither The Shores of Tripoli nor Votes for Women were finished products when we launched their respective Kickstarter campaigns. But now, Kickstarter is viewed as a pre-order system, and a segment of backers expect full game playthroughs and final version rules and components. While The Halls of Montezuma is 98% done, it is not 100% done and we will miss out on some backers because of that - so be it. But this will change how we do campaigns in the future.
July 5, 6:30pm: 685 backers, $50,471
Sample pieces have arrived from China. And we crossed the $50,000 mark. And the Kickstarter site seems to be down. The joys of running a campaign.
July 6, 9:15am: 700 backers, $51,374 pledged
The last day of the campaign. I was originally going to be at the Nationals day game today, but we decided to skip the game because of the oppressive heat. We opted for a boys’ lunch, but I will be monitoring the campaign all day I am sure. A few last social media posts, would love to see a good day today.
July 7, 11am: 747 backers, $55,140 pledged
Yesterday held more excitement than expected. I was having lunch with some friends downtown with the intent to return home for the last two hours of the campaign. As we were wrapping up, the Secret Service came in and hustled everyone out the back because of a “suspicious vehicle” parked nearby. Several streets were closed and getting an Uber was impossible, so we sheltered in place at the nearest bar that was open (and, presumably outside of the potential blast radius).
I am going to write up a post mortem of the campaign separately, comparing the campaigns of The Shores of Tripoli and The Halls of Montezuma - hopefully tomorrow. Although the campaign did not reach 1000 backers or the $70,000 mark, I am still quite happy with how it did - especially since there was no advertising and only limited marketing. This sets a baseline - one that we can compare to when we pull out all the stops for the First Monday in October campaign. Thank you everyone for following along - hope it was not too boring.
I unfortunately missed out on this campaign last year, and only discovered the blog from a post on the Votes for Women 2nd printing campaign which I did back. I see that the site has preorders for this game but it is North America only. Shame, to add to your comment on "ready made games", for some of us, outside the US, Kickstarter is often the only way of getting our hands on games that would otherwise be prohibitive or not accessible for international shipping. I know this is the case with some of the TTRPG stuff I back, but I jumped at the chance when I saw the Votes for Women was up there.