Complete Kickstarter Review: What You Need to Know

Creating and taking a new product live might be an entrepreneur’s most stressful yet exciting journey. If you’ve chosen crowdfunding to make your dreams come true, you’ve come to the right place.

Welcome to our complete Kickstarter review.

Having successfully helped over 252,000 projects succeed and raised $7.7 billion since launching in 2009, Kickstarter is a top crowdfunding platform.

Nevertheless, choosing the best platform for you and your project can be challenging with other players in the game. That’s why we’ve put together the ultimate Kickstarter overview, from funding models and fees to rewards and eligibility. In a nutshell, we talk about it all.

Without further ado, let’s dive right in and talk about the 15 main aspects of Kickstarter you should know about.

Safety

Safety is one of the points we had to cover for this Kickstarter review. So, let’s talk about how safe it is to raise funds or back a project on Kickstarter.

When raising funding for a project, there’s always some risk involved. In the case of Kickstarter, they minimized the risk you’re taking by creating an all-or-nothing funding model, which we will discuss later.

Kickstarter is a highly reliable platform, and you can rest assured that raising your funding through the platform won’t bring up any issues in the future.

The platform has a review process that can help safeguard against fraudulent projects or backers so you can raise and back projects with peace of mind.

Kickstarter makes both its backers and its project owners happy.

Eligibility

Next up on our Kickstarter review, let’s talk about eligibility. One of the best features of Kickstarter is its inclusivity. With a wide range of categories and global reach, the platform is not as strict on its eligibility criteria as you’d imagine.

Nevertheless, Kickstarter’s guidelines may limit some ventures you can run on the platform. Let’s discuss some eligibility criteria you should consider when learning about Kickstarter.

• Countries: Almost anyone from any country can run a campaign on Kickstarter. If you have a registered address in one of the following countries, you are golden:
  • Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States
• Age: You must be at least over the age of 18 to run a project on Kickstarter.
• For individuals: You must be a resident of the country where you run your project.
• For entities: You must launch your project in the country where your legal entity is registered. The individual who sets up the project must do so on the entity’s behalf by being its owner or executive authorized to represent it.
• Bank account: The project owner must have a bank account in the country where he runs the project. The bank account must be in the project owner’s or entity’s name.

Constraints

Kickstarter represents a friendly environment where you must follow the rules to maintain the platform’s integrity. You must uphold many ethical and legal standards, requirements, and restrictions.

To enrich this Kickstarter review, we’ve put together a list of restrictions and prohibitions you should take note of:

• Charity: Kickstarter doesn’t allow crowdfunding for charity projects. If you’re running a non-profit project, consider using GoFundMe.
• Equity: You cannot offer equity in exchange for a backer’s support. The only rewards you can give away must be related to your products.
• Prohibited items: There is a list of prohibited items for which you are not allowed to crowdfund on the platform, including energy drinks, live animals, alcohol, drugs, weapons, and much more.
• Sharable items: If you’re running a project, you must raise funds for something you can later develop or manufacture and share with your backers.
• Your project page: All information regarding your project must be honest and transparently represented on your project page. The visuals you use to describe your prototype must be of its current state and cannot be generated through CGI. Additionally, you cannot use misleading imagery and misrepresent your product to backers.

Campaign Categories

The next topic we want to cover in our Kickstarter review is the campaign categories available on the platform. One of the platform’s biggest strengths is its diversity in campaign categories. You can run everything from an ebike to a smart chessboard and even a hotel concept.

The only two challenges you might face with this wide range of categories are:

• Difficulty choosing the appropriate one for your project.
• Not meeting the criteria for selecting the right category.

The main categories you will be able to choose for your crowdfunding project on Kickstarter are:

• Food
• Art
• Games
• Comics
• Journalism
• Crafts
• Music
• Dance
• Photography
• Design
• Publishing
• Fashion
• Technology
• Film & Video
• Theater

Is your project more fitting to be in the Art or Crafts category? How will you choose between Photography vs Film & Video?

The decision is yours. Always remember that some categories are more competitive than others, and the bigger your risk, the bigger your reward will be (if it pays off).

Campaign creation

Campaign creation might be one of the most extensive features discussed in the review. Let us start with that Kickstarter’s user interface is intuitive and friendly, even for first-time project creators.

You will find tools that will simplify your campaign creation journey, so don’t hesitate to rely on the resources provided by the platform.

Your goal at this stage will be to effectively showcase your project to backers and make it engaging enough to deserve their attention.

Nevertheless, due to the competitive landscape of the platform, you’ll need to get creative in your efforts to stand out. Luckily, Kickstarter is here to support you on your journey and will give you all the tools you need to succeed.

1. Double subcategories: To make it easy to choose your project category, you’ll need to pick one primary and one additional subcategory. It gives your product a more specific niche to work with.
2. Setting up the basics: Everything is straightforward in this section. You must name your project, upload photos and videos, and fill in more details.
3. Setting up your rewards: Next up, you must choose the rewards you’ll offer your backers.
4. Tell your story: This section requires you to tell the story of your project and make it engaging enough to convince backers to fund your project.
5. Add collaborators and a bank account: Before submitting your project for review, you must set up your Kickstarter profile and verify your bank details.
6. The project review process: Kickstarter will accept your project if you follow all the platform guidelines. Overall, 80% of projects are accepted. It takes Kickstarter around 30 hours to come back to you with a decision, but it can also take 2-3 business days, so be patient.
7. Editing your project while in review: If you find things you’d like to change in your project, you can do so even if it is already in review. However, you won’t be able to edit the project’s name, funding goal, campaign duration, bank account, and other verified information.
8. Going live: After your project gets reviewed and approved, it doesn’t immediately go live. All that’s left to do for you is to take it live and start your promotional efforts to reach your goal.

Overall, the campaign creation process is as simple as it gets. Kickstarter thrives in this regard.

Campaign promotion

​​Next up on our Kickstarter review, let us tell you a bit about campaign promotion on Kickstarter. As of January 2024 statistics, Kickstarter has 2 million monthly organic visitors. To ensure your project has exposure, Kickstarter does a kickass job.

Overall, Kickstarter has a fantastic curation system where you can discover projects you would want to back. Here are a couple of categories your backers might be exploring:

If your project is doing well, you’ll likely end up in one of these categories. Some of our favorites are:

• Trending
• Nearly Funded
• Backed By People You Follow
• Projects We Love

One of the best features of Kickstarter is its “Projects We Love” section. This section can boost your project’s visibility, helping you reach more people.

The Kickstarter team manually goes through projects to select their favorites, and unfortunately, there isn’t anything you can do to get on there on your own. All you can do is build a noteworthy project page.

Funding model

One of the main things you should learn from our Kickstarter review is its funding model. While other platforms have flexible ones, Kickstarter works on an all-or-nothing funding model. It means you will only receive the funds you’ve raised if your project meets its funding goal.

This feature can work both in your favor and against you. If you don’t reach your goal, there is no harm, no foul. If you get it, you can start manufacturing and delivering rewards to your backers.

Project owners will set realistic product goals thanks to this model. On the other hand, backers can feel confident that they will receive their funds back or the rewards they paid for.

Fees and payments

Kickstarter fees vary from country to country, but you can expect to pay a 5% fee on the amount you raise and processing fees for each pledge you get. Pledges over $10 charge $0.20 + 3% per pledge. For micropledges under $10, you’ll be charged $0.05 + 5%.

You will not be charged any fees if your project fails to meet its funding goal. It is the low-risk model that Kickstarter employs.

Rewards

Rewards are the products you give your backers in exchange for their pledge. For example, if you’re fundraising for a movie, you can send them a poster. If you’re fundraising for a board game, send them the board game, and as a Kickstarter reward, send an expansion pack for their early support.

Kickstarter has a pretty straightforward rewards structure. You set them during your project page creation stage. You can even add time-sensitive add-ons for extra incentives. You can always use integrations if you’d like to automate this process.

Challenges and controversies

In the world of crowdfunding, issues are inevitable. Kickstarter has demonstrated resilience through its efforts to address both challenges and controversies. It’s a people-first brand that cares about its backers and project owners.

Overall, the platform’s huge wins outweigh its mishaps, making it a trustworthy base for bringing your projects to life. All controversies about the platform have brought about relevant guidelines and policy changes, showing that it has learned from its mistakes.

Impact on crowdfunding

This one is a point we couldn’t miss in our Kickstarter review. Kickstarter is a pioneer in the crowdfunding field. There’s no doubt about it. It has popularized the funding model and helped a quarter million projects come to life.

Although not all projects have succeeded, it shows that any startup funding model has inherent challenges.

As one of the major players in the field, Kickstarter continues to innovate and bring new ideas to the world of crowdfunding. It is up with the trends, and we’re excited to see what it does next.

Evolving features

The Kickstarter crowdfunding model has been evolving ever since its launch. As new technologies and users come around, the platform adapts through new features.

As a dynamic platform, Kickstarter updates its features to benefit its project creators and backers, giving them a better experience with each iteration.

Impact on creative industries

While Kickstarter is a pioneer in the crowdfunding industry, its impact doesn’t end there. It has also brought new and innovative concepts to many creative industries. It fosters innovation and pushes products that reinvent their respective fields.

By empowering creators to follow their artistic visions and bring them to life, it has launched a renaissance for independent and creative projects.

Nevertheless, let’s not forget the traditional funding models. The influence of Kickstarter has brought about new challenges for specific creative industry dynamics that need to be addressed.

Future developments

As we approach the end of our Kickstarter review, let’s look ahead into the future and see what it holds for Kickstarter. The platform will undoubtedly continue evolving and adapting to new trends like AI and user behaviors.

Will Kickstarter be able to hold its spot as the leader in crowdfunding? As of now, no competitors are running after the #1 place. As long as Kickstarter maintains its innovative nature, the crowdfunding ecosystem will be in its warm hands.

Closure

To wrap it all up, let’s remember what we’ve learned. Overall, Kickstarter is undoubtedly a pioneer in the landscape of crowdfunding. It serves as a dynamic platform for many categories, supporting new creators and giving them a door to innovation.

Having discussed the platform’s safety, eligibility, funding model, and more, the Kickstarter review positively assessed the platform.

Ultimately, if your project category is popular on Kickstarter and you are ready to face the competition, there is no reason to shy away from trying your luck.

Happy crowdfunding!