It feels like yesterday that the kickstarter for Miserably Altered ended. The first issue was a long process but I was happy to see that it had succeeded beyond my expectations. I wanted to keep the goal simple and reasonable. This was my first comic that I would self-publish, after all!
I have worked on Miserably Altered for 2 years prior to making it an official comic series. Like anyone else who creates a project of their own, there are doubts and there is hope.
I wanted to use kickstarter as my crowdfunding base because it seemed easy to use and self explanatory than the other platforms I had seen. Best of all, if the project did not succeed, everyone would get their money back, no problem.
What took me the longest to for the kickstarter campaign, was creating a good and short trailer for it. I have no experience in animation or making trailers whatsoever so creating one was a challenge. So definitely take your time when making a trailer!
The next thing that took me longer than I thought was creating the art for my kickstarter page to make it more appealing and with the feel of my comic genre. The better your kickstarter page looks, the more interest viewers will show! You have to, HAVE TO, put effort in your kickstarter page.
Another thing, the pledges. Make sure you have a reasonable amount of pledges with reasonable prices. No one wants to get one thing that is out of their budget. So if you have a pledge with a high price, make sure it is a good package that comes with multiple things. As everyone says, you get what you pay for. Seriously.
The one thing I did not do before I made a kickstarter, was have an audience. If you don't have an audience it will be harder to get your comic name out there for backers. Don't get me wrong, it IS possible to have a successful campaign without an audience. It is just MUCH HARDER. I know this because I was in this situation. I did not have an audience. Even now, the audience for A.C.R.O Comics is slowly growing on instagram but I continue to post and continue to write these blogs whether they are being read or not. Never give up!
Without an audience, you can pay to advertise on social media or even go old school and go word of mouth! Trust me it works. It did for me.
I will have another kickstarter campaign for the second issue of Miserably Altered which is just about done with a few pages to go. For this campaign, I have more of an audience and Miserably Altered is better known now than the first campaign. Now that I have more experience with it, I know I can do better to improve it!
So I will be crossing my fingers until the end of the campaign and before it even starts.