KickstarterReviews 206

Some of these comments are so 'poor me, wahh, i spilled my milk, mommy-do-it-for-me' that it just makes me sick.

Kickstarter has provided a platform and they have 'their' ideas about how to run 'their' business. It's THEIR's you selfish, cry-me-a-river little brats. If you don't like 'their' platform and what 'THEY' provided then man up/woman up, whatever, and create 'your-own' friggin' platform.

When did America become so socialistic in mindset that everyone thinks that everything should revolve around them? And that if I make something, that I should or have to change it for you?

Pull up your pants and do what you need to do to be successful or go to another country for your handouts.

FYI, I have a campaign in the approval process that I worked 8 weeks on and I think it should get approved but if it doesn't I'll know why and try again.

Meh... ok...

Spent the better part of 3 to 4 days getting the entire thing written, putting it together, etc... for it just to be lost in a huge pile of other kickstarter projects. I did what I could to network and advertise via social networking sites 'n' such & read up on some of their "tips" for making the most out of their site. I basically ended up no further along than where I was to begin with. I even emailed their support for tips & advise, just to blatantly be ignored... The site seems to be useful tool but it's impossible to benefit from unless you excessively advertise the hell out of your project anywhere you can without being flagged for spam & relentless self-promotion. They should have an area for 'newly' uploaded projects to help newbies get exposure. Overall... frustrated & annoyed I wasted my time with it.

I just launch my first Kickstarter project a little over a week ago. I'm over 50% funded in 7 day. Yes, it takes work, making a video, having a web page set up, and emailing out to people you know.

Some here write why not just contact the people you know and ask them to support your project. That's fine, but what Kickstarter does for you is to help you find supporters that you don't know. Over $1,000.00 of pledges so far are from people I don't know.

I personally have back 8 projects of people I don't know!

If you are thinking about launching a project there, study the successful projects and more importantly the unsuccessful ones. I study for months before I launched my project.

The key for me and why I went with Kickstarter was not raising money from people I know, but to find funds from around the world from people I don't know, and for me it's working.

Here is a link to my project, and who knows if I helped you here, you might send me a $5.00 bill :) Anything helps to reach my goal of $9,000.00 and I'm over 50% there in a weeks time.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/*******768/my-first-mural-size-photographs

I WANT EVERYONE TO READ THIS ABOUT KICKSTARTER. COM

It is a sleazy company that deserves to be sued in a class action law suit BY ANYONE who has recently been wronged by this company for their policy of lies.

I personally had dealings with this company, when 8 weeks ago I was ACCEPTED from a proposal i wrote to Kickstarter to be accepted and raise funds...

THEY ACCEPTED MY PROPOSAL and saw all the information there was to see about it!
6 weeks later when I went to launch the project ON kickstarter after spending COUNTLESS hours on preparing, COUNTLESS hours on their site setting my fund campaign up, COUNTLESS hours putting a video together, MONEY on video and video editing, Flyers to pass out and promote the project that was ALREADY accepted. Built a web site devoted to information for the campaign. Spent money and time on countless other things.

THEY THEN TURNED AROUND AND TOLD ME MY PROJECT WAS NOT ACCEPTED... BECAUSE IT APPEARS THEY CHANGE SOME RULES OR REGULATIONS OVER NIGHT AND DID NOT SEE FIT TO INFORM PEOPLE SAVE FOR: NOT TO WORRY SINCE YOU WERE ALREADY ACCEPTED

This company is sleazy and full of lies, more content on automated emails and ZERO real customer service...

Banks accounts were opened to prepare for the Kickstarter campaign, personal information given to Amazon as well... ALL FOR A LIE...

Kickstater is a greedy, discriminatory company that lies and cheats their way through making money off of OTHER peoples ideas and projects... and on the back end apparently does not care who they lie to or how they operate with LACK of honesty and integrity.

ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN WRONGED BY KICKSTARTER TOLD THEY WERE ACCEPTED AND THEN SUBSEQUENTLY TOLD NO AFTER THEY TRIED TO LAUNCH SHOULD CONTACT ME FOR A CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT AGAINST THIS SLEEZY COMPANY

I submitted a project on Kickstarter and they approved it enthusiastically. I have all the emails and documents. The approval notice told me a video was a MUST and another more direct and personal email told me to be more creative with my 'rewards.' So, I started to go to work. I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time developing my presentation. Then, on the very day I was ready they sent an email saying they had "updated" their guidelines. Apparently, according to them, the weren't "clear" enough about some stuff earlier. As it turns out my project never should have been approved in the first place. When I complained they apologized and said the Kickstarter staffer must've "missed" it. Missed it? The very NAME of the project made it perfectly clear that this was an online TV Game show with cash prizes. When I asked (politely) how we could remedy the situation they never responded. When I threatened legal action, they never responded. Beware of Kickstarter. It's a good idea with good intentions but when it comes to accepting responsibility for their actions --- well, they're a bunch of adolescents.

We are in progress with our Kickstarter Project - our example: http://kck.st/vL281h

We have learned much about spreading the word on the internet for a project. The goal of the project has kept us focused and that has helped our project greatly.

However, we must agree that you need to bring your own backers - don't rely on Kickstarter to do that for you. The projects they choose for promotions is almost always on the eclectic side of the brain. Which is cool, but if you are a rather straight forward product it won't help you much. We also managed to add tracking to our project so we know for a fact where our traffic is coming from and at what levels. We averaged 80 views per day on the Kickstarter page, which is not outstanding by any means. Only about 10 - 20 of those visits click on the video.

Our typical traffic level at http://www.Qubits.com is 100 views per day so many of the Kickstarter views were referrals from ourselves. 87% of the backers were friends - while the rest were from Kickstarter and Twitter.

Note: The front page of Kickstarter averages 40,000 unique viewers PER DAY. Yes getting picked ( CURATED) for a highlight on that page is a boon to anyone. However your chances of getting onto it are slim. They receive hundreds of new project submissions per day.

Focus on your project, your customer or fan base, come up with a plan how to gather your own funding, post a project and perhaps receive the extra touch of the Kickstarter community. The boost your project receives from Kickstarter will hopefully offset the Kickstarter & Amazon 10% - 15% fee

It might be just the right fit for you. If you fail, regroup and try again. If you succeed you have even a greater chance with your second project since you will have an established connection with satisfied customers.

Kickstarter is an interesting idea. But that is where it stops. The idea has yet to come into a practical reality. I currently have a kickstarter project running. The literature refers to a 'kickstarter community.' that you can attract for $10-$25 rewards. However, there is no kickstarter community. The project must bring its own backers! What is the point of having Kickstarter if you already have backers?

Based on the success stories posted, I conclude that this is a good place for established small businesses to offer new products to an existing customer base. They can 'pre-order' projects at a discounted price. Examples: a shoe company offers customers a new style shoe at a discount if they 'pre-order them'. A recording artist offers a new album to existing fans at a discounted rate if they 'pre-order'. Kickstarter just takes the risk out of 'pre-ordering' by telling would-be customers that if they can't raise enough money to complete their new product, then they are not obligated to fulfill the orders. No one gets mad, that's all.

The second problem is that even if Kickstarter had an interested, altruistic community interested in funding new projects, the website is set up for favoritism and corruption. The entire set up displays only what are called 'popular' projects and 'recommended' projects- about six in all! The search capabilities are so favorably prejudiced toward these projects that people would be completely unaware that more projects even existed.

I'm posting this review because I don't want anyone else to waste a solid month of hard work preparing like I did. I had read earlier complaints but didn't heed them. I hope you heed this one. New artists without a lot of moneyed customers ready to pay up early need not apply at Kickstarter.com

First of all I'm only writing this in response to the other reviews of this site, mainly concerning what people are saying about Diaspora. I am in no way affiliated with kickstarter or diaspora.

I am here to say that if you are wondering about kick starter do not rely on the information that the people above me submitted. If they had even taken the 5 minutes to understand what Diaspora is about they wouldn't be calling it a facebook clone. Diaspora is not like a tradition social networking "site" because you run it on your computers, and it connects to other computers such as a p2p network would. If you can't even take the time to figure that out, then why you're writing reviews on it is absolutely mind boggling to me.

Sadly, kickstarter picks and chooses who does or does not qualify for their promotion based on their own political outline. I've read other comments about this supposedly beneficial website helping so many to get financial assistance, yet like any other online site seeking to gain popularity and obtain that infamous 'google' status they simply entice individuals to share their unique concepts, hash over the suggestions, pick at random who should or should not be accepted, then run with the ideas themselves. I'm sorry, but this is yet another scam to take advantage of other concepts and the naive individual that submits them. It it looks too good to be true, it generally is, and with kickstarter, they really pull the wool over your eyes.

I hate kickstarter. I see them turn down great ideas all the time but promote dumb ideas like a facebook clone. Come on, isn't one facebook enough? They helped these guys make $250,000 to make a copy of facebook when there's already dozens of open source social networking websites. That was 4 months ago, and there's still nothing to show for it. These guys took the money and ran, we'll see nothing of Diaspora, no one is going to leave Facebook. What a waste!

If kickstarter is going to support ideas at least support NEW ideas not old ones!

UPDATE 2013: Like I said 3 years ago, we saw nothing of Disapora. Kickstarter is a scam, they take the money and say "we'll give you something in 6 months!" and when you get nothing and try to complain to Visa they say "Sorry, that was 6 months ago!"

Have an idea that you think will out do what already exist... like Facebook?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/*******/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr Creators of Diaspora thought of a place where they could get what they had gotten from Facebook, but without the privacy issues.

Ever wonder where did the trade school go?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/OurGoods/trade-school-0 According to the creators of Our Goods: Anyone can offer to teach a class. Students sign up for classes by agreeing to meet the teacher's barter needs. We ran Trade School for 35 days and we want to open again!

Kickstarter is place where many hands can make the load light. Share a creative project in art, film, food, writing, music, community, technology... and more. You throw out your idea in written format as well as video and set a goal. If your goal is not matched by the due date (you set) then no money exchanges hands between you and your many backers.

This allows people to test the waters for what people are interested in. It also keeps you from having to front money should you only reach part of your goal and then those that back you expect a $20,000 to blossom from $5,000 backing.

It is an innovative site that could jumpstart many (or kickstart har har) into areas of life they can't get to by conventional means (maybe this will be conventional one day...).

Check it out. You might have an idea or you might find an idea you'd be willing to support. Either way this is a place for the creative to flourish and show that the rich and the mighty don't hold all the cards when the unknowns get together to propel one of their own to the stars.