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It's fairly common knowledge these days that to succeed on any crowdfunding platform, you have to bring the crowd. Platforms like Kickstarter are now seen as force multipliers rather than the source of your funding, especially in the incredibly competitive board game market. Most wisdom out there also suggests that the force multiplier works best when you can get funded early on in your campaign. What does this mean practically? It means if you want to fund in the opening days of your campaign and make the most of the organic traffic on Kickstarter you probably want an email list ready to go on day 1. I've worked out I need about 100 backers to fund, so assuming a (somewhat optimistic 10% conversion) I'm looking at 1000 emails. I have 40. I have no ad budget. I have 12 months to get to 1000. From 40 to 1000 is my attempt to document everything I try and see what works for other self-publishers.
If you'd prefer to watch, here's the video covering all of this.
Why no ads?
Why am I not using ads? To be brutally honest, I don't think they work for small independent board game crowdfunding projects like mine. Looking at the numbers:
$2 per email is often considered a good return
10% email list to backers is considered very good
That's $20 per backer
My game will probably cost around $25 - $35 to make
This leaves $5 - $15 for manufacturing and transport, just to break even
On top of that, to get the best dollar per email you'll probably want paid professional help. At the scale and size of game I'm making the maths doesn't work.
What "No Ad Budget" Actually Means
To be clear, I will be advertising my game at events, in person, reviewers and other means. What I mean by no ad budget is no money for meta ads, google ads - the services which I don't think will provide any return on my spend.
What Am I Launching? Introducing Station Decimus
Station Decimus is a competitive push-your-luck game where players take on the role of scavengers exploring an abandoned space station. They compete over 4 missions to gather more loot than the other scavengers, sabotage each others' plans and most importantly - survive.
It's been in development for about 4 years and is pretty much done. I keep getting asked the most important question: "When can I buy this?". It turns out in that time I probably should've been putting more thought into organic marketing - this is now my main focus for the game.
More than that though the game represents 4 years of work, weekends away playtesting (with a very understanding wife and kids). If you want to give it a go for yourself sign up below and get a free print and play version — and yes, that's also me building the email list this whole series is about. No tricks here, just being upfront about it.
Starting Numbers: My Kickstarter Audience Baseline
Each time I add to the series I'll be going through the numbers and comparing to the previous ones. So let's look at the baseline numbers.Beyond just email sign ups I'll be tracking the following indicators of how the project is growing:
Mailing list - I probably don't need to expand but emails are gold, they're the most reliable platform for contacting potential backers
Kickstarter followers - arguably the biggest indicator
Convention demos - not playtesting at conventions which I've done a lot of but actual demos
YouTube subscribers - more an indicator of whether the series is helping or interesting like I hope
Discord members - this is less an indicator of the funding likelihood but a great indicator of the community being built around the game, everyone who signs up to the email get a link to the Discord server
Why 1000 and why a year?
Building an email list for Kickstarter is something most successful campaigns prioritise from day one. I've briefly touched on this, but 1000 emails with a good 10% conversion would be 100 backers. The manufacturing numbers suggest that's enough to get my game made.
A year sounds arbitrary but it has a reason! It leaves me enough time to finish art, get prototypes manufactured and reviewed and lands with a launch window I can try to align with UKGE. UK Games Expo 2027 will be my answer (hopefully) to the mid-campaign slump. It also gives me enough time to try and work out what I'm doing with organic marketing and make up for my failure to remember capturing emails until this point!
What can you expect from the series?
This series will be me documenting all the organic marketing I'll be doing over the next year and how they do, or don't, move the needle for the Kickstarter. I've got a long list of things to try, some I'm confident in - I'm sure some will probably not work though. They'll range from social media strategy, blind playtesting, board game cafes, conventions, podcasts/community outreach, Kickstarter-period activities and I'm sure more ideas will come up along the way.
If you want to follow along check back here for more articles, or subscribe to my YouTube channel. And again, if you want to play the game I'm Kickstarting (and be email 41), sign up below!
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