[ibimage==42297==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-left]On Monday, November 10 at 5PM, we launched our Kickstarter campaign called, “Passionly: Sexy Marriage Made Easy.” In the first day, we got some great attention from Chicago Inno and raised $235.
Skip to 3 days later, we raised a total of $210 (someone pulled their funding), had hundreds of engagements across social media and conversation galore. We saw a significant uptake of engagement around our product. But at the end of the day, we didn’t think we’d reap the benefits of a pre-launch on Kickstarter for the amount of work it required. Our cost-benefits analysis was pretty clear.
My Co-founder (and husband) Tim Watson asked, “Why are we doing Kickstarter, anyway?”. Would we rather be spending our time improving our product, or talking about improving our product? Is it worth the money we’re losing not doing development? No.
So how did we get here? In preparation for launching our recent Kickstarter page, I did my homework. From reading blog posts to having strategic conversations and filming, the whole process took over a month to figure out whether we’d actually even do this Kickstarter page. But I felt foreshadowing when I saw the awesome Everpurse campaign fail to reach its lofty $200,000 goal. It definitely gets me thinking Kickstarter might not be the funding powerhouse it once was (unless maybe you’re the Reading Rainbow?).
There were risks, of course, in running a Kickstarter. Our team understood that only 44% of Kickstarter campaigns are financially successful. And unless we were financially successful in the first few days, we weren’t very likely to make our 20% goal. That is, Kickstarter pages who raise 20% of their funding are 79% more likely to achieve their funding goal.
On the other hand, we knew the opportunities of reaching out to the Kickstarter community. We knew several prior Kickstarter app campaigns got a great amount of engagement. We knew Kickstarter generates media attention (which everyone loves). [Insert other benefits of running a Kickstarter campaign here.]
[ibimage==42298==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-right]In addition to some technical problems and circumstances beyond our control (and some in our control which were just sheer mistakes), we felt Kickstarter wasn’t the best use of our time. Which shouldn’t be surprising, should it? Just like every startup effort, one needs to experiment with many different options until one really works.
This most definitely happened with Kickstarter. We accessed the interim results and realized completing the campaign would waste time. And as a startup, you don’t have time. No, we don’t have time to waste.
What will happen to our Kickstarter now?
As for our Kickstarter campaign, it's cancelled. We may start it again in January, but need to finalize the details on that.
As for our goals--they are still the same! But now we can move forward with making our product awesome, more mobile and publishing our Busy Couples Guide to Sexy Marriage just like we announced with our trending article here.
This means we have an iPhone app to complete by January 2015, an Android app coming February 2015 and a comprehensive Busy Couples Guide to Sexy Marriage launching February 2015.
Take part in our non-Kickstarter launch
Oh! And we have a live(!!!) web app that you should visit. Like now. Check out all the dets below.
Subscribe by Sunday, November 16th at 8PM CST and we’ll give you 50% off (that mean’s it’s as low as $2.50 per month for a sexier, more loving marriage!). How to get this offer? Use discount code “Kickstarter” when creating your account here. Want a 30 day free trial? But of course, darling. Visit us at http://passionly.com and click on the pink “Start free trial now” button.
-19.jpg)
