Zine Kickstarter Analysis

Loop Unlimited did not manage to gather enough people around the 1500€ target funding goals, and because Kickstarter is “all or nothing”, Loop Unlimited will not (yet) feel the warmth of the printing press. It is sad, not unexpected but still sad nonetheless. Let’s untangle some of the reasons we did not manage to pull that zine off.

First thing first, it’s a small zine project. So I intended to not spend money on advertisements for this project. It was most and foremost an experiment to see how kickstarter works, mistakes I could make (and have made). I must admit I was a bit naive, thinking the zine community, all excited about projects to discover, would help me fill the pledgers I was missing. I did back 3 zines myself, and hoped to grab enough people's attention organically around the joy of making zines.

The obvious reason Loop Unlimited failed is that I did not manage to bring enough people around the project. I am a complete nobody on the TTRPG scene (outside of Norway). I was very difficult for me to communicate around the networks I’m part of (i.e. Discord servers, LI groups, FB groups…). I did post a couple of days before the launch, on the day of the launch and 48h before the end of the campaign. So let’s analyze some data.

23 people register to get notified on launch. 3 pledged within the first 3 hours, 9 in the first 24 hours. I already mentioned 2 weeks ago that not communicating the launch hour might have been a mistake.

Now, 23=>9 people is not a lot. But the conversion rate within the 24h first hours would then be 39%. Is it bad? I’m not so sure, I would need data from other projects to compare. But I will keep this number in mind.

Still before launching, I posted messages on enough platforms to reach technically almost 20000 (187 facebook friends, 861 on LinkedIn, 60 people on the Loop ‘n’ Loot discord and 28 newsletter subscribers, ~4300+311+~2700+~3000+~2700 on various facebook TTPRG groups, ~1000+~1000+~1000 TTRPG discord servers). Assuming these 23 people came from these initial, the conversion rate is -without a doubt- absolutely terrible (less than 0.001%). I felt like I was noise among louder noises.

I knew my zine was to be the underdog: it’s a setting, although largely system-agnostic it’s technically for a TTRPG system that has not been published yet. Therefore, it might not have looked as attractive as a zine branded “for 5E” or “Compatible with DCC”.

Another mistake I made is to not have used early enough KS labeled links so I could better track where people were coming from and what type of platform/advertisement works the best.

I also did not check how my campaign would look like read on a phone, and retrospectively, I believe some parts were just like “wall of text”, which is definitely not attractive in a world where Tik Tok has reduced the people’s attention span. I’ll need more pictures for the next one!

Given the price to print the zine I wanted to print, I needed a bit more 1400€ for the printing cost (including delivery, taxes, KS fees), rounded to 1500€. Looking at previous zine projects I saw a ratio of 70%/30% between printed/digital pledges. Based on that statistics, I needed 150 people to pledge, which did not look impossible according to previous years’ projects.

Mid-campaign, only 50 people were following my project, maybe waiting for the last 48h to pledge. It was about a third of what I needed to finance the zine, so I kinda already knew by then that Mathematically, I was not making it.

The worst part was that I had no idea how to interest more people in my project while the campaign was running. It was “just” a zine project; contacting the media felt overkilled, especially since I did not have a lot to communicate about Loop ‘n’ Loot itself. I’m not the kind of guy who felt comfortable spamming people who had already technically heard about Loop Unlimited via FB or discord posts.

I knew it before: a KS lives or dies within the first 24h. More than once myself I looked at KS projects that were funded at 15% with 20 days left and I just said “they won’t make it”.

Also, you would not believe how many spam mail I got, promising me that for a small investement, there would be able to reach so many people my campaign would be funded in an instant. Of course, it’s a lie. Your campaign success is tied to what happened before the launch, not in mid-campaign.

The last 48h hours I pushed over the same channels I did with the Pre-Launch phase, hoping to grasp a few more pledgers. Only 4 people pledged, which account for 25% of the total pledgers numbers.

Fun fact, a colleague shared my last message on his LinkedIn profile to 30.000 followers, about 1000 people saw the message, 0 were converted to buyers. I’m starting to think LI is not the best place to grab random people interest into a kickstarter :p.

The following analysis is to be taken with a pinch of salt as it is hard to drive statistics from my meager numbers.

If I look at pledge sources:

• 21% came from facebook posts

• 27% came from discord posts

• 52% came from Kickstarter recommendations (in a way I was right to assume that, for zinequest at least, organic KS growth would be non-negligible)

About 50% of the pledges came from Norway, unsurprisingly. But the other 50% came from the US. I was really surprised to see no one from Europe. Is it because the demographic user base of KS is US-centric? I know that French tends to use more Ulule, but still, this is an unexpected surprise.

23% of the pledgers ask for a digital-only product (or no reward). This was actually on part with my pre-analysis of 70/30 for the type of pledges.

I’m glad I get to test Kickstarter features with a small project that has no incidence on the bigger Loop ‘n’ Loot project, except maybe for a slightly bruised ego. I made mistakes before launch and during the campaign, but this is how you learn and I feel way more confident for the next one.

I think I managed to create a nice zine product and a nice campaign page. At least I’m proud of what I made.

Selling a new product is hard. Factor the fact you are a nobody without a community and this becomes an impossible task! I’m glad I took a marketing agency to help me with launching Loop ‘n’ Loot Core Rulebook and building a proper pre-campaign to raise awareness.

One of the reasons I decided to do a zine project, even knowing it could fail, was to raise awareness around Loop ‘n’ Loot as a new TTRPG system. I was thinking that even if people would not pledge, they might at least see and click the link to download the free Quick Start Rules. Long story short: no. There was no spike in downloads, no overall daily download increase during the campaign, no increase of posted reviews. But if we scale down to 50 followers interesting in the campaign, maybe the surge (i.e. +2 download of the Quick Start Rules) compared to the average on the 27th is still somewhat of a win.

There was 1 new subscriber to the newsletter (yeah welcome aboard Mr “dyvim”), no new discord member.

I would assume that the traffic around the KS page was simply not enough to make an impact. Oh well… I’ll be working on spreading the free pdf the hard way I guess.

Download the free Quick Start Rules

The next goal is to gear up toward the Core Rulebook campaign. I’ll be working on marketing over the next coming months. Don’t worry, I won’t try to launch a campaign like the zine one: there will be a pre-campaign, with videos, advertisement and such.

Loop Unlimited as a zine is not dead and will become likely become a stretch goal for the Loop ‘n’ Loot campaign.

To be kept in the loop of the upcoming pre-launch campaign, for now, there is only one place, this newsletter!