One last job. Then she’ll retire. But this job just might kill her. Isn’t that always the way?
We value your privacy and would never spam you. We will send you relevant offers and add you to our mailing list, though.
A couple of weeks ago somebody asked whether more people were backing Kickstarter at the digital level now instead of the physical level. It took me a while to compile the numbers, but you can see here that while a far greater percentage of revenue came from physical backers, they only accounted for a little over 35% of backers, down from 51% earlier this year and 55% from this time last year.
For this analysis, I looked at my previous FOUR comic book Kickstarter campaigns. My novels ALWAYS have a majority of people backing at the digital level, so I excluded them from this analysis. This looks at Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter volume 2 (September 2020), Cthulhu is Hard to Spell: The Terrible Twos (March 2020), Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter issue #5 (September 2019), and Cthulhu is Hard to Spell (September 2018).
So, you can see some consistency across the same month for the past three years ( from campaigns run in September 2018, 2019, and 2020), and the same projects (Ichabod in 2019 and 2020, and Cthulhu in 2018 and 2020)
As you can see, the Ichabod campaign I ran last year had 53% of backers contributing at a physical level. Of course, that was a single issue so the optics are a bit different as the cheapest physical pledge level was $17 in that campaign, compared to $23 during this campaign.
Still, as far as strictly a numbers game, my campaigns dropped from 55% physical backers in September 2018 to 35% in September 2020. That is a precipitous drop in a single year. That could have been because I ran four Kickstarter campaigns this year, but it certainly could have been COVID-related as well as people are tightening their purses. September was only the second month without the COVID unemployment benefits as well, which could have also contributed to the decrease in pledge levels. From April through July unemployed people had an extra $600 per week in benefits which artificially inflated their buying power.
However, COVID could have had much further ranging impacts than just digital pledges, and could have prevented people from backing at all. For instance, the total number of backers from Cthulhu #1 to Cthulhu #2 dropped from 1039 to 757, falling 282 backers, or 27% when I launched it in March of this year, the month the COVID stuff started in earnest.
I know many of my friends had great launches in April and May after the initial shock wore off, but I still think that because I was launching right DURING peak COVID panic, it hurt.
That being said, Ichabod volume #2 had over 100 more backers than issue #5 as well, and almost 500 more than volume #1, so I think it’s more likely that people who intended to pledge simply pledged for less than didn’t pledge at all, and might be expecting to pick up the other volumes at a later date. On alternate theory was that the extra hundred people who wanted to check out the book chose the lower tier as well. Both are possible, and it’s likely some combination of the two.
Regardless of the reason, a 15% swing from physical backers to digital backers could be disastrous to a campaign. Based on the numbers above, every percentage point of physical backer pledges accounted for $373.47 in revenue, while every percentage point of digital backer pledges accounted for just $86.02 in revenue. Using those numbers, 15% of physical backer pledges would then account for $5,602.05 in revenue against $1249.80 in digital revenue, a $4352.25 difference. My campaign only overfunded by $3,142, so 15% in shifted pledges could literally mean the difference between funding and not funding to a campaign, and should probably be taken into account when planning your next launch.
Please note that for the example above I rounded up to 36% for physical backers and down to 64% for digital backers, and they got to the number by taking total revenue and dividing by the percentage of backers to get the revenue per percent, before multiplying by 15 to get to 15% of revenue.
I don’t know how instructive this is in the end, but by sheer percentage, I can confirm that there was a massive swing in digital backers even from March of 2020 to September 2020, but certainly from September 2019 to September 2020, by proportion at least, if not by sheer volume.
Take our free course and learn how to crush your next Kickstarter campaign.
We value your privacy and would never spam you. We will send you relevant offers and add you to our mailing list, though.
For folks on a limited budget – particularly those of us who are international backers, the extra cost of a physical book and the shipping for it can be prohibitive, especially during a pandemic when cash flow might be jeopardized. I am that person your study identifies – someone who backed your previous two campaigns at the physical level but opted for digital this time around. I have both of the Cthulhu anthologies. I love the books, appreciate the quality and the new book smell of a real, physical book, BUT with shipping and exchange, the final bill for the second book was roughly double the original backing price. I don’t regret spending it, but I just couldn’t justify spending that much again for this one.
None of that is your fault. Financial exchange rates vary significantly over time, and at the moment, the Canadian $$ is not strong, and even at their best, international mailing charges are obscene at the best of time, but that may be a factor to consider in changes to backing levels that occur over time.
Absolutely makes sense. Yes, not only was COVID this year, but also international shipping DOUBLED from September last year to January this year, which didn’t make it into my analysis and probably should. It seems like what people do is do digital until they have 2-3+ they want and then pay for international shipping because it seems to be cheaper the more books you buy on a per book basis. Thank you for your support.