Backerkit
Backerkit has completely changed the way I fulfill Kickstarter rewards. That alone is worth an endorsement.
It costs 2% of the money you generated through your successful Kickstarter campaign (before Kickstarter’s cut). And then it takes 5% of each extra sale Backerkit generates.
For my most recent Kickstarter, that came to about $560.
I made that money back in the first 12 hours after launching Backerkit.
As of now, less than 24 hours later, that number has nearly doubled — about $970.
How did they do that? Glad you asked…
Here’s how they do it
Backerkit offers many services, but here’s the one that has signs of brilliance behind it. After your Kickstarter has successfully funded, you send surveys out to your backers to get information. This is usually stuff like shipping information, T-shirt sizes, whether the backer wants a hardcover book or a softcover, Artist Edition details and so forth. With Backerkit, the process goes like this.
Didn’t even notice it, did you? I know I didn’t.
Look at the bottom — Want to switch your pledge level? Using this, a backer can add money and move to a higher pledge level. Of course, you have control over this. You can decide which levels you allow access to through this process.
Next the backer answers the survey questions.
And then… sheer brilliance. In a wonderful little “exit through the gift shop” move, look what the next step is… add-ons!
Boom.
Here, you can offer everything that was funded by your Kickstarter — PLUS any other merchandise you have on hand to offer! This includes physical items as well as digital items. (Backerkit offers digital fulfillment as well.)
You can even set up shipping tables to add weight- or item-based fees for the extra goods so you don’t get zonked by shipping fees.
For me, this alone has resulted in extra sales of nearly a thousand dollars in under 24 hours. And in my case, I had already encouraged backers to add money to their pledges if they wanted to get add-ons later. And a bunch of them did! This extra grand is beyond that.
Now, I’m not going to lie to you. Setting up the Shipping Tables had me ready to pull out my hair. But to be completely fair, once you sign with Backerkit, they assign you a personal contact. For me, this was Anna. And Anna hung with me through thus process every step of the way — answering countless questions and helping me understand a bunch of stuff I needed to get right. It was not a fun process, but without Anna, it would have been a nightmare.
This will not be the last time I post about Backerkit. I’m going to need to prepare a number of tutorials. But right now, I need to make sure I understand this stuff completely before I start writing about it. And I’m not going to really have that knowledge until I’m quite a bit further in this process.
For now, however, I encourage you strongly to give Backerkit a look if and when you’re preparing to fulfill a successful Kickstarter campaign. My results have been jaw-dropping.
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