Kickstats: Introduction

Photo by Gia Oris on Unsplash

We all want our Kickstarter campaigns to do well, right? So it’s only natural for us to wonder about things like:

• What day of the week would be best to launch?
• Does the time of the day matter?
• Are Early Bird pledge levels worth it?

as well as a host of other questions.

Well, now that Grumpy Spider Games is getting ready for its first Kickstarter launch, Rucksack, I found myself asking those same questions. But the more I looked, the more disappointed I became.

I was able to find some answers, but they often weren’t quite as helpful as I had hoped. Many were based on anecdotal evidence, or just what seemed reasonable to the person answering the question. I found very few answers that were based on real numbers, and when they were, there were other aspects that limited their usefulness.

I was just about to resign myself to the dark reality of a data-less world when I came to a sudden realization. I am a statistician – as in, my day job is all about collecting, cleaning, and analyzing data. If I couldn’t find the answers I was looking for, why wasn’t I answering them myself? I mean, Kickstarter is a treasure trove of information just waiting to be mined!

So with that, I’ve decided to start “Kickstats“, a series of blog posts dedicated to answering data-centric questions about what affects the average campaign’s success rate.

What questions do you have?

I’ve got several questions that I personally want answered, but I’m sure I haven’t thought of everything. So, if you have any questions that you’re curious about, let me know in the comments, and I’ll see if I can feature them in a future post!