Craig Lawrence’s music and videos are the best money can buy. Is his Kickstarter project ALSO bought and paid for by Craig himself?
In this post I’ll explore the dark side of Kickstarter for music: pledging to your own Kickstarter to spare yourself the embarrassment and realization that you don’t have as many people who care about your art as you’d like.
To be clear, I’m not necessarily calling Craig out. There are plenty of perfectly legit explanations behind a single $5000 pledge made four days before the end of his project, taking him from $5004 to $10,004 raised of his $10,000 goal.
Sometimes friends or family members like to save the day. My step Dad pledged exactly $507 so he could be the one who caused us to hit our goal.
So with that disclaimer, I do think Craig’s project is a perfect opportunity to chat about something every project creator thinks about.
How Far Would You Go to Save Your Kickstarter Project?
When you’re preparing to launch your band’s Kickstarter, without fail, no matter who you are or how big your fan base is, your mind wanders to the dark side and asks, “what happens if we get to the end and we’re short by just a few thousand dollars?”
Kickstarter, of course, doesn’t let you pledge to yourself, but how easy would it be to have your sister or good buddy throw down a few thousand dollars that you’ll reimburse him or her for?
What’s at Stake?
It’ll Cost You
For every $1000 you pledge to yourself, you’re losing about $100 in Amazon and Kickstarter fees. So at $5000 you’re spending about $500 to save face. Of course, if everything is riding on you collecting what has been pledged thus far, perhaps getting the money is well worth the $500 investment.
They’re Always Watching
Did you notice the graph above? It’s from an awesome site called CanHeKick.it (though it’s now defunct). There’s another Kickstarter tracking site called KickTraq.com that does a killer job of this as well.
These sites are pretty new, so up until now, even if you did pledge to yourself, nobody could really find you out. Now it’s different a story. There’s always someone watching you.
The Takeaway
There are no Pledge Police (as of now). No one is going to bust you and throw you in jail.
This Hail Mary maneuver is largely up to you and depends on where your morals lie. In the end, nobody really cares except for you. You either fail and feel bad, or you lie and feel bad (if you have a conscience, that is).
Thank you Levi. Very interesting topic. Actually I’ve never thought about such a way to support a kickstarter project.
IMHO it’s better to fail in kickstarter than to fail later with the release after unfair success of kickstarter project.
In the end, kickstarter project helps not just to gain money, it’s an opportunity to check the concept, idea or a dream. It helps to get precious feedback and thus to do corrections of the project on earlier stage.
You can always count on some turd like Levi James to try tearing down the best efforts of people struggling to get ahead in the world. Every kickstarter campaign has friends and campaign authors feeding the machine. Levi, you negative prick, your first sentence is a lie; yes, you are calling out the artist directly. Your second sentence is speculative and as condescending as every other line in your pin headed article. Why don’t YOU go do something productive instead of playing the self righteous pledge police mall cop? Your final attacks on artists’ morality & conscience are the last straw; who the hell are you? It’s too bad your parents didn’t flush you down the toilet when they had the chance.