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.

View Craig Lawrence’s Kickstarter

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.  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).