
We turned $140k on Kickstarter into $40k debt and broke even - CaliforniaKarl
https://medium.com/@JohnTeasdale/how-we-turned-140k-on-kickstarter-into-40k-in-debt-and-how-we-broke-even-1f86d80fe50f#.71a4sbp8i
======
ignostic
I do a lot of marketing, and I smiled seeing what you spent money on. I've
been most of those places with bigger budgets and similar results. When I'm
working with good companies it usually turns into something more like product
management with some relevant search or contextual advertising.

> We fell into a trap. We thought marketing meant we had to come at people
> sideways to get them to give us money. Turn’s [sic] out, the game’s just
> good and people want to play it.

One small suggestion: you're not doing a great job on the up/cross sale. I
went to your site and added the game to the cart. But after reading about the
expansion I WANTED the expansion. Make it easier for people to add them on.
Every large ecommerce store does this. It's helpful to your users, increases
RPS, and (when done right) relevant enough to not be annoying. Make sure to
find a non-popup solution that won't get blocked by ad blockers.

I'll be buying the product and an expansion based on the Amazon reviews: good
luck making some money!

~~~
sopooneo
Mind telling what RPS stands for? I'm Googling, but can't find anything
relevant.

~~~
kevan
I believe it's Revenue Per Sale.

~~~
467568985476
The advertising industry seems to rival the military in its fondness for
acronyms.

~~~
lazaroclapp
Or the software industry, for that matter. TLA's are a literal cliche for us
;) Consider e.g. "This TCP segment has SYN bit set and a random number used
for SEQ(A) synchronization". Or, at the more pointy headed side of the
spectrum: TDD, TOS, SaaS, etc.

~~~
thr0waway1239
Acronyms have their place though - you can convey your thoughts tersely and
usually reduce ambiguity, which is important in technical writing. You are
probably doing a disservice to your reader by expanding acronyms (after first
use) in most lengthy technical communication. Imagine a 1 pager full of
sentences like the one you used in the example, but with no acronyms allowed.
I think it would be harder to read.

It also depends on the perceived audience I guess.

~~~
opsunit
Without presumption of your nationality, but mentioned here because of
"expanding acronyms", I've noticed that North Americans almost exclusively
seem to use an acronym and then explain it, whilst the rest of the English
speaking world does the proper thing of using a term and then introducing an
acronym to abbreviate.

------
soreal
Facebook ads: spent $1000, got 20 clicks and 0 sales

Is that for real? Is everyone else's experience with Facebook advertising
similar?

~~~
thearn4
I've heard a lot of similar experiences using both FB and Google.

I feel like the entire ad-tech industry is a house of cards that is bound to
topple over at some point.

~~~
colechristensen
You have to be good at it!

Yes, it's very possible to throw money into a hole with advertising. If you're
selling something people don't want, targeting the wrong people, or have ads
that don't work with your audience then you'll get nothing back.

Buying advertising isn't a guarantee. Lots of people with little advertising
experience would do good to seek out tools and advice to get started.

~~~
JPTeasdale
Oh yeah. I've def click on other people's Facebook ads. It's not a skill that
I had and we didn't have the bankroll for me to get good at it.

------
lxmorj
I run a bootstrapped e-commerce fulfillment center that doesn't charge for
storage. We also ship for GameBoxMonthly.com - might be a good way to move a
decent percentage of your existing stock. Happy to intro to the GBM team
and/or chat about working together. Hit me up: alex@monthlyboxer.com

~~~
zenincognito
I get alerted that monthlyboxer.com is hosting malware via trendmicro.

Should get that checked.

~~~
lxmorj
Cool thanks, will look into it! Our site is a static site hosted on Strikingly
and doesn't power anything so hopefully it's nothing major!

------
JPTeasdale
Hey gang. I'm John Teasdale (author) happy to answer any questions you have
about the write-up.

~~~
hibikir
How many people with industry experience did you talk to about this before you
kickstarted?

The hobby game industry is very accessible: Go to the right convention and you
get to talk shop with people with decades of experience printing and marketing
games. Just two weeks ago I was talking to industry bigwigs about the changes
that came to US publishing as part of Asmodee's purchasing spree of very
different game studios. The kind of shop talk that describes the different
choices you need when making a Fantasy Flight game, a Catan game or the first
printing of Codenames are exactly the kind of thing you guys needed to know in
advance.

Also, why did you decide to kickstart yourselves, as opposed to talk to a
publisher?

~~~
JPTeasdale
Embarrassingly few. Justin and I have a background in team-building, and
didn't have any connections in the tabletop space. We also didn't know what
questions to ask, even if we knew who to ask them to. Everyone we have talked
to since has been very nice. GenCon especially was a huge eye-opener for us.

As for why we Kickstarted, the answer is pretty much the same. We had no
reputation in the industry and wouldn't know who to talk to. However, it works
out for us. We like being our own bosses. We'll stick with Kickstarter in the
future, especially now that we know more about the pitfalls.

 _Sorry about the delay. I have a new account and am getting comment-
throttled. I 'll get to everything as I can._

~~~
walshemj
To follow up on hibikir's comment word of mouth is key and have been to a few
games cons in the UK and you do see people trying out alpha versions of games.

Ill put this story round my contacts.

~~~
JPTeasdale
Thanks!

------
labster
I wish I could have supported this, but I play board games so as to avoid
thinking about current U.S. politics. Diplomacy is set in WWI which is distant
enough to provide an escape, and even Arkham Horror is moderately more
cheerful than the political news today.

------
markwaldron
Interested to know how many sales come through from this Hackernews/Medium
post.

~~~
bbctol
Especially given that their final conclusion is "just trust that our game is
great, because it really is Fun to Play for All Ages." I thought this was a
good and interesting post, but it's so transparent I thought they would at
least hang a lampshade on the fact that this is clearly another strategy
they're testing.

~~~
tempestn
Would've been funny too. Just add, "Submit <title of this post> to HN and hope
it makes the first page" to the end of the list of strategies tried. Result:
We'll see

~~~
kevindqc
Did they not?

> Tried: Write a series of tell-alls about your buisiness and hope someone
> blows it up on Hacker News.

> Result: Hi everyone!

~~~
JPTeasdale
To be fair to @bbctol, I did add that in after I saw we were #1.

~~~
tempestn
Ah, ya, must've been after I read it as well. Good addition!

------
odbol_
Manufacturing in China vs the U.S.: for my company's Kickstarter project, the
U.S. was about 5x more expensive. (It's a bit different for electronics).

However, after flying me and my co-founder to China, living there for a month
to work out all the kinks in the process, then the incredible cost of shipping
and customs taxes (has to rush ship for Christmas of course), I'm thinking the
U.S.would have been a better choice (at the small volumes of 1000 per batch we
were doing).

Now, if you are making 50,000 or a million of something, then China is
definitely the way to go. But for small batches I recommend shopping around
U.S. factories... They're pretty desperate for it at this point.

~~~
vishbar
I have what is probably a silly question. When you have an idea or something
you want to mass-produce, what do you actually do? Is there some website that
you can upload your design to, then receive quotes from factories that agree
to manufacture N units at M dollars/unit? Or do you usually go through an
agent?

Sorry if that seems dumb. I just have literally no experience in this area; if
someone handed me a design and said "Manufacture 1,000 of these" I'd just
stand around dumbfounded.

~~~
odbol_
We used Berkeley Sourcing Group. They have an office in China as well as
California. So we gave them all the designs, then they did the work of finding
factories to do everything and coordinating them all together all the way up
to final assembly and packaging. In the end we used about 8 different
factories to make all the parts: electronic, injection molding, textiles,
packaging, silk screening, etc. I don't know how we could have done it without
the BSG team honestly.

------
mmastrac
Destroying thousands of units kind of sucks - would it cost a great deal to
have the inventory shipped to some sort of low-cost offline storage for later
sale? Or is that just going to eat into margins?

Edit: since the game appears to be kid-friendly and non-partisan, maybe the
company should consider a crowdfunding campaign to buy back the extra stock
and send them to schools for free.

~~~
JPTeasdale
Yeah it does suck. We're going to look exactly at how much it'll cost to ship
/ warehouse them vs destroy. My gut instinct is shipping + storing 5000 for
the duration until they sellout would be comparable to just printing a second
edition in China if demand picks up again.

~~~
guiomie
Can't you give them away? Would be some extra marketing.

~~~
JPTeasdale
Even giving them away cost's ~$6 per unit to ship them somewhere. We're
looking into donating a bunch to schools / libraries / other non-profits.

~~~
kamjam
What about selling them very very cheaply as an Amazon Add-on item?

~~~
JPTeasdale
Amazon has worse margins than our online store already. The way I see it. We
can drop the price, but we still have to market it. It'd be just as much work
to market a $5 as it would a $30 game.

------
IshKebab
It's got a 6.8 rating Board Game Geek which is actually pretty good. Anything
above 7 is a solidly good game in my experience. Nice article too.

~~~
XaspR8d
You could be referring to either ranking system here, so I just want to
clarify for people not familiar with BGG:

A 7.0 _average_ rating is fairly good, though it's hard to factor out bias
with a low number of rankings (this game has 46 ATM). There are about 4500 BGG
listings with AR > 7.0 and at least 45 ratings.

A 7.0 _geek_ rating (which has artificial dampening and vote filtering) is
very good. There are only ~415 games with a 7.0 or higher, and you need
something like 200 votes to be given a geek rating at all.

That said, I mean no argument against the game. I haven't played it and it
looks 10x better than the average Kickstarted tabletop game. I applaud the
work they've put into it and if I weren't actively _avoiding_ politics in my
game group, I'd look into it. :P

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Where can you see the geek rating?

------
Mz
_Kickstarter is a magical fantasy land where people get excited about your
stuff in a way that doesn’t translate into your small business._

I don't really get Kickstarter. The above sums up a lot of my concerns about
it and why I have yet to look into it in a serious way.

~~~
enraged_camel
I view Kickstarter contributions as a form of gambling: even if the
Kickstarter reaches its goal, the odds are heavily stacked against you that
something will actually get produced and shipped, but if it does then it's
pretty sweet.

The trick, as a backer, is to keep your expectations low and not get too
emotionally attached to whatever you are backing.

~~~
dublinben
The problem is that many Kickstarter campaigns are now offering a non-existing
product as the main reward that people are paying for. Under the Kickstarter
Terms of Service, they are obligated to deliver all rewards upon the
successful funding of the campaign.

~~~
sigstoat
that's pretty much the whole point. and has been since the first kickstarter
project i backed in, let's see... december 2011.

------
TheGRS
Thanks for the write-up. Marketing seems really hard in many of the
entertainment-oriented businesses out there. Weak ties and word of mouth are
still the dominate way to sell things effectively, but they remain very hard
to strategize around.

------
appleiigs
There seems to be many problems you faced that could have been avoided just be
asking questions :(. For example, asking "do you have experience shipping to
Amazon fulfillment centers?". Or talking to the several folk in industry and
the CEO ahead of time.

I also have an issue with the Big Lesson of "order at most two times what
you've already sold". The lesson shouldn't be a rule of thumb. The lesson
should be to find methods to gauge interest better, not just "2X maximum".

Anyway, thanks for sharing. I obviously thought it was an interesting read and
it got my brain thinking.

~~~
JPTeasdale
Yep. You're 100% right. At the time, we didn't know the questions we needed to
ask or who to ask them to.

------
uptown
The first thing on your site -essentially the sales pitch - is a quote
comparing it to Cards Against Humanity. While I've heard of CAH, I've never
played it - so your product game concept is lost on me.

~~~
mmanfrin
Counterpoint: A _lot_ of people have played CAH and it is arguably the most
popular board/card/party game of the 21st century.

~~~
bschwindHN
And CAH was typically described as "an offensive Apples to Apples", so yeah, I
think you can describe card games by referencing other card games.

------
relics443
I started reading this article thinking, "nice try guys, not getting anything
from me".

I'm about to order one, and sent a link to about 10 friends. Good job!

~~~
JPTeasdale
Thanks!

------
netrap
Interesting insight into selling via Amazon.. I didn't know about the long-
term storage fees and whatnot. I guess also getting the game into some retail
shops might help? How much would it cost to get those games back from Amazon
to some other storage?

~~~
JPTeasdale
Just ran it. For 5,000 games:

Destroy: $750 Remove: $2,500 + costs to store it somewhere else.

Also, 5,000 games is a lot of games. Like >15 pallets.

------
muse900
Not specifically direct to this post but something relevant.

We had that discussion with a colleague yesterday while we are thinking of
starting a company ourselfs.

The only thing I actually told him that if we start off something I dont want
it to focus on investments or anything crazy and I'd like to go very humble
with everything. Create a small business with a product and let it grow in a
normal pace.

Atm we are both working for 2 entrepreneurs that started a small company and
slowly slowly grew it up to a medium company that returns over 50m a year. Its
a very stable environment and they don't go into heavy risks when it comes to
spending.

I see a lot of people nowadays that are very proficient in tech doing
startups. Startups are everywhere. The main thing we see though is that most
of them fail at it. I mainly think its because they are not experienced enough
on how life works and they think they gonna make the next uber etc. NO! Thats
a big NO! People that created uber are like people that win the lottery. They
were lucky enough to get investments they way they did etc and kept at it.
Thats all about it. For me its not a success story about a company that
started small and ended up big. Its just the lucky draw that investors picked
up and threw money at. People around tech industry need to realise that. Start
a company, have a product, and go slowly with it. Stick with it and yes in
10-20 years time you'll be at some good amount of money. Don't expect it to
happen in a year or even 5 years or else you are stressing your company to
fail.

I feel like this is the issue with the tech industry entrepreneurs atm. They
want to have it all fast, and thats why they fail.

Also you see people celebrating investments... I love the show "silicon
valley" because it shows you in reality what this industry is about. When you
get an investment you shouldn't be the happiest person in the world, you gonna
get people demanding stuff etc which will definitely put you in a difficult
position especially if the company and the product is very young as the
investors might wanna take a different path and lead you into taking it as
well.

------
shortstuffsushi
I don't see this mentioned in the article, but I think the author makes the
assumption that his Chinese company would have been more reliable / more
experienced and would not have made these sorts of mistakes (which could be
accurate, don't know the two companies). Imagine the setbacks his company had,
except then add the delay of cross ocean (air or ship) shipping. Unless things
had gone perfectly with the Chinese company, they may still have gotten a
faster turn around having it in the US. He mentions in a comment here that
they're thinking about doing a second batch overseas, I'm curious to see the
turnaround on that.

~~~
jhchen
The author is making an assumption but it is not uninformed. In the comparison
list he wrote "I had printed games in China before, and have a good
relationship with the company we used." I'm assuming things went reasonably
well if relationships are still good.

~~~
shortstuffsushi
Indeed, and I don't mean it to come off that way. I'm sure in that time he
experienced some distribution hiccups as well, so weighing that against his
experience here, he must still be finding that the Chinese company will
provide a better outcome (since he's still talking about printing with them in
the future).

------
lz400
Very interesting and well written post. I own a lot of boardgames and follow
the hobby in BGG, YouTube, etc. There are a bunch of famous game reviewers in
YT that bring sales if they like a game but to be honest I think they won't
like your game as it's yet another clone of Cards Against Humanity, which is
loathed among the board game community. That's the same reason I won't buy
your game as I've no interest in CAH but I wish you the best of luck.

~~~
JustinRYoung
Agreed. We've already been pooped on by the Dice Tower.

------
pretz
> On September 9th, 2015 we received $127,827.01 from Kickstarter. This sounds
> like a lot of money, until we say that this week, November 22nd 2016, we
> have finally gotten out of debt. That’s 440 days of work after creating the
> product and running the Kickstarter before we made $1.

As someone who's spent their professional career working for venture-backed
tech companies that hadn't yet made a profit, that sounds damn good. Many many
companies never get that far.

------
Symbiote
How about sending some free copies to board game cafés? Only if they want
them, obviously.

~~~
JustinRYoung
Hi, I'm Justin. I co-created the game with John. Both of us used to travel the
country for work and would drop off copies at any cafe we'd see!

------
paulcole
>Tried: Amazon Sponsored Products Result: Actually works. We spend about $2.70
on ads per sale of the base game.

You're throwing money away. I searched "presidential debate game" on Amazon
and you're the #1 (non-paid) result. Why are you paying for clicks on a search
for which you're the only relevant result?

~~~
JPTeasdale
When you do a promotion on amazon, they also list your game under in that
'Sponsored Products Similar to This One section' . That's where most of the
clicks come from.

~~~
flashman
Makes sense - most visitors are going to be looking at some other game, not
doing a keyword search, so go where the eyeballs are.

------
bambax
> _We wanted space in the box so expansion cards would fit. The printing
> company recommended a cheap cardboard insert. The empty cardboard insert
> created a crumple zone that caused hundreds of games to arrive damaged._

It also means you're paying extra for manufacturing, transporting, storing and
then shipping... empty space.

The size of the box seems huge if the game is just a deck of cards (which it
seems to be from the demo video? There doesn't seem to be a board or anything
like that?)

Is there a way to instead offer different versions of the game, that are
simply different sets of cards, that can be played independently (and
therefore do not need to be stored together by the end users).

------
tudorw
thanks for sharing the level of detail on sales efforts, interesting read

------
walshemj
One tip would be get it in front of the guys at the d6 generation and some of
the other mini/ board game podcasters.

If you get over to games expo in the UK I will have to buy you a beer

------
iampherocity
I've listened to Justin all the way through this from the start on the other
side, it's interesting seeing this from your perspective. Thanks for sharing.

------
ninjakeyboard
I bet getting that article on the top of HN should help!

~~~
JPTeasdale
It's been a helluva day, I'm going to update the article in a few days to
account for this.

------
guiomie
Tried: Facebook Advertisements. Result: Spent ~$1000 on 30 different ads, ~20
clicks, 0 sales.

Is this a typical result with facebook ads?

~~~
enraged_camel
Not sure if we have the stats for it, but as with most advertisement it
depends heavily on who you are targeting (as well as when) and what you say on
the ad. It's complicated... Which is why consultants exist in this space.

------
imchillyb
Purchased! Making board games great again!

------
Heliosmaster
Don't you ship to Europe? :(

------
acedinlowball
I will be buying a copy of this game to support a fellow HN-er.

Cheers, mate! I hope you become very rich.

~~~
JPTeasdale
Haha, thank you!

