Average funding on KS projects - Black Tie?

[Strag]

I've just noticed there was a huge jump in the funding on the Black Tie deck on KS (which a lot of backers also seem to be commenting on). They had a MASSIVE $7400 day with no real increase in backers. I think this could be a similar situation to the Genesis deck (which apparently had a last minute mystery backer who then never actually funded his pledge) and could cause this project to be a risk.

Out of curiosity I did some match on recent KS projects and the average pledge per backer. Interesting to note how out of whack the top 2 are.

Medusa $22.66
Revision 1 $22.77
Americana $25.79
Army Men $26.86
Brimstone $27.46
Bohemia $29.57
Ultraviolet $30.68
Asylum $31.04
Core $35.97
Pedale $36.45
Vanda $37.13
War of Currents $37.75
B&W Actuators $38.89
Galvanic $39.45
Ritual $39.48
Tendril $41.19
Cthulhu $43.58
Eclipse $56.01
Black Tie $75.76
Genesis $79.17

Full disclosure: I am not a backer of this KS as I do not really care for the design and I am concerned about the funding.

[cosmicsecret]

Maybe.someone from the competition who tries to knock them out?
If i think about this,this would be a ideal way to prevent backers to throw in more money and then it doesn get funded.
The money can be spend then on other projects of the competition.....ya i know conspiracy thoughts but who knows?
Business is business.

[Ryric]

It looks like Genesis fell through because of this problem and refunded their customers. (The Genesis creator is also the creator of the Allure deck, so it might be worth keeping an eye on that one).

Does the creator take a hit on the refunds (does Amazon and Kickstarter still take their cut if a project is refunded?).

Not sure how you fix the problem, by the time you know a transaction is unsuccessful you've already charged other people so you are running into refund issues. Perhaps requiring validation from the creator for funding over a certain amount before the offer is accepted?

Perhaps Kickstarter forcing refunds and marking the project as failed if a percent or amount of transactions fail, even have the the information displayed or adjustable by the creators?

[Oswin]

It looks like Genesis fell through because of this problem and refunded their customers. (The Genesis creator is also the creator of the Allure deck, so it might be worth keeping an eye on that one).

Does the creator take a hit on the refunds (does Amazon and Kickstarter still take their cut if a project is refunded?).

Not sure how you fix the problem, by the time you know a transaction is unsuccessful you've already charged other people so you are running into refund issues. Perhaps requiring validation from the creator for funding over a certain amount before the offer is accepted?

Perhaps Kickstarter forcing refunds and marking the project as failed if a percent or amount of transactions fail, even have the the information displayed or adjustable by the creators?

Yes he return my money, but I lost some money. Due to tax and currency ($), I've lost 10€ in this history.....

[Ryric]

Specifically on Black Tie, it is hard to determine their funding in general due to the low number of reward levels and the ability to add decks at any level. They have 50 backers that are visually identified as having pledged more then $30.

I think the biggest problem here is the lack of transparency by allowing people to add decks or other rewards to a tier. There is no way for backers to really review the funding level based on rewards and determine where and how many people are supporting the project, no way to tell if one or two funders are carrying the project.

Edit: I suppose you could create a spreadsheet that would identify how much funding has been generated based on rewards and how much is "dark money" that is not displayed by (# of Funders x Funding Level).

[Ryric]

Someone can check the back of the napkin numbers:

Visually you are able to account for ~37% of their Goal, and ~28% of their Total.

Not sure how that stacks up, obviously you need to take into account international shipping charges, and deck/other addons (as well as the add'l +$4 Int'l shipping per extra deck).

Code: Select all

Reward 	No. 	Total
1	2	2
7	25	175
8	50	400
9	64	576
10	5	50
12	2	24
15	4	60
16	2	32
17	18	306
30	19	570
40	2	80
41	1	41
45	5	225
60	6	360
80	6	480
88	7	616
100	2	200
120	2	240

Total		4437

[Encarded]

$7400 in one day, for that deck? Very fishy IMO. I had a very successful deck going, featured in the Staff Picks, Design section, etc and had over 1,000 backers and never got close to that kind of 1 day value. Not even remotely close.

If the number of backers really didnt rise much, you'd have to have a few people that bought a stupid-silly amount of decks, like 8+ gross which is highly unlikely. I really dont think too many resellers would pour that much into one deck design.

Strange things, kind of glad I didnt bother with that one.

[DukeBoy]

Howdy all,
Im sure it was a pledge add-on typo. They did a 11th hour sale for 2 decks at$11.59 and Im sure more than 1 typed $1159 and forgot the decimal point. I wonder how many people have overdraft protection that will still pay out,
Scott

[Adam]

I fear you may be right. over 7 grand in one day at the end is pretty strange. also Kickstarter has an issue with international backers pledging 11,95 instead of 11.95 KS takes it as $1195 if you notice on the last day of the project someone did back out of over $1000. I had one backer pledge 4500 during my project. I emailed them and it was an error and they corrected it before the end date.

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/staycl ... hart-daily" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Any backers what to copy and past the most recent update?

[MJF]

The most disappointing thing now, is that the deck will eventually get produced, and as a collector, I'll have to buy at least one of them *cringe*

But yeah, $7000+ in their final day??? I bet there's going to be an update and big mess if those turn out to be incorrect pledge levels...

*** Just noticed on the kicktracker page that on the final day, they LOST $1066.00 - my bet is now on "mispledging" and that some people are going to have huge overdrafts and this project will get cancelled/refunded. I can only hope, as I never cared for the deck to begin with.

[Sharpie]

This Kickstarter Update was just sent to backers:

"Hey guys, a few things to talk about quickly... As you can see the funding was "successful." HOWEVER, in reality this has happened in part because of one accidental pledge by one backer that is unable to pay the amount they pledged. What does this mean for us? Well as of now the actual funding we received is not enough to produce the deck, all of the add-ons, and ship all of it. We are working to make something happen, even put more money up ourselves to make this happen for all of our backers. There are a number of possible outcomes: 1) we are able to gather enough funding and you receive your rewards none the wiser... 2) we are able to gather some funding but not enough, this may lead to a compromise where we produce the deck and ship it but are not able to produce the add-ons. We would ultimately send you the value of the add-ons you ordered in playing card decks. 3) the last and most unfortunate possibility is we end up refunding all of your pledges... If it comes to this we will make absolutely sure everyone gets the refund they deserve... As we know more we will update you accordingly, please be patient as I have STILL not gotten back power... I hope to gather the funding to make this a reality for everyone! Thank you everyone for the support we have already received!"

Thoughts?

[MJF]

Wow. If I ever do a KickStarter project, I've now seen many of the things to watch out for and why you should be diligent with all the numbers especially when they seem way off like this one was...

[DukeBoy]

This is why I backed out. IT wll be a cluster to get refunds done and i'm not sure who would take the hit on KS and Amazon's part of the $. They are about 3K short of funding in my estimation. If it gets produced good for them, luckly the add-ons that they will be losing will not be that big of a loss (leather box and lapel pins).

[neongrey]

Yeah, the kickstarter goal has to take into account failed pledges because of things like this. Unfortunately you can really only give yourself so big a buffer.

[Adam]

Kickstarter send you an email every time someone makes a pledge, changes a pledge or cancels a pledge. This is 100% on Black Tie. if I got an email that said "Backer x has pledge $4,500" It would throw up so many red flags and I would immediately jump on fixing it. As you can see from the Kicktraq report the "bad" pledge came in with 3 days still remaining. PLENTY of time to fix the problem. If someone pledges an amount that seams too good to be true, Don't me a Fu$*ing idiot! IT IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

[neongrey]

3 days isn't as much time as you'd think-- you can't withdraw a pledge on the last day if doing so would cause the project to lose funding (to prevent troll pledges, basically). So even if you're on the ball and message someone as soon as it comes in (when realistically it could probably take up to about 12-18 hours if you're away from the computer, or have no power due to a hurricane like the project update suggested) to go 'hey did you accidentally stick a couple zeroes on there?' if the person who pledged isn't right at their computer to get the message, they might not be able to fix it in time.

I'm not really sure I buy the logic of blaming the designers of the deck for someone else's typo assuming good faith on everyone's part, regardless. They got nailed by one of the flaws in the system and to all appearances they're doing everything they can to make good on their obligations anyway. That's really good of them, really.