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Kickstarter Basics 101

Kickstarter; you’ve heard the term before and you may even already have the base idea of what is it, but you want a more detailed understanding of what it is, how a project works, and the risks involved. We’ve compiled a list of the top most questions asked about Kickstarter projects from what they are to all the details included in one. 

What Is A Kickstarter Project?

Kickstarter is a funding platform that helps creative projects get the funding that they need to get off the ground and be successful. All the funding comes from crowdsourcing, which means that donations from the public is where the money comes from. People choose to donate to what projects they would like to and back that idea with funding. 

How Does Kickstarter Work? 

The next question that most people ask is exactly how the process works. Basically, Kickstarter projects involve two main parties; backers and creatives. Creatives present their ideas and backers can choose whether or not to back these ideas. Creatives show off their ideas using a page that displays their prototypes, text, images, and other important information about their ideas. 

Kickstarter has reward levels for backers, making it so the larger the donation the greater the reward is. Once they have enough funding from enough backers, creatives can use the funds to jumpstart their idea and have the potential of seeing their idea became a successful start-up company. 

How You Can Get Your Kickstarter Project Approved 

Although Kickstarter accepts more than half of the projects submitted, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some turned away. Kickstarter has specific terms for projects getting approved and if you don’t meet them then you could have yours turned away. The number one reason that projects are turned away is a lack of compliance with the rules and guidelines. What are these guidelines and how can you avoid not be turned away because of lack of compliance with them? Kickstarter gives a full list of their rules and guidelines here. 

Browsing Through Projects 

If someone looks to back a project, then you browse through projects until you find one that you’re interested in backing. Even if you’re not interested in backing a project then you can still choose to browse through the selection of projects, many people do that as well. Kickstarter makes it easy for people to browse projects by breaking their projects up into categories, making it easy for you to find a particular project. 

Pledging Money To A Project 

If you do end up finding a project that you do want to back then Kickstarter makes it an easy process to pledge a project once you’ve found one. You can select the green Back This Project, choose a donation amount and reward and then Amazon’s checkout system will process your information. Kickstarter also covers the basics, ensuring that your credit card is only charged when and if the funding goal is met. 

In Conclusion 

Overall, the basics of how Kickstarter works can be confusing to those who don’t have experience with it before. In this article, we covered all the basics of what a Kickstarter project is, how one works, how to get your project approved, browsing projects, and pledging money to projects. We hope that after reading this article you have a better understanding of what Kickstarter is and how it works.