I love Kickstarter statistics!

Hey again Kickstarters and gamers, 

I hope you're having a great time - either working on your own Kickstarter project, or maybe developing the future's Settlers of Catan :)
Today I wanted to make a "light" article about Kickstarter. So I thought I would give you guys some statistics on my first Kickstarter project - Burning Suns (visit it here). 

Ever since I started to look into Kickstarter I've tried to analyse on the results of other's projects and see what I could make of it. That also means looking into already done statistics of Kickstarter.

Here are a few stats of mine :) 

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Stats from the first Burning Suns campaign
We collected a total of £17.579 of a £20.000 goal (88%)
According to Kickstarter's stats (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats), that almost leaves us in a league of our own. 

Quote > 81% of projects that raised more than 20% of their goal were successfully funded. 
Numbers of unsuccessful projects with 81-99% funding: 48 in the games category. 

Statistics I collected for successful campaigns in 2012 (over 220 campaigns in the table top games category), put up against our campaign stats. 

• Average campaign length: 34 days vs 37 days.
  
• Average amount of backers: 451 vs 272
• Average goal: £4.845 vs £20.000
• Average of total pledge: £22.125 vs £17.579
• Average pledge size: £44 vs £64
  
• Average amount of updates: 16 vs 10
• Average amount of comments: 251 vs 161
• Average amount of Facebook likes: 404 vs 409
• Average video length: 3m 24s vs 4m 6s. 
• Average amount of pledge levels: 14 vs 16
• Average (lowest) pledge level: £3,75 vs £3
• Average (highest) pledge level: £880 vs £220

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Some assumptions on statistics
Yea, it's assumptions I've done based on qualified guesses. It's not stats I've been able to pull, I'm just putting my 50 cents on the table ;)

6.365 people started my presentation video on my last campaign and 24% finished it too (and a small percentage must have seen it more than once). 
I have to assume that between 95-100% of the people backing my project saw some or all of the video. 
So I've had at least 6.365 initially interested people, of them 272 ended up backing (till the end, read my other post about how many cancelled during the campaign here) - a conversion percent of 4,27%. 

A quick calculation tells me a conversion percent of 4,92% would have been enough to reach the goal of approx. 313 backers. 

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What does the future hold for my next Kickstarter project?
As most of you probably have noticed, I'm currently previewing my new Burning Suns campaign - You can find it here!

Though nothing is "set in stone" for my Kickstarter campaign yet, I've still made some decisions we can put some statistics on. 

New goal: £55.000 (149% more than the average reached amount)
Which means that I need at least, 40 updates, 1004 FB likes.. and have to estimate around 623 comments during the campaign. 

Currently I'm planning on a 45 days campaign, meaning that we'll have to raise £1222 per day, where the average was £650 per day. 

We'll need approx. 860 backers (assuming the average pledge is the same). 
If we assume that the conversion rate will be 4,27% again, almost 20.000 people has to "start the intro video"...

Well, as we all know - statistics can be deceiving! As the Kicktraq website is addressing on their blog from time to time. 

Of course this is not a proof of neither success nor failure - but I think it's not a bad idea to do some estimations on the amount of work that lies ahead of you, when you want to start a Kickstarter campaign ;)

May you all have a pleasant day - and happy gaming and pledging! 
Best regards Emil

PS: Be sure to sign up for the Kickstarter alert, as we launch the campaign. 

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