Laying a Few Cards on the Table

I'd like to share a few thoughts on the current status and the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

A few weeks ago, Kickstarter reached out to me and asked if I'd be interested in being one of the first creators to test their new Pledge Manager during its beta phase. I even had a Zoom meeting with two Kickstarter employees - despite normally avoiding video calls with strangers, especially in a language that isn't my native one... :D

Essentially, Kickstarter wants to offer something similar to what BackerKit does. The Pledge Manager would allow me to manually start the post-campaign process, where shipping costs would only be charged after the campaign ends. Shipping fees are always a big topic and often a reason why some potential backers hesitate to pledge. Honestly, that aspect of the Pledge Manager immediately appealed to me. Of course, I would have clearly stated that shipping costs would be charged after the campaign, but there's still a psychological difference between seeing those costs upfront and handling them later.

However, there was one major downside: taxes. The Pledge Manager would also apply taxes post-campaign, and these vary from country to country. That didn't sit well with me. It makes no sense for person A to pay €15 while person B has to pay €18 for the exact same product. With all these complex and inconsistent regulations, I ultimately decided against using the Pledge Manager. So, everything will remain as it has always been.

This week, I received the new shipping rates from Gambler’s Warehouse, and what can I say… the prices are insane. Because I don't want potential backers to drop out due to high shipping costs, I've decided to keep them as low as possible. This means I'll once again be covering part of the shipping costs myself - costs that should ideally go toward producing the decks.

Since my very first Kickstarter campaign, finding the right balance between pricing my decks fairly and keeping shipping costs reasonable has always been a tightrope act. One thing I can say for sure: in all 15 of my Kickstarter campaigns, I've always ended up paying more in shipping than what I actually received from backers for it. From a business perspective, this is probably one of the dumbest things to do. But at the end of the day, I care about making my work as accessible as possible to anyone who's interested.

Since the question came up about whether the "First Come First Served" bundle could be purchased twice, I reached out to my new Kickstarter contact and mentioned that it would actually be a smart idea if backers could adjust the quantity of a reward. Their response was:

"…thanks for the suggestion, the ability to add multiple items of the same reward has come up from creators before and I've logged your notes!"

So, with a bit of luck, we might not be too far from seeing this feature implemented.

I think I will make a few FCFS bundles available as add-ons for the upcoming campaign as well. I originally wanted to avoid this to keep the add-on list more organized, but if there is interest, I don’t want to take away the opportunity from you.

Right now, I’m switching between finalizing the decks and putting the finishing touches on the Kickstarter campaign page. There haven’t been many updates this month, but as you can see, I’m definitely not asleep on the job :D It’s already been an incredibly hectic year with everything going on around it, , so I just hope that enough people will show interest in the new campaign.

Thank you so much for your support!

Much love

Daniel