18: Platform: Kickstarter versus Indiegogo

Zach Smith: (00:00) Funded Today Nation. Welcome back to the Funded Today Podcast. “How is your goal setting and your goal accomplishing coming along”. If you’ve not listened to last week's episode, “What the heck are you thinking” listen to that one right now I guarantee if you apply even half of what we taught in the master class you’re going to accomplish more goals this year and feel even more happy and satisfied with your progression in life than ever before. And remember if our show is helping you in any way, please spend a minute or two and gives a Five Star Rating on iTunes or any other podcast platform where you may be listening that really helps us to keep the show going. Now on today's episode, we’re finally going to answer the age-old question that we probably going to ask just as much as anything until this point there’s really never been a direct, straightforward answer to, the question “Which platform should I choose for launching my campaign Indiegogo or Kickstarter” the answer might surprise.

Announcer:  (00:54) The Funded Today Podcast is hosted by World Renowned Entrepreneurs and Business Experts, Thomas Alvord and Zach Smith. To get help with your next big business idea or to take your business to the next level go to fundedtoday.com.

Zach Smith:  (01:07) Welcome back to the show I am Zach Smith.

Thomas Alvord:  (01:10) And I'm Thomas Alvord.

Zach Smith:  (01:12) And in our last episode we talked about how you too can set goals the way multimillionaires do apply just a little bit of what we taught in that master class and you're going to get so much more done, you’ll wonder what you ever did before. Now today's episode we’re going to get a little bit more straightforward, less abstract, we’re answering the question once and for all about which Crowdfunding Platform is king Indiegogo or Kickstarter. Thomas, did we get ourselves into a loaded conversation by tackling this one head on.

Thomas Alvord:  (01:39) Pretty much I would say, but I actually want to step back real quick before I answer that and ask another question, is this even the right question to be asking, you really need to ask, “Does your product lend itself to Crowdfunding”.

Zach Smith:  (01:56) Woo, getting a little philosophical, I like it.

Thomas Alvord:  (01:59) And also practical because Crowdfunding is not necessarily the best platform for any launch right, if you have a SasS it might not be the best platform. If you're launching a restaurant in your local city, maybe not the best platform, if you haven't already, check out Episode Six which is the “7 P’s of Crowdfunding Success” and we talk about platform there. But yes, let's chat with his head on Zach.

Zach Smith:  (02:25) Alright.

Thomas Alvord:  (02:26) Kickstarter verse Indiegogo.

Zach Smith:  (02:27) Let’s do it.

Thomas Alvord:  (02:28) Which platform is superior?

Zach Smith:  (02:30) I’m excited for this one. Even though I know some heads are going to roll, a brief story to introduce some things. There's a perception and then there's a reality element and generally what I like to say is perception is a private experience, meaning my reality is true to me, Thomas’s reality is true to him, your reality is true to you, but what is the true reality, usually it’s somewhere in between. In this case, I attended the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas this year, we attend it every year it's a great way to kind of see all the different new technology products coming to life. This year's theme was kind of Internet of Things integrating Amazon and Alexa and Apple and all these different technologies into Internet of Things devices, so you can make a lamp – a Google home while also charging your phone and providing the light and coming on in the afternoon and coming on at night and all that kind of stuff IoT is the technical term for it. But anyway at CES this year Indiegogo had the biggest booth I've ever seen. I actually talked with Kickstarter recently and they guess that Indiegogo probably spend $1 million between their teams, the travel, the booth just their entire presence at CES. It looked massive; it looked like Indiegogo was the most successful company in the entire area. All of this to say there's a perception and there's a reality. Kickstarter decided to do what was called the Guerilla Approach and they approached every single booth, which is the team of a few people and they talked to all the different creators individually one-by-one but they didn’t even a booth presence well that was interesting.

Thomas Alvord:  (04:04) Well it’s just a different approach for the marketing but what is so interesting is the perception that as you went about, as we went about talking with creators they all seem to have in their mind that Indiegogo is a better platform than Kickstarter.

Zach Smith:  (04:21) Absolutely, that's – that seem to be the ringing theme and it's easy to see that when you look at the presence that Indiegogo have well we maybe include some pictures or something in the show notes on the website so you can see what we’re talking about. Here's Kickstarter, here's Indiegogo and which one looks bigger, which one looks more successful and creators had all kinds of different ideas in their mind. Well Kickstarter used to be really good, but Indiegogo has really gotten better in the last two years. Indiegogo – all these people hear and they’re going to do all these amazing things for my campaign and they promised me the sun, moon and star that's what one creator told us. And it was interesting to see just how important branding is first and foremost, but just how important it is to understand the reality of things and to understand the facts of the matter and to understand what is actually true. And that's when we first started asking the question which platform is better Kickstarter or Indiegogo; we did this about five years ago when we first started tracking data.

Thomas Alvord:  (05:19) When we first started back in 2014 Kickstarter and Indiegogo were probably like how anybody else experienced it. They seem exactly the same, you launch a product you give 5% and you get backers and it might be a little different one’s green, one’s pink and what’s the difference and we even wondered and had this question and talk to others who had experience in this space. It wasn't until we actually delve in and looked at the data, both from a data standpoint as well as our own experience running campaigns, hundreds of campaigns, thousands of campaigns on both platforms that we were able to see wow, here's the platform that people should choose. And we've been tracking data, talking about the actual facts and figures you’ve heard us say this before “We hate theory”, we want to know what the facts are and what someone should actually do right, no theory what are the facts. We've been tracking data for over five years between Kickstarter and Indiegogo and we have over $5 billion in pledges that we track across different campaigns across the platforms and have over 700,000 campaigns between Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We have a ton of data and our analysis is objective and you don't need to take our word for it, you can actually go to www.funded.today/stats again that's www.funded.today/stats and you can see at any point in time how much Kickstarter has raised for campaigns and how much Indiegogo has raised four campaigns and you can see how many campaigns launched. And when you look at the numbers, the numbers don't lie Kickstarter is better than Indiegogo.

Zach Smith:  (07:25) It's not even close. So our data after looking at $5 billion in pledges across 700,000 campaigns again completely objective we want to take the emotion completely out of it because at Funded Today we have the same. We believe in client or customer lifetime value and we don't have any preference on who we like better Kickstarter or Indiegogo whatever all we care about is facts, all we care about is numbers, all we care about is what everything is saying and so if there were to be a new platform that popped up called Kick Gogo and it’s a mixture of Indiegogo and Kickstarter and it converted 10 times better and raised millions more in pledges we’d start talking about Kick Gogo but the data shows definitively that Kick Starter is better. At the time of recording this podcast Indiegogo had 3,749 live campaigns, they had $3.6 million in live pledges, the average pledge therefore was $960 per campaign. Kickstarter 2,681 live campaigns $15.4 million in live pledges, average pledge per campaign $5,749 this data will vary of course based on the data and the date ranges that you’re going on, but you can see this anytime like Thomas said it’s funded.today/stats. Another point and this is one I like to talk about quite a bit if you just go to similarweb.com, this is a way to compare websites you’ll see that there are 16.9 million visitors on Indiegogo at any given month, on Kickstarter there’s 36.7 million when you have a higher Alexa rank, meaning we have more traffic to your website that shows that you are a bigger website and if you're a bigger website that means more people are coming to your website and if more people are coming to your website that means more possibilities for people to pledge for more campaigns. Kickstarter also dominates traffic, Alexa rank as similarweb again the third party source shows and when you’d ask the question well why should I even launch a Crowdfunding campaign, why shouldn’t I just launch my own website here is the easiest answer to that. Does your website get 36.7 million visitors? If it does launch on your own website it’s way better to do that you don't need Kickstarter, you don’t need Indiegogo but if you get less than that you can capitalize on the traffic from Kickstarter and Indiegogo and raise a lot more money off of their third-party visitors and their brand and their reputation. In this case the obvious answer based on average pledges per campaign, based on total visitors that come to the site both unique and total visitors Kickstarter is definitively and without fail and has always been this way and has gotten stronger over the last two years, not weaker based on all the data that we look at and we look at data on the daily Kickstarter is the choice, it’s not even a debate.

Thomas Alvord:  (10:13) And again you can view any time frame the numbers we just shared, that Zach just shared are for the time frame of when we recorded this podcast and the similarweb it is actually a little higher in the summer months because when we are recording this right now it's actually in the slower month for Crowdfunding. Again funded.today/stats and you can go see for yourself how many campaigns are live on each platform and how many pledges are live on those campaigns and you can see what the average amount raised is per campaign. And this might change as Zach was saying in the future, Indiegogo could be better or another platform could come about and if that were the case we’re going to show those numbers because as a third-party we want to steer people and creators and entrepreneurs and business owners to the platform that they're gonna have the most success with so Kickstarter is the best.

Zach Smith:  (11:09) We also have anecdotal experiences too that we might share I mean, I think of Samsara a luggage company they raised nearly $300,000 on Kickstarter but Indiegogo again sun, moon and stars type promise they have amazing customer support, they have amazing sales teams, Kickstarter doesn’t even practice sales really and they only have an email address for customer support most the time and Samsara was hooked, they really want to go on Indiegogo, well they went on Indiegogo their campaign completely failed, it failed so bad that they canceled it and it's hidden from their website now, Indiegogo has it hidden for whatever reason and they canceled, they launched on Kickstarter and again $300,000 roughly raised. That's just one example of all of the hundreds of campaigns we worked with it. Started on Indiegogo failed, came to Kickstarter had success or they just started on Kickstarter originally you're always going to raise more money if the idea is the same on Kickstarter versus Indiegogo no matter what you can do exact same marketing, exact same everything doesn’t matter.

Thomas Alvord:  (12:06) And one more anecdote Zach, we will run marketing to a Kickstarter campaign and then afterwards we will transition that campaign to Indiegogo InDemand which is another episode that will be either the next episode or maybe it's two more episodes down the road discussing Indiegogo InDemand. But what's interesting we will make the Indiegogo page exactly the same as the Kickstarter page, same images, same pledge levels, same amount and we will have the exact same Ad, the exact same image and we will run traffic to the Indiegogo page or the Indiegogo InDemand page and it will convert three or four times worse than the Kickstarter campaign. For whatever reason everything else is exactly the same, but Kickstarter converts better, Indiegogo converts worse. It's just how it is, we don't know why it’s just how it is.

Zach Smith:  (13:09) And one more thing I want to share on this point and again we're beating this thing dead. You might find a lot of articles maybe another blog post, maybe a podcast I don't know and they'll say “Well it depends Kickstarter or Indiegogo it depends”. We’re sorry it doesn't depend and if you want to take us up on that offer I’ve got $1 million that says you cannot prove us wrong, it doesn't depend if you know what you're talking about and you actually have experience in Crowdfunding and you’ve raised nearly $250 million for 3,000 campaigns across the world like we have it doesn't depend. Trust me, we love Indiegogo and I wanted to switch topics a little bit and say why we love Indiegogo and why they're an amazing company, but we still cannot run campaigns on Indiegogo at least to start because of the fact. Well number one, Indiegogo way better customer support, they will call you, they will talk on the phone with you, they have salespeople, they have customer support team, they have account managers if they get behind your idea they can get really excited they’ll – again promise to sun, moon and stars they’ll do your newsletter, they’ll do marketing for you, they’ll do all these wonderful great things problem is all those wonderful great things even with Kickstarter doing nothing still raise you seven times less, 10 times less I’ve even seen a 100 times less before, despite everything they give it doesn't work and some of those hookups come with some strings being attached where they’ll promise all these things if you raise $30,000 first, if your raise $50,000, if you raise $100,000 so it sounds really good. Then you raise a $30,000 and then they do what they do and maybe it raises you another $10,000 or maybe you never get to the $30,000 and so they locked you in the Indiegogo but you didn't do your part for the contract and therefore they don't have to do their part, well guess well on Kickstarter if you just do what we say in our episodes you don't even need Indiegogo, you don’t even need Kickstarter to do anything that they do, you don’t need their newsletters, you don’t need their support you can do everything that we teach, leverage the platform and still have a ton of success.

Thomas Alvord:  (15:06) To the point you make Zach, Indiegogo cares about the entrepreneur, they care about helping creators. That’s not to say that Kickstarter doesn't but Indiegogo makes that manifesto, they’re going to talk to you, they’re going to help you like Zach said and Indiegogo they also support marketing, they are happy when you run marketing. On Indiegogo just like on any other webpage basically in the entire world you can place a Facebook conversion pixel, meaning that if you're running Facebook Ads and somebody makes a purchase, you can know somebody made a purchase from this ad to this audience. Kickstarter even after 10 years or eight years of being in existence still doesn't let you place a Facebook pixel and I think there's a reason for that they like more the artist type, the documentary, the homegrown right they don't like necessarily helping businesses raise half a million even though that's the best platform to raise the money on, so Kickstarter in a way it succeeds in spite of itself. Although I think recently they have made some strides and...

Zach Smith:  (16:20) And Thomas you make a good point because you were talking about earlier well we don't necessarily know why Kickstarter converts better or what other new website in the future might convert better. One thing I think that makes Kickstarter convert better and this is one reason why you might go to Indiegogo, Kickstarter has a very strict trust and safety team, their trust and safety team evaluates campaigns before you launch and throughout the launch of your campaign and they will suspend things that they believe are rip-offs, not new, not going to be able to happen potentially are scammers, Indiegogo has gotten better at that but for several years they were pretty bad and there was lots of scammy terrible things on Indiegogo and I think it hurt the overall community of backers those are people who give money to campaigns and so Indiegogo’s reputation is such that you can be a – they’re a little more lenient, but because they are more lenient, but because they help creators more this actually has hurt them in terms of their conversion rate and the ability to raise money because backers, the people who give money simply do not support Indiegogo the way they do Kickstarter because the trust of Kickstarter is a little bit higher. And then we get asked this question all the time you want to shoot for million bucks, a lot of people are like I want to raise $1 million I need to raise at least a million, that's my number I want to be there. On Indiegogo your chances to raise a million are 0.03%, on Kickstarter 0.08%. We hear a lot of people say “Well Indiegogo has a lot of Million Dollar campaigns” your chances of Million Dollar Campaigns on Kickstarer are nearly three times higher, so let’s just dispel that myth right now as well.

Thomas Alvord:  (17:48) And again, people can visit funded.today/stats and for any time frame you could look at those numbers say from January 1st to June 1st of 2017 how many campaigns raised a $1 million, and how many campaigns were launched, or in the current year how many campaigns have launched and how many have raised $1 million, again the numbers will change, but we want you to have that data so you’re not simply taking our word for it. And again we like Indiegogo either a Crowdfunding platform we love Crowdfunding, we respect Indiegogo they try really hard and they put as best they can the interest of the backers and the community and the creators in the forefront.

Zach Smith:  (18:40) And they’ve always treated Funded Today really well too.

Thomas Alvord:  (18:42) So that puts us in a hard spot and we haven't really shared this before, but...

Zach Smith:  (18:48) Oh story time again.

Thomas Alvord:  (18:49) We figured we were simply to really help remove the myth that or perception that Indiegogo is better and part of it is once we started discussing and sharing with people that Indiegogo is better – oh excuse me that Kickstarter is better Indiegogo started silencing us in a way making us – so we couldn't share our experience or our expertise or make it look like we didn’t know what we were talking about and...

Zach Smith:  (19:24) This is a very interesting story and it circles about some of the online community so it's actually good to kind of set the record straight once and for all. We are – were whatever you want to say Indiegogo’s number one affiliate partner, we had raised millions more than anybody else and it wasn't even close. In the show notes if you want to see this definitive proof there's something called the Wayback Machine and the Wayback Machine logs all the websites in all the world at any given point in time. So if something changes that's okay, there's a record of what it used to say well Indiegogo had a partner page called indiegogo.com/partners and Funded Today was the number one partner. The way they rank partners was based upon total money raised, Funded Today raised the most money we were the number one partner. Problem was everything we’re telling you in this episode we were telling people and Indiegogo is a great website, they get a lot of traffic as we said as well and so we had a lot of people who would find us on there and say “You guys are great, you’ve raised tons of money” and they knew we raised tons of money because it was fully transparent they could see all the money that we raised and independently evaluate that we've raised more money than anybody else, all other agency, all other people and it wasn’t even close and so they want to hire us well here's what we would do.

 We would say “Look yes we’re Indiegogo’s number one partner we’ve raised the most money on their platform, but all the data says that you need to run on Kickstarter if you want to raise more money and a lot more money”. Literally we do the exact same thing on Kickstarter we raise you more money and so obviously Indiegogo didn’t like that why would any business like that and so they took down their partner’s page and essentially silenced us. Now I would probably do the same if I were them that’s a smart business decision if you have a website and you have a lots of people wanting to come to your page and everybody is and somebody on that page is telling them you go to Kickstarter not Indiegogo well of course you're probably going to need to silence them. But you can see but even though they changed the page, even though they deleted everything and this was in April 25th, 2017 I believe we were their number one partner and still there it has nothing to do of falling out or anything like that, like I said we still like Indiegogo in fact we send more campaigns to what's called Indiegogo InDemand which we’ll be talking about in a future episode and that is a way to raise money for your campaign after your Kickstarter we love it Kickstarter for whatever reason, never invented this system, so as soon as you're done raising money on Kickstarter while you are manufacturing and getting ready to ship and fulfill of all your Kickstarter backers you can continue to raise money on Indiegogo InDemand and set a date to ship a few months after you shipped all your Kickstarter backers make your price a little higher because people didn't jump on-board when you were on Kickstarter and still raise a lot of money which can help with all the headaches that come we’re trying to ship and fulfill a new product and get all your stuff figured out on Kickstarter it’s a wonderful service that Indiegogo offers and we love working with them on Indiegogo InDemand and we recommend everybody to first do a Kickstarter campaign and if your Kickstarter campaign is successful to immediately transition to an Indiegogo InDemand campaign page. But of course Indiegogo wants people to do Indiegogo and then do Indiegogo InDemand and so Indiegogo had to silence us because that's just a smart business decision we can’t blame them, but we also have to be honest to you, Funded Today Nation and anybody who decides to hire Funded Today for our services because without fail, you will raise more money on Kickstarter than you will on Indiegogo case closed there is nothing more to it and I have yet to be proven wrong on this point.

Thomas Alvord:  (23:01) And everything we do we want to be transparent and that's why for the Wayback Machine you can go to the website, its archive.org and just type in indiegogo.com/partners and go to the last snapshot of that page, which was April 25th, 2017 and that was the last time that web page was saved before it was taken down and Funded Today was the number one Indiegogo partner and we had raised over $42 million, the next biggest campaign or agency was $21 million, and then after that $20 million, $13 million, $11 million. So we were double, or triple what the other agencies were – in addition to us actually sending the majority of our campaigns to Kickstarter whereas number of those agencies were only Indiegogo.

Zach Smith:  (23:57) And Thomas at one point I remember kind of an inside discussion going on at Funded Today that we had raised more money than all the other agencies combined on Indiegogo and we weren't even sending people to Indiegogo we were starting on Kickstarter and then going to Indiegogo so...

Thomas Alvord:  (24:12) That's right.

Zach Smith:  (24:14) That's one our – we’ll brag about that one a little bit I think we can. So there you have it this is a shorter episode, but I hope you understand now very clearly the fees are the same, Kickstarter’s customer support is going to be nothing compared to Indiegogo’s but everything else, apples-to-apples, oranges-to-oranges, Kickstarter dominates Indiegogo in every metric that matters to you as a creator and the only reason you should launch on Indiegogo is it for whatever reason Kickstarter won’t allow your campaign to launch there, if that happens do it otherwise, the battle isn't even close. So we hope you enjoyed this episode, again if you found it helpful, if you made a life altering decision and decided to go to Kickstarter instead of Indiegogo and you had a success story please let us know about it we love to hear those stories, we love when we hear that we’ve helped out a creator and helped them raise more money to bring their next big idea to life. Give us a Five Star Rating review on iTunes and any other platforms because it really does help us move this podcast forward and because we really love hearing from you.

 Alright Funded Today Nation it is time for the Funded Today Products of the Week I’ve got a really cool one this week it is the SuperTank by Zendure these guys are serial Kickstarter creators, this is their 6th campaign that they have worked on. This device promises to power your phone for a week while recharging your phone in just one hour. It's big, it's fast, it's nice I know when I'm on the road I hate I have to charge my phone and I love when my phone charges quickly. Imagine being able to use one device to charge your phone for an entire week that might relieve some headaches with trying to carry around cords and all kinds of different things. I love it AppleInsider said “Zendure SuperTank is the best battery pack we’ve ever used” and Android Police said “SuperTank battery promises a 100 watt output over USB Type C” I mean this is impressive it’s a very powerful device the SuperTank by Zendure recharge your phone for an entire week very quickly within an hour.

Thomas Alvord:  (26:16) My product of the week is for Apple lovers. If you have an Apple Watch this is for you. If you don't well, keep listening I guess it's called Groove Watch Band on Kickstarter right now and they are unique straps that you can put on your Apple Watch and they have amazing designs, so you don't have this bland design and they have what's called a comfort arch, so you know how if you're wearing a watch and the moisture traps up and it gets kind of sweaty, yes you don't have that issue with this and they have grooves in it with the design to make it so its breathable and they have a very strong warranty if you don’t like it, if you break it, you lose it whatever happens they have a warranty, and obviously I can't really describe the designs just in words here, but check it out they have really awesome designs and the reviews for their product is amazing. So that's the Groove Watch Band.

Zach Smith:  (27:15) And on our next episode we are going to go down a little bit of a different way we’re going to break down the Kickstarter Algorithm so you can generate more funds for your next venture, it’s pretty mysterious, it’s pretty mystical no one’s ever quite figured it out, we’ve get some answers that I think you’re gonna want to hear and it will make all the difference when you launch your Kickstarter campaign. Don't know what the Kickstarter Algorithm is, don’t worry about that either we’ve got you covered. So tune in Wednesday of next week to get the scoop. And as always remember, don't wait until tomorrow get Funded Today.

Announcer:  (27:50) Funded Today is the worldwide leader in Rewards Based Crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Combined they have raised over $200 million and counting for thousands of new ideas and inventions worldwide. If you got an idea for a new product or invention visit fundedtoday.com to speak with one of their experts.