I have been following Kickstarter on and off for the past 3 years. I was and still am fascinated by people's ideas. Over a year ago I have also started advising developers and game designers running Kickstarter campaigns. For example, I helped with Demigods Rising (I was also asked to help them with their second campaign launching June 9th, 6 PM GMT+1).

What I’ve learned about the platform in the past 36 months is that a great idea and amazing team isn’t enough; at least not anymore. Back when Kickstarter was just another emerging platform, anybody who launched a campaign became an instant story on every media outlet worldwide.

Today, launching a campaign isn’t enough. However, many people tend to forget about this tiny detail and start a poorly prepared campaign with an unrealistic goal, and fail in the end. Remember, only ~38% of all Kickstarter projects get funded.

What can we do to increase our chances? Well, you can follow these 5 simple steps to launch an effective campaign and increase your chance of succeeding.

In order to succeed on Kickstarter, one has to reach his/her campaign’s goal. The only way to do that is to convince people to invest their own money. And it’s much easier to ask for money people who are already familiar with the project.

Remember, the initial 48 hours are crucial for your project. You have two days to collect as much money as possible, and your initial followers can help you do that.

Tyler Sigma, Executive Producer and Game Designer at Red Hook Games (Darkest Dungeon), got his campaign funded in less than 24 hours.

Another successful project that started building fan-base prior to his Kickstarter campaign was Rob Lockhart (Codemancer).

If you’re an indie developer with no budget, connections inside the industry and big projects in your portfolio the worst thing you can do is launch your campaign without a solid strategy behind it. And researching should be a the very top of your list.

Scott Stephan (Aegis Defenders) did his research and made sure that everything’s in place for the launch date.

Also, check if there are any big events or games’ releases coming up soon. Trust me, no one will pay attention to your project during Call of Duty release week. Guys behind Twin Souls, one of my favorite up and comers from last year, made that mistake.

The very first thing anybody sees when clicking on a Kickstarter campaign button is the project’s video. If the trailer is bad you instantly lose a potential backer. And it’s crazy to see so many people forgetting about it. Twin Souls created a not-so-appealing video for their campaign and see what happened:

Unfortunately, the problem is there are almost no good “Kickstarter video” guides available on the Internet, so if you’re not a video producer yourself you should hire someone to do it for you. However, you can still find some general guidelines like this small piece written again by Scott Stephan (Aegis Defenders)

This is one of the hardest parts when creating your campaign; besides the video of course. Evaluating your needs and your project’s potential is extremely hard. My best advice is to calculate how much money do you REALLY need and just go for it.

Don’t go for a lower goal just to get funded because eventually this might not be enough. Don’t try to grab more than you should because most of the time being greedy will kill your campaign. Matt Hackett wrote in his Crypt Run post mortem:

Running a Kickstarter campaign isn’t you just pressing the button. You have to answer e-mails, questions on Kickstarter, Twitter and Facebook. Get in touch with the press, bloggers and more. It’s basically your second 9-5. And if you won’t make it your second job for those 30 days you might as well just give up right now.

One of the best campaigns I’ve seen in the past few months was Dungeon Saga by Mantic Games. Their description is on point, their video hits the target audience, they were available almost 24/7 (I believe 2-4 people taking shifts), they did arrangements with the press and kept constantly talking about their newest game wherever they could. And that’s how you should run your campaign too.

Here are the links I didn't manage to incorporate directly into the article. I strongly suggest you read them before you launch your campaign. You can also research hundreds of other post-mortems and guides online. Good luck!

Scraps Game post mortem
Dwarf Cops post mortem

KS post mortems to read before launching a crowdfunding campaign

Strike Suit Zero Kickstarter post mortem

Crystal Quest Kickstarter Funding Fail post mortem

Moon Hunters Kickstarter post mortem

How to successful Kickstarter

Stasis Game post mortem

Highlands post mortem

And an amazing guide by Aksel Junkkila from bugbyte.fi - MUST READ for anyone interested in running a campaign on Kickstarter. The Ultimate Kickstarter And Steam Greenlight Guide.