Unlocking the secrets of successful Direct-to-Consumer businesses

With the growth of technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning. There are two realities that we cannot ignore:

• The first is that e-commerce has become a selling model on its own and is growing bigger and bigger each year.
• The second is the important role that the physical response play in e-commerce. While all the transactions happen online, products need to be shipped to customers using different transportation means. The products delivery is a basic component of e-commerce and this can represent either a huge asset or a clear pain for your business.
  

‍

While it can be an easy task at the beginning of your e-commerce journey when you just have 20 orders to fulfill per day, managing your logistics can get a bit complicated as your business grows. There are stocks, warehousing, transportation, delivery, licenses and customs to consider. It is time consuming as you’ll have to deal with so many things out of your area of expertise. That’s why we believe the perfect solution is turning to a third party logistics or tech solution.

‍

^{3PL is an abbreviation of Third-Party Logistics, it is used in logistics and supply-chain management to refer to outsourced part of a business’ distribution and fulfillment services such as warehousing or transportation.}

‍

Using a 3PL or a Tech Solution that integrates all the logistics processes allows you to focus on your core activity.

It can help increase efficiency, cut costs and improve customer service. Now the hardest part is to find the right logistics provider for your business and that is why we designed a list of indicators that you should consider before choosing the best option for your e-commerce.

‍

1. The business needs:

‍

You first need to define what are your needs in logistics.

• Do you need a warehouse to store your products?
• Where do you ship your products? Locally? Nationally? or Globally?
• Which regions do you ship to?
• Do you ship products that require refrigeration? Do you have large products to ship?
• Do you have large volumes of orders to fulfill?
• Do you have a lot of B2B order or B2C order? Are you partnering with retailers a lot?
• Do you have a delivery time to respect?

‍

Answering these questions will help you determine which type of services you need and will save you some time during your logistics provider research. This is also the perfect solution to clearly define your expectations from your future partner.

‍

For example, let’s imagine that I have an e-commerce website where I sell statues of movie characters. I’ll for sure need a warehouse to store the products.

‍

My shipments would require a lot of care as they’re fragile. The products are large and they need to be treated carefully. By answering these questions I determined my needs and thus which type of services I want from my logistics provider.

‍

2. Area of expertise:

‍

Most logistics providers have a special expertise in a certain area (activity) of logistics whether it is transportation, warehousing or distribution. (Don’t worry, there are still some who do cover and master all of the logistics activities).

‍

For example: some are experts in returns such as Coliback, others like UPS are experts in transportation and some like Bigblue integrate all of these solutions into one platform.

‍

So once you define your needs and you get to know what are the strengths and weaknesses of each provider, you can finally target and shortlist the 3PLs or Tech solutions that meet your short-term and long-term needs.

‍

3. Customer Service:

‍

Your customer probably doesn’t see any difference between the company delivering their order and the company they’re buying their products from; for him it is all the same experience. Your logistics provider then represents your brand.

So choosing a provider that offers a good customer service by managing claims, tracking deliveries and answering your customer’s queries will help you reduce your workload and allow you to reallocate your resources to other core activities such as your marketing or your website development.

‍
A good customer service can be a real value proposition, it helps increase customer satisfaction and thus increase sales and brand recognition.

‍

^{Remember: A happy customer is a loyal customer.}

‍

4. Scalability:

‍

At the very beginning of your journey, it is better to manage your logistics by yourself as you have a small number of orders to fulfill but as soon as you gain momentum and orders start to flow. The best solution is to look for a logistics provider to work with over the long term. It takes time to find the perfect fit and you don’t want to repeat the process again in six months.

‍

That's why your logistics provider needs to be able to handle your current needs, as well as the needs you’ll have in the future as you continue to grow. So flexibility and scalability are key.

‍

Finding a partner who has the capacity to scale with your business is crucial for the long run as you both will probably need to adjust your processes to meet the demand without compromising your performances, efficiency, revenues and quality of service.

‍

You also need to make sure that the logistics provider is flexible enough and has the right infrastructure to sustain that growth over time. For example:

• Can your logistics provider immediately take extra inventory?
• Can they expand along with you if you reach new markets?
• Can they support you during your peak seasons?
• Can they scale back down when your peak season is over?

‍

To reach this flexibility level and grow together, you’ll need to both work really closely to understand your planning and forecasting.

‍

5. Technology and integrations:

‍

Every e-commerce delivery includes the information flow that goes with it. So for customers, e-commerce owners or logistics providers, it is important to get the right information at the right moment.

‍

Choosing a partner who’s using the latest management software is highly important as it enables you to have real-time data and thus take the right decisions quickly and optimize the quality of service.

‍

Logistics providers who invest in technology have the necessary resources to make the right changes to adapt their processes to your needs. It is also a proof that they’re always on point with the latest innovations which means that you’ll have access to software and hardware innovations that you wouldn’t be able to invest in by yourself.

‍

Another important factor to take into account is the integration of these systems with the current CMS you use to manage your store.

‍

6. Relationship:

‍

When you choose a logistics provider, you entrust them with your brand, so it is crucial to partner with a company that understands and accepts your company’s purpose, values and behaviors.

‍

The right logistics service provider for your business will get to know your needs and use their expertise of the industry to align their goals with yours.This will help both of you build trust, which is a critical factor in fostering quality business relationships and shared long term success.

‍

So before choosing your future logistics provider, make sure to also understand their culture and vision by answering the following questions:

• Why they do what they do?
• What is their purpose?
• How do they treat their employees?
• How do they treat their customers?
• What are their values and beliefs?
• How do they see themselves in 5, 10 or 15 years?
  

‍

Answering these questions will give you a clear idea of your potential partner’s culture and mindset. Partnering with a like minded businesses ensures that you go together in the same direction while supporting each other to grow.

‍

7. Price:

‍

The market is highly competitive and you’ll find a big range of offers with different pricing.

‍

Make sure to select a logistics provider with a transparent pricing policy and who provide an offer with no hidden charges. You also should consider all cost items in order to compare apples to apples.

‍

Price while important is not the main factor to take into consideration. Choosing the cheapest price might not be the perfect solution for your business. For example, shipping everything from China will for sure be ship but like the case of drop shipping companies, you can encounter many weeks of delay.

‍

Companies with significantly lower prices than those of the market are often less reliable and usually fall short on customer service, that’s why you should double check all of the previous factors if you consider working with low price provider.

‍

Don't forget that choosing a cheap price isn't the best solution if your products aren't delivered on time, or if you have to reallocate your resources to resolves claims and problems, or if you customers aren't satisfied with the service. Losing profitability and revenues due to a cheap but poor logistics service isn't worth the shot.

‍

Look for a provider that offers the best optimum between service, purpose and cost.

‍

‍

Finally, investing in a logistics provider that will match your needs, help you satisfy your customers, enhance your brand image and can grow with you overtime is probably the best investment you can make to reach new heights with your e-commerce website.

And now let us know which factors you think e-commerce owners should consider before selecting their logistics provider ?

With the development of technology and the rise of platforms such as Kickstarter, launching a creative project has never been easier. It just takes a matter of hours to start your campaign and bring your project to life, but (yes there is always a but) in order for your campaign to be successful, there’s one factor that you shouldn’t underestimate: your community.

Nowadays, community has become a buzzword extensively used when it comes to brand image and marketing. So before moving forward in this topic, let’s answer the following question:

What do I mean by community? It’s pretty simple: a crowd of people that share the same passion and interest. These people are the ones who follow your project and are engaged in it.

Why having a community is important for you and your project? Because it will help you build trust and gain credibility. It will allow you to add value to your followers’ lives, while at the same time, creating advocates for your project. It organically increases word of mouth around your project and thus gives it more exposure

Building a community before launching your Kickstarter campaign is a crucial part for your campaign’s success. The tricky part is that it takes time, effort and consistency to engage these people to your cause. The perfect timing to start building your community is 6 to 9 months prior to launch. In the following paragraphs, I’m going to share with you some steps to follow to help accomplish this:‍

1. Define your community.

At the beginning of everything, 9 months prior to launch, you should ask yourself the right questions. For example, let’s suppose that I want to create a card game about Llamas. Why Llamas, right? Well, because Llamas are funny, fluffy and cute. Don’t you see them everywhere now? On social media, clothes or birthday cakes. Forget about unicorns, llamas are the new trend. Now it’s time to ask myself the right questions.

Who is this for ? Card game lovers, friends who like to spend time having fun while playing games, llama lovers.

What is my target ? Individuals who love to socialize around card games.

Who are my potential partners ? Gamer bars and cafes, gaming magazines, gaming shops etc…

Who can potentially support me ? Family, friends, card games specialists etc...

What is the positioning of my product or service ? A funny game to play for groups who want to chill and spend quality time.

Answering these questions will help you get a clear vision about your project and its environment. By clearly defining your project’s positioning, you’ll be able to identify your target and define its main characteristics, behaviors and interests.

Based on these parameters, you’ll have the opportunity to plan the most efficient communication strategy to specifically reach your target audience.

Your community is not limited to your audience. It can be other people that share the same passion as you. In my case, I can contact the other card games creators. This would give me an opportunity for exposure, potential support and feedback from industry experts.

2. Reach out to your first circle and start building up from there.

After personal savings, family and friends are second on the list for funding startups. Not only are these the people that love and trust you, but they’re also the ones that believe in your potential and want you to succeed. Getting backing from them can be a good way to get feedback on what to improve. It is also a factor of motivation as their trust will make you more prompt to succeed.

A good example on how family support can help you achieve your dreams and grow your project is the story of Bhavin Turakhia and how he became a self-made billionaire. He started his journey back in 1998 when he received a 375$ loan from his father to launch his first tech venture. He went on to create many startups that were sold for millions a few years after, and now Bhavin is one of the most influential entrepreneurs in India.

So just like Bhavin, don’t be afraid to seek support from your family and friends. They might be the ones to first back you for your project launch. Getting backings from the first moments of your campaign’s launch gives you momentum and exposure on Kickstarter’s website due to its algorithm and thus attracts more and more backers.

In my case, no one is a fan of llamas or card games in my circle, but I know for sure that they will help me by backing my project to reach my $10 000 funding goal. Securing double the number of backers needed for the funding as soon as the campaign is launched, is essential to gain the momentum I need to exceed my aim.

3. Join forums and groups that share the same interest:

People usually join Facebook groups or forums to talk about things they are passionate about or to meet people that share the same interests. So look for some groups related to your passion or project and join them.

You’ll have access to a mine of resources, content and debates which are made by people who are extremely passionate about what they do. This can be a strong learning opportunity for you as well.

Take part in the discussion and spend a few weeks interacting with other forum members. Get involved in the community and show your engagement by commenting on others' posts.

Share your project in these forums, as you can be sure to find at least a small group of people that will be passionate about your idea and will give you feedback.

After fulfilling these steps, you’d then already have a small community who’s interested in what you do and is ready to back your project. This is a good start, but this is just the beginning! You’ll need to put in more effort now to attract a new audience. In the following paragraphs, I’ll list some actions that you can frequently repeat to grow your community:‍

4. Build, update and segment your community list.

This list is the one that regroups all of your community’s data. In other words, all the contact details (names, email addresses, social media and phone numbers) of all the people that are interested in your project will be well categorized.

Reading this, it might seem like a mountain to climb, but a database can be any normal Google Spreadsheet. You can find here a template (database) to get you started.

Once the list is big enough, start segmenting it. “Is this person a member of my family, a friend, a potential partner etc… how did I reach this person ?”.

Segmenting your list and organizing by groups, will help you in later stages to share specific content and send tailored newsletters. This will improve your chances of getting better feedback from your audience. The following graph shows the results you can get from segmenting your list.

Collecting this data can be hard but you can start slowly, by asking people for their contact details on forums. Another good way is to add a small space on your website for people to leave their email addresses for receiving updates on your project.

There’s no shame to start small. A community doesn’t need thousands of people. We call it a community as soon as there are 2 people who share the same passion and interests.

5. Create content that gives value to your readers

As Gary Vaynerchuk famously said: “Brand storytelling isn’t about pushing advertising, it’s about bringing value” and this is what separates the successful projects from those that fail. Your content strategy should focus on giving value rather than selling a product, a project or a service.

What do I mean by making content that brings value ?

It is all visual, verbal or written communication that you expose to your community, and it should at least answer one of your followers’ questions or problems, or simply help them learn something new about what they’re interested in.

So make sure to create content that brings an added value. It will be your main tool for driving traffic and building engagement around your project.

Creating content that resonates in your tribe’s mind can be difficult, but if you’ve followed the first steps described in this article, you’d have everything ready to produce some kickass content. Once you know your segments, their interests and their behavior, you’ll not only be able to understand which type of people you’ll be addressing yourself to, but you’ll also know which channel you should use to reach them.

The next step is to find what you should write about. I personally use a simple technique which consists of picking some of my followers’ questions and starting from there, creating content that would help them solve those problems and answer those questions.

A good example for someone who produces valuable content is Jamey Stegmaier. He successfully raised over $3.2 million for his Kickstarter campaigns, and he shares his insights, mistakes, and lessons learned on his blog. I recommend checking it out. ‍

6. Use paid social media ads as a promotional tool

This is a huge debate within the kickstarter community. Many experts and kickstarter lessons recommend not to use social media such as: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc. as a promotional tool, while many creators have seen a huge ROI from their social media campaigns.

I personally recommend you to use it because out of all the tools you can have access to. Social media ads are the cheapest and most effective way to reach your audience.

Which platform to use ? Facebook ? Instagram ? Snapchat ?

The most important is to define your target, based on which, you'll be able to choose the platform to invest in.

Facebook (and thus Instagram as well) for example, offer you the opportunity to use their Behavior Targeting and Interest targeting. These 2 features help you target people based on purchase behavior, purchase intent and other behavioral characteristics, or based on people’s interests like activities, hobbies and liked pages.

Another feature that Facebook offers is Pixel. It helps measure conversions and optimize your ads. It also provides the opportunity to track the actions people take on your website, such as reading your amazing content (that brings value, of course) or purchasing a product. Pixel will help you retarget them or reach a similar audience on Facebook.

Note: For those who don’t know what retargeting is; it consists on targeting your content toward users who previously visited your website.

7. Back other projects that are related to yours

Backing projects of other creators in the same category as yours can help you prepare your campaign. You can see how a campaign is executed from the backer perspective. You’ll also be able to access the project updates and see how other creators run their campaigns. It will also help you connect via the comments with other backers that share the same interests and might be interested in your project.

It is also important to back projects as it is badly perceived by the kickstarter community when a creator seeks backing while not backing other projects.

If you’re short on money, you can still back 3 or 4 projects by spending 1$ each. This will give you access to the projects updates and grow your backed projects list.

In my case, I'll check out all the card games or llamas related projects and back some of them.

8. Use email newsletters

Many people say that sharing content by mail is outdated and dead while some others rely solely on email marketing for their content strategy.

Yes email marketing isn’t as powerful as it was 5 or 10 years ago, but it’s not dead in my opinion, it’s still a really valuable channel and that’s why you should use it.

Why is it still valuable? Well because out of all the channels you could use, email marketing has the highest ROI (Return on Investment). As you can see in the graph taken from Truconversion below.

In fact, emails generate 40$ for every 1$ spent, which is a 4000% ROI. It’s twice as much as Search Engine Optimization which is the second best on the list.

Another important reason for using emails to reach and engage your community is that pretty much everyone has an email address (5,6 Billion in 2019). In contrast to social media for example, we all know some people who don’t use facebook, twitter or any other platform.

Now, if you’ve followed my previous steps and actions, you should already have a huge list of segmented emails and a great (valuable, of course) content. The next step is to distribute this content.

There are many tools for email marketing. I personally advise you to use MailChimp. Using it will help you get past spam filters. And as for cost, MailChimp gives you the opportunity to contact up to 2000 subscribers and send 12000 emails per month with its free version. This can help you grow your community and run your email marketing strategy for no cost.

Some other good feature of MailChimp is the automation, which will help you send email automatically to your community. You just need to set the parameters and let it do the rest. You can for example send welcome emails, birthday wishes or newsletters twice a month to let your community know how your project is moving forward.

Another good feature is the beautiful MailChimp templates, also provided with the free version. Using them will help you save time, effort and money on code and design.

Something that I thought about is to send the llamas newsletter each Sunday. This newsletter would be a good opportunity to update my community about the llamas village, the crazy stories of the llamas and the project’s progression.

9. Focus on quality, not quantity

It sounds like another cool sentence to write in an article I know, but if you want to keep your community’s engagement, you’ll have to share updates on your project advancement and content that interests them. The important thing is: these touch points don’t need to be shared everyday but when it’s done, it needs to make people excited to hear more about the project and its launch.

Harassing your community with emails, ads or notifications everyday can be really annoying. It will also dilute the quality of your content and lower its relevance.

One piece of advice, is to set specific touch points with your community. For example, you can set a newsletter each week to update them about your project’s progress or set a Facebook live each Sunday to answer all of your community’s question or debate about the project.

This will give them something to wait for every week and thus excites them to know more and more about the next meetup and the launch. I mean you’re also waiting for the latest episode of Game of Thrones, that is coming out this week, aren’t you?

10. Help other creators to build their community.

Have you ever heard of the adage?

The more you give, the more you receive!

Well, this is one of the things I believe in the most. Through my experience in the different communities I am engaged in, the more I gave without waiting for anything in return, the more I received some invaluable experiences and lessons.

So now that you have built a small community (at least), you can start to help other creators that are going through the same process as you did, to gain more exposure.

You can for example, share with them tips to get things started, or introduce them to your community so that they (and their project) gain exposure. This is a great way to build trust and to shape strong links within your community, and the more you give when people need it, the more they’ll give back when you’ll need help.

Now that I’ve shared with you this piece of advice, I believe you’ve got an interesting method to build a huge community before launching a successful kickstarter campaign. I would love to know what are your thoughts about it and what would you do for growing and engaging your crowd!

Among the "perks" of doing my job, I get to see a lot of different crowdfunding pages every day, sometimes it's great and sometimes I see odd choices to say the least.

It seemed to me that some project creators are underestimating the power of building an efficient page, that's why I wanted to summarize in this article what I think makes a great Kickstarter project page and what you might want to avoid doing.

1. Page structure

For a starters (and as promised in the over-selling title of this article), let's review the main elements you might want to pay attention to, while structuring your page.

This list is not necessarily in priority order as you'll see that some elements may be prioritized on a case-by-case basis. The hierarchy should be set depending on the importance of an element, best selling points should always be on top:

Project image

Further down in this article, I'll tell you how important it is to invest in your graphics, let's say that the project image being the first thing backers will see (it's the image you see before clicking to launch the video), it's the most important of the most important, and thus the one you really have to think through.

The project images that really attracts me personally are the one where I actually get to see the product. It can be a 3D or an actual photo, in any case it should be very easy to understand at a glance and this image will be also used in a smaller format on the projects lists on the other Kickstarter pages.

Note: this image can be changed all along the way through the campaign and even after, so it's a great place to advertise info that can bring some additional attention to your project during the campaign. You should keep it roughly the same though, to remain consistent.

Project description

Here, you have only a few lines to express yourself about your project. It's just under the top video and lets you give information about what you project if about. You have only 3 lines, so be concise, yet very descriptive.

Note: Project description is going to be the meta description of your project on Google, so you definitely have to add some keywords.

Kicktraq link

Kicktraq is a website that gives a lot of statistics insight about your Kickstarter page. It's funny to look at and very sharable, returning kickstarter backers use that a lot and it actually drives some new backers along the way as Kicktraq features projects on the main page. That's an additional way for new backers to discover your project.

I'm seeing more and more campaigns clearly putting the link at the very top of the page asking backers to upvote on Kicktraq. It makes sense because it helps the project to be on top of the "Hot List" (Top 10 being also on the main page) and it's really really easy for backers to do that.

What’s in the box

People want to know what they'll actually receive, make an exhaustive list of the content and/or list the main features. Use graphics to the maximum here.

Third-party reviews

If Oprah Winfrey says that your product is the best she ever tried, this quote should definitely be on top of the page.

In any case, put some reviews from trustworthy sources. If backers get the feeling that experts from your sector or opinion-leading people think your product is great, every single other line of your project page will have this nice credibility varnish.

Why pledge

Potential backers want to understand why they have to pledge your project and why they have to do it now.

‍

You want to tell them why your project is unique and I would recommend giving reasons your project stands out form the crowd, because it surely does. I would suggest laying down the 10-20 reasons your project is unique and keep the to 3-6 to put on the page.

Next, you don't want backers to think that they might as well wait after the campaign is finished to get your product. It's crutial that that you creat a strong incentive for them to back now. List the reasons that makes your backers' support absolutely essential, for the project to see the light and reward your backers with unique features that only them would benefit from. I listed a few of the common incentives for backers to actually back:

• Availability: backers will get it before anyone else, it can be days, weeks or month (preferably month)
• Better price: a better pricing for those who support on Kickstarter
• Special options: either a unique color or a feature that will not be available in retail, that's attractive.
• Additional content: close to the previous incentive, it's another way of showing that your unique product will be even more unique to backers.

Stretch goals

This could be the subject of an entire blog post, so I'm not going to be exhaustive there, making stretch goal is a good motivational tool for your backers to help you putting the word out about your campaign.

SG (Stretch goals) has to be seen as mini-campaigns, each of those has to bring value to your backers and thus be easily sharable.

To summarize, SG are an incentive you give to backers to reach a milestone. Theycan be either social based (number of backers, shares on twitter, funny videos, etc.) or money based (basically the amount you raised), or even both, it's potentialy a long debate and again depends on your product.

I'm really going to keep that for another article as I have too much to say here.

Explanatory video(s)

You know the statement that says that an image is worth a thousand words, a 5' video has 7200 images, it's 7 200 000 words... Try writing that much words and maybe you'll convince yourself that shooting a video to further explain your product is a bargain.

I just made up a rule, it's called "The dollar shave club rule", take a look at this (non-Kickstarter) video on Youtube, it's the recipe of a great intro-video :

• 1 to 2mn long
• 3 to 5 key features
• Well executed

‍

While the main video has to be short and efficient, you should make another (or several other) video(s) that goes in details through the many features of your product. Here, you don't need to make a Hollywood movie (keep your budget for the main video James Cameron), a decent quality smartphone-shot video is fine as long as the content really brings some new info to the backer and helps to better understand the product.

Add-ons

This mostly depends of your product and your overall strategy. One the one hand, it's a good way to increase the average basket, but on the other hand it's also a source of logistical complication (and I know about logistics, and complication).

Risks and Challenges

Truth is; you'll makes mistakes, everybody does... every-time. Don't tell people that you know what you are doing and thus risks are 0.0001%, because while I'm sure you know what you are doing, risks always exist and some of those you don't control.

You ask for people to invest even before you started to manufacture and even if you have worked with your manufacturer for the last 5 years and nothing ever got wrong (I doubt it Pinocchio), even if your entire design is top notch and got the NASA seal of approval, your always can have your container fall into the sea on the way to the warehouse.

‍

So, be true to your backers, remind yourself of each step you will go through and tell them what could possibly go wrong and delay the delivery of the rewards. You won't scare anyone off, you'll bring trust on yourself as being a reliable human being (or team), that know where his is going.

Note: The Risks and Challenges section is mandatory and can only be written in plain-text.

Bonus - Reward levels

You might think that it's not part of the page structure, but I would strongly advise to have a reminder of the pledge levels of your main page so people can get a visual idea of what they would get as a reward.

Regarding the actual reward levels on the right section of your page, same as the rest of the page, best is to keep the information concise. I might do a specific article about reward levels in the future, for now I'd say that the rewards have to be easily understood and easy to differentiate from each other. Prefer listing the unique aspect of each reward level and keep the recurring elements for the main page.

2. Do's

Be passionate

Believe it or not, Kickstarter is still about making a creator's dream come true and backers want to feel that you made this project with your heart.

Show that you love your project and that it reflects who you are. The page can't be just about this but should have touches of yourself here and there.

Get great designer/artist/photograph

Of course you might be starting a crowdfunding campaign because you can't afford the development on the game without the help of the community, but competition in tough on Kickstarter now and if you don't put the necessary efforts, your potential backers will simply arbitrate toward choosing another project to back.

You still can find great help without spending too much money ahead of your campaign, here is a few ideas:

• Incentive the designer on the campaign results; Separate the total amount between a fixed sum to be paid ahead and variable amount based on a percentage of the total amount raised. Let's say the designer asks for $1000 and you are looking to raise $25k, pay $500 as a fixed fee and give a 2% incentive to the designer. That way, if you reach your goal, you'll have the money to pay the designer what was initially expected and if you outperform, the designer get's more money, which is only fair since he/she made a bet on the success of your campaign.
• Hire young talents; lot of young artist need some eyes on their work and are ready to make some concessions on their price. Give them a chance and talk about them a lot. But please, never, never, never ask an artist/designer to work for free.
• Get a designer as a co-founder; give a chunk of the company to someone who would put time and effort in your project without being paid.
• Share your preview link widely

I mean very widely. I was talking with a creator at Essen Spiel (a very big board games fair in Germany) and he told me that, for a new campaign, they were finishing up the page 1 month ahead of the planed date and then sharing the preview link not only to the close ones and specialized Facebook groups, but to their entire community. It's a genius move because:

• It helps you gather a maximum feedback before the start of the campaign.
• It makes your community feel al little bit more special
• The preview link to your project page will automatically forward to your final campaign page when you go live.
• And last but not least, they can hit the "remind me" button. That way they will receive an email the day you'll start.
• Bonus: you can keep a surprise that you'll put at the last minute :)

3. Don'ts

Typo and syntax mistakes

Hey, again, we all do mistakes, I will have this article proof-read by at least 2 person before publishing it and it's not even a Kickstarter page.

Find someone who spots any mistake in a sentence (your mom for instance), have a maximum people read you page before publishing, don't under-estimate the negative-power of typos and bad syntax.

If you make some typo on your page, I will immediately assume that you'll make mistakes while creating your product and so will most of the backers, that's a serious drawback.

Bad design

Don't get your brother-in-law make the graphics because you are having hell of a deal with him. Invest in your page, make some wireframes and work with a pro-designer, a pro-photographer, a pro-3D artist or a pro-illustrator (or the 4 at the same time if needed) to showcase your product the best possible way.

Only text/too much info

You don't want your page to look like a Wikipedia page, you know why? Simply for the same reason people watch more movies than then read books, human beings prefer images and it's even better when those move.

Most people will spend 30s to 2mn on your KS page before taking a decision (to back or not to back, that's the question) and you want them to get as much information as possible before setting up their mind, so make sure that the text is short and easy to read and replace text by images, videos or even gifs when you can.

If a lot needs to be said about your project anyways, the best is to use external links and FAQ. A rulebook for a board game, detailed specs for an electronic device, those elements might be important to less than 5% of the backers to make a decision, so it shouldn't be put on the main page. Again, be concise, you already have a lot to say.

I now believe you have the basics, don't hesitate to send us an email if you think that I'm missing something in the list or if you have questions.