Thinking About Stretch Goals
Added 2024-07-09 20:35:05 +0000 UTCStretch goals in things like Kickstarters feel a bit weird to me.
'Cause like, if you've done this long enough you already know that your funding goal can't be your actual funding goal. It's whatever money you think you can raise in 24 hours. Because that is what gets you momentum, and makes other people back and share your project. Folks are more likely to give money to a KS that is already funded. Which means other people see it, and so on and so forth.
And stretch goals are like this "I would have already done this but we're gonna pretend that I wasn't and make it a gamification thing so we keep momentum for as long as possible" scam that is one stretch too far for me.
So that's why I rarely bother. It feels too artificial for how I do my work.
But with THE 55, as I was getting things ready and in the first days of the campaign, I thought of things I could add that wouldn't take me much time. The interior covers are blank, and in zine land that's just wasted real estate, so I could do something for that. I could make more tables, I like making tables, and I already have a long list of ridiculous cyberpunk names for another project, I could do more of that. Hey the back page is just an image, that could be monster stat blocks that would look cooler and provide more content.
But then comes the "okay how much money for these" step and I recoiled. I want as much money as people wanna give me, I don't wanna upsell. I'd much rather people spread the word about the project than give me more money. So I decided to base most of these goals on backer numbers rather than $$$. It's not gonna cost me much more to include these in the zine, it's gonna cost me some time, which the Kickstarter funds already cover.
Maybe it won't work. Maybe it will. I had good momentum for this project in the first few days but it plateaued really quickly so we'll see.
You can see more of these stretch goals on THE 55 KS page.
Thanks for the support,
-Michael
