What is this about?
Well this blog is just dealing with whatever is on my mind at the time. So sometimes it may focus on my games other times it will just be random things going on in my head.
Today I’m looking at the journey of Vermin Vendetta to kickstarter. Originally looking to get the game to kickstarter this summer, now it’s looking like it will be next summer. I’m still waiting on the quote though panda did tell me next week I should see it. Now I’m looking at advertisement budgets that are a little more costly than I expected needing around $2,000 to even start thinking about getting it to kickstarter.
Being my first kickstarter I wasn’t anticipating a lot of that but I want to do this right and make sure I know the cost to produce, the cost of shipping, how much kickstarter takes from the project, the cost of using backerkit, how much to expect needing to pay on taxes, etc… This is all the information I have been working on as well as building up my facebook, instagram, and twitter.
I’ve even contacted Rahdo Runs Through about getting Vermin Vendetta on his show. They mentioned the price to me and the time scale when to get them things. So I’m looking to go with it. It would be Shea that would review the game but would be on Rahdo’s channel. I want to wait until about a month before the kickstarter goes live to have it show up so I will wait until I know more about costs and figure out how to get everything together.
Here is my findings that may help you if you are interested in making a kickstarter
Cost of Games from Manufacturer - (use this to figure out the /game cost it is from you. I’m shooting for a 2,000 game run from Panda. So I will take what they give me and divide by 2,000. From the research I read you want to consider this cost as 42% of the MSRP for your game.
Kickstarter takes 10% of your pledge in the end. (5% payment processing & 5% kickstarter fee)
Art Cost - (if worried about losing money on the art you can add this on. I’m going to ignore what I paid for the art that already came out of my pocket but if interested - $1,900 in base game & $4,350 I’ve already spent on expansion art.)
Backerkit - $199 or $99 if set up before campaign ends. (upfront cost)
Backerkit - 2% of your pledge
Sales Tax - 3.5%
Personal Income Tax - 11.2%
Self-Employment Tax - 15.3%
Shipping Cost US - waiting on weight estimate
Shipping Cost World - waiting on weight estimate
Shipping fee from Manufacturer to Shipping company - need to pick company still
Cost of using Shipping company - thinking of fufillrite. If you know of a good one I’m all ears. I’ve contacted a few but without weights they couldn’t help me. And I heard bad things about ship naked.
Kickstarter can have shipping added to the pledge up front but I’m wanting to go with Backerkit so I can add shipping later to the project there. This will let me be more certain on what I need for shipping depending where it is shipping to. As well as knowing the exact weight of the product after it is developed.
If I choose not to use Backerkit I’d need to add shipping to the pledge levels and then I could just use kickstarters pledge manager. This would also save me another 2%.
Next thing I need to do is figure out what amount I need to hit to add stretch goals. This may be different than how most people would do a kickstarter, but I’m not trying to get rich from this I want to just break even and will put more things into the kickstarter making the game more complete with all the expansions I have planned.
That’s it for today. This has been the last four months of my research thus far… COVID-19 has slowed down the estimates and emails are running slower than normal but all in all I’m moving towards what I feel will be a successful project.
