This year my Zine Month project, Dead Internet Theory, funded $1910 on BackerKit. Last year my project Roguelike Megadungeon funded $1934 using Itchfunding. You'd think these two campaigns with their nearly identical funding amounts would be similar, but they had some surprising differences. I'll try to do a quick look at how they were different, and what can be learned. Disclaimer: I am not a knowledgeable industry insider. This is mostly a note to myself while its fresh in my memory. The graph shows the difference. The Roguelike Megadungeon crowdfunding campaign's funding (blue) climbs steadily over time with a few surges, while the Dead Internet Theory amount (red) has a big jump at the start, a long flat part after that until half way through the month, and then a tail that curves upward toward the end of the campaign. Talking with the agent from BackerKit while setting up my campaign, and from the native resources provided by BackerKit, the Dead Internet Theory funding pattern is standard. What makes it so different from the Itch funding curve, is that BackerKit allows you to collect emails before launch using a pre-launch page, while Itch doesn't. While Itchfunding, I always saw more immediate results when I made social media posts, because I didn't frontload all those backers with a pre-launch page. During the first half of the campaign on BackerKit I sometimes promoted with no effect, and even lost backers!
My biggest take away is that pre-launch follower count and base pledge value determine your campaign. I had about 100 followers at time of launch with a base pledge tier of $20. I made about $1000 in the first two days of the campaign and ended up funding about twice that in the end. More or less exactly how the BackerKit agent told me it would go.
So here are my thoughts for a campaign planned around prelaunch followers:
Create a prelaunch page that collects emails 6 or more months in advance and promote that as much as you can. Make the goal equal to or less than your follower count times your base pledge tier divided by two. Plan the scope around that. Push back the launch date and rework the prelaunch page if needed. Spread out stretch goals over the same amount of money as the funding goal once over. Promote your launch, and then save energy for the second half or even last week of the campaign.