The Realities of Kickstarter Funding and Where the Money Goes

While it’s certainly not directly related to Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, or The Banner Saga, given all of the news we’ve had for those three Kickstarter titles lately, I figured it was worth pointing out this update for Star Command, in which the Warballoon team breaks down how the $37,000 they raised in funding actually amounted to about $4000 in income.

Our kickstarter earned $36,967 after asking for $20,000 so that was incredible.

To begin with, we didn’t get all of that. We lost about $2,000 to no-shows, just people that pledged and the funds did not transfer.

That got us down to $35k, and kickstarter and Amazon Payments take their portions, which got us down to right around $32,000.

Now, right off the top you had $10,000 for prize fulfillment. That includes printing the posters, the shirts and shipping everything (thanks Australia). If we had to do it again, we would have probably had the price point a bit higher for the t-shirts and posters, as those turned to be a very large expense. We also would have included the cost of a 3rd party fulfillment house – we just aren’t equipped or skilled in that area, and it was (still is) something that we struggle with.

After that, we had $22,000 remaining. From there:

Music – $6,000
Attorneys, startup fees, CPA – $4000
Poster art – $2000
iPads – $1000
PAX East – $3000

TOTAL: $16,000

Leaving us with around $6000, which is income, so that was taxed (piece of advice to other kickstarters – spend that money before the end of the year).

So were right around $4000 remaining and even that cursory math isn’t working as there are other things that weren’t big tickets but sapped the coffers. There’s odds and ends etc, so that goes rather quickly as you can imagine.

Definitely food for thought here, particularly for anyone looking to do the same thing.  And before you call out Kickstarter and Amazon Payments for taking 10% off the top, remember that the credit card companies take something like 3% of that too.  When you look at how expensive something like eBay fees are, I’m actually surprised Kickstarter doesn’t take more.