Advertising your Kickstarter on Kicktraq – Is it worth it?

This post is a follow-up to How to Advertise your Kickstarter.

So if you read my previous post, you know that Kicktraq by far performed the worst out of all the places that I advertised.  I spent $140 and directly can track only $145 in pledges so you may have come to the conclusion that advertising on Kicktraq isn’t worth it.  Well, I’m not so sure…

While my kicktraq ad only brought in $145 in pledges, the site itself (not attached to my ad code) yielded $1282 in pledges.  I think there’s a certain faith you have to have in marketing and advertising.  On the internet, we are lucky enough to be able to track the dollars being spent (to a point) but trust me when I tell you that Coca-Cola and McDonald’s advertise on TV, radio and everywhere else for a reason.  There are intangibles.  During my month long Kickstarter, I was lucky enough to consistently be on Kicktraq’s homepage on in the top ten of their hotlist.  I even managed to hit #1 and was in the top 5 for a good run.

I’m pretty sure Kicktraq’s hotlist isn’t affected by whether or not you advertise with them and has more to do with comments and pledge amounts per day.  Maybe I get that $1.2k without spending the $140 – maybe not.  I tend to believe it’s somewhere in the middle. I am pretty confident that Kickstarter doesn’t magically send your game tens of thousands of dollars just through their search, browse and other systems.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Kickstarter – but what happens if someone clicks my ad and then saves my project so they’re reminded in the last 48 hours. Does Kickstarter categorize that under my referral link or do their categorize it under the 48hr reminder email category? I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

I’m on the fence about Kicktraq, but there are some more positives that deserve to be mentioned before we scratch them from the list. Their ad serving platform is not the most sophisticated but they do breakdown the territory for where clicks are coming from:

It’s definitely good to see that Kicktraq has such a strong US audience.  Germany is good for tabletop Kickstarters as well… Russia and China not so much but then Canada, France and UK are all where you want to target.  There’s a little junk traffic in there, but all in all I think the site caters to board gaming quite well. The tabletop category often makes up at least 50% of the top 10 if not more, so it’s not like I’m agonizing over the $140.

Is Kicktraq Worth It?

I’m still on the fence.  The website itself is definitely worthwhile – especially if you can stay on the hot list like I did, but the banner advertising may not be worth the trouble.  If I were to advertise with Kicktraq again, I would plan on advertising in the final week.  The final week creates more urgency and I advertised  in the middle of my campaign with a random week that was available. I think that was a mistake.  I do find it very annoying that Kicktraq does not use standard IAB sized ads.  If I could use one of my Facebook or BGG ads on Kicktraq without any work in Photoshop, I would definitely give them another try – but it’s annoying to have to resize your ad to their 930×80 pixel (or 400×150) format. Furthermore, my CPC was it’s highest on Kicktraq at $0.61 which I think has something to do with their ad formats. I definitely would advise against their more expensive homepage takeover at this time, but throwing them $140 and scheduling the ad for your final week might be a good strategy for your game.