What makes a good pledge
If you want your project to get fully funded (which I’m hoping you do), then having good pledges is a key factor in determining whether or not your project gets all the ‘wonga’ it needs. So before you make any rash decisions and rush into uploading your project, be sure to follow these guidelines when determining what rewards you are going to offer your potential backers.
Be creative- (Be Unique.)
It is immediately obvious that the more unique a pledge is, the more likely a project is to entice people from outside its network of direct support. In other words, people from outside the direct community associated with your project category.
More and more people are looking for something different to do nowadays. A good pledge will therefore offer a unique one-off experience, an exclusive offer or a limited and personalised product, for example. As a project owner, don’t be afraid to be creative. Dare I say, don’t be afraid to ‘think outside the box’.
Be deep.
Having tiered pledge rewards is definitely no bad thing. It’s important to have a range of pledges, offering a good depth of rewards. The more a project has to offer, the more inviting it is to a potential backer - It proves that a project is not a charity and is offering something back in return.
There is no limit to the amount of pledge rewards a project can offer, but a sensible suggestion would be somewhere between 3 and 8. Too few and it gives the impression that the project doesn’t have much to offer. Too many, and the project runs the risk of becoming less gripping and losing the attention of the potential backer.
Within the tier of pledges it’s crucial to have a good range of price. The pledge rewards however should be proportionate to its price. If a project for example is offering a hand written thank you letter and a candle –lit dinner for two for every £80 given, whilst also offering the same candle-lit dinner for two but without the hand written thank you letter for every £30 given – I cant imagine many people would back the £80 pledge! It is also important to have a pledge price mark of below £10 so that the project has the possibility to go viral.
Be Easy….
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is to remember to ensure that each pledge rewards is easy and affordable to deliver. This doesn’t by any means suggest that the quality of a pledge, or it’s uniqueness, should be jeopardised -(don’t deter from those creative brainstorming sessions)- but rather that the project owner should exhaust all possible contacts and make use of all resources that are readily available to them.
It is a balance that each project owner has to make. On the one hand, a reward has to be good enough to entice potential backers. On the other, each pledge reward needs to be as (financially) viable to them as possible. That said, if a project owner wants to get the full funding they require, they should never be afraid to give something back!
… Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.
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