It is no secret that I’m a bit of sci-fi geek.
That is probably not too big a shock to you, given I walk in some fairly geeky circles already as a blogger. I might be stereotyping, but I suspect there is an overlap of people who write blogs and like sci-fi.
I grew up with two major sci-fi influences, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Doctor Who, in particular the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker, the guy with the scarf and big hair.
(Now that I think about it, I may have underestimated his influence on my own choice of haircut growing up.)
These shows have led me to a deep, almost spirtual connection with many other sci-fi franchises, from The X-Files, to Battlestar Gallactica, and currently Continuum, among many, many others.
Exploring Kickstarter
I recently spent some time one evening exploring the Kickstarter.com crowdfunding site.
If you have not done so already, you really need to check out Kickstarter. There are some amazing things being funded there, including movies, music, gadgets and games.
Kickstarter allows creative people to tap into the resources of the “crowd” to throw their financial support behind ideas that have not yet been realised.
You only need to show people what your idea is, get them excited about it, promise to give them something in return for their financial support, and in return you have funding to go and build your idea.
The Product Launch Presell Process
As I was exploring Kickstarter I was reminded how similar a “product launch” is to a kickstarter campaign.
The idea is to spark excitement in a short period of time to drive an action.
You use triggers like social proof, authority and scarcity, slowly releasing content building up to a deadline, when a flood of sales pour in due to the pressure cooker effect.
It is all one big presell process, something information marketers have been doing for years.
New Blog Post: Kickstarter, Sci-Fi, And The Presell Process
I became really excited when my eyes opened to the possibility of Kickstarter as a new funding source for some of my favourite Sci-Fi shows.
You see for some very strange, very sad reason, some of the best shows I’ve ever seen like Stargate Universe and The 4400, not to mention the winner of the award for cancelled way too early — Firefly — were killed off because some network executives decided not to fund the show anymore.
Kickstarter, and sites like it, have created an entirely new way to fund a project. A project might be something small, like an album release for an independent musician, or a quirky gadget idea from an inventor.
Or, as recent successful Kickstarter campaigns are proving ($5 Million raised for a Veronica Mars movie!), this might be a way for previously mainstream popular shows to fund a resurrection, completely bypassing any need for network support.
Oh and let’s not forget, Kickstarter might be the perfect way to fund your business idea too.
If anything I wrote about here got you excited, then you will love my new blog post (including heaps of videos!).
You can go read it now here –
I’ll talk to you soon,
Yaro Starak
Yaro.Blog
Wouldn’t it be cool if Farscape could be resuscitated.