The problem wih upfront selling is the risk to not be delivered. Some buyers are not really aware of the risk. The amount of money in play is quite low but the disapointment will be as big as the initial expectation.
If everything goes well then it's a win win, but amounts in play will start to attract crooks. It looks like too easy money. As long as kickstarter was under the radar, only well intended people where using it.
When the offered rewards are goods or services, then kickstarter is an upfront selling shop and these are high risk deals. The risk could be evaluted, but buyers have only videos and some text to evaluate it by themselves for now.
That's a good point. From my experience in dealing with marketplaces where scammers can earn 10k/scam, they're quite hard to effectively suss out beforehand and block, and they adapt. I can only imagine what the lure of a 100k or or more will draw in terms of creativity. I really hope there's some effective structural or procedural safeguards that we're not aware of, because the obscurity is gone. If they can get past that, I think Kickstarter has a very bright future.
I've come to learn that people will copy everything. I once built an iPhone app that seems to have topped out at around $500/year in income; barely enough to secure a developer for a day. Yet, I found two apps that I would consider clones of mine with many similar characteristics, not just someone trying to enter the same market.
I was quite flattered to see them, but I remain curious why they'd go after such small potatoes? It seems like copying something that has a sustainable business model would be the better choice.
If those two clones didn't exist, do you think your app would be collecting "their" revenue (i.e. $500/year * 2)? Maybe you three are splitting a small pie into smaller slices.
Probably not in any meaningful way. The clones never seemed to grab much traction in the rankings, where my app did. Though I guess I'll never know for sure. If anything, I'm losing out to the real competition that took their own approaches to solving the problem and didn't just clone what I did.
Out of curiosity, I just had a look at the ones I do consider clones, and the one that took my name and added "Pro" to the end doesn't even appear to be on sale anymore though their website is still active. I can't find the other, so it may not be either.
You can make some estimations by rankings, but I guess that's a fair question. Also, I spent several months on the project, so even a week of work per year isn't going to get you far.
> I really hope there's some effective structural or procedural safeguards that we're not aware of, because the obscurity is gone.
Not yet, their terms of service have a clause that (paraphrased) says "if you don't follow through we might pursue legal action" but nothing concrete.
They really need contractual obligations to complete the project if you get funded, otherwise where's the accountability? The ability to threaten someone with breach of contract is at least some bargaining power.
All of these multimillion dollar deals were raised by people or companies with proven track records. But with so much money in play, Kickstarter has little incentive to restrict funding limits. If Kickstarter only got paid after the funded project delivers, then Kickstarter and funders would have the same interests.
If everything goes well then it's a win win, but amounts in play will start to attract crooks. It looks like too easy money. As long as kickstarter was under the radar, only well intended people where using it.
When the offered rewards are goods or services, then kickstarter is an upfront selling shop and these are high risk deals. The risk could be evaluted, but buyers have only videos and some text to evaluate it by themselves for now.