Going All In on Pre-Launch!
đ„ As the most crowded season in crowdfunding approaches, we're rolling out NEW Pre-Launch Follower Goals to keep pace!
If youâre standing still, youâre falling behind.
If youâre falling behind, you might as well quit.
The entire world seems to be in a scarcity moment right now, under the âleadershipâ of a U.S. President who sees everything in terms of winning or losingâŠ
Youâre either âhotâ or youâre âdeadâ and thereâs no in-between.
Do I actually believe that?
No.
A career, especially a creative one, rarely follows a straight line of upward momentum. Even the biggest creators in the world have peaks and valleys on their journey.
But the reality is, creating comics in 2025 does seem more daunting than it was a few years ago⊠and itâs probably not going to get any easier any time soon.
Weâre heading into the busiest time of the year for Kickstarter projects. October is by far the most crowded month for comics on the Kickstarter platform. After a summer swoon, the number of LIVE projects will soon top 300 in the comics category, and could get close to 400 by mid-October if annual trendlines hold.
As a publisher who uses Kickstarter to launch new projects and has been teaching crowdfunding on the weekly ComixLaunch podcast for over a decade, Iâve been reading the tea leaves and all signs point to the increasing importance pre-launch to a campaignâs success:
Sam Kusek, the Comics Outreach Lead at Kickstarter, has mentioned the importance of pre-launch pages in most of his public interviews this year, including his appearance on ComixLaunch. âWe see an average conversion rate of 31% where pre-launch followers turn into backers. Notably, 29% of total funding typically comes in on day one of the campaignâŠâ Sam said recently.
Kickstarter just activated PRE-LAUNCH UPDATES, a new feature that gives creators the ability to message the inboxes of pre-launch followers for the first time.
Kickstarter also did a super useful overhaul of its Project Follower UI in creatorsâ campaign dashboards, breaking out the conversion rates of Pre-Launch & Post-Launch followers, which show that pre-launch followers may be up to 300% more likely to back than post-launch followers.
Kickstarter also this year finally de-coupled Project Approval from Pre-Launch Page launching for veteran crowdfunders, meaning Pre-Launch Pages could be created first and launched early, even without building your crowdfunding pages.
As more and more major publishers are launching multiple six- and even seven-figure campaigns regularly on Kickstarter, we also see professional campaign managers aggressively prioritizing pre-launch more than ever and putting real marketing dollars behind those campaigns BEFORE they go live.
âThe Great Oneâ told us the importance to always skate where the puck is going, and itâs pretty clear that prioritizing pre-launch is that destination for crowdfundersâŠ
SO WEâRE DOING IT!
Our next big ComixTribe launch, one that I am personally fired up about, is for a HALLOWEEN SPECIAL for our longest running, most successful horror series SINK from indie comics titans John Lees & Alex Cormack.
Though weâll be launching during SPOOKY SEASON, weâre not waiting to get our pre-launch page pushed live⊠and weâre taking things up several notches with PRE-LAUNCH FOLLOWER GOALS!
Knowing just how valuable those Pre-Launch Followers are in terms of contributing to a campaigns overall success, weâre adding a new wrinkle to our pre-launch, and benchmarking our EARLY BACKER bonus reward to our Pre-Launch Follower count⊠basically, the more pre-launch followers weâre able to get, the better the reward ALL physical backers will get at launch.
Itâs a super simple concept, but one weâre going to lean in HEAVY for this next projectâs pre-launch.
The reality is, comic fans and prospective backers have more choices than ever when it comes to the creators, series, and projects they support.
Often the shiny new thing is easier to get excited about, even than an established powerhouse of a series like SINK.
Rather than sit on our laurels⊠weâre hunkering down, and leaning all the way in on pre-launch.
What say you?
-Tyler James
ComixTribe Publisher
P.S. Just here for the great comics? Cool! Hit the NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH button to be the first to know about the next cool comic from the âTribe!
I wonder if thereâs a limit to how many prelaunch pages you can have active. đ€