How to Back Your First Kickstarter Campaign (Cuz Most People STILL Never Have!)

Though Kickstarter may be the most popular place to get indie comics in 2025, today only 0.3% of the people on planet earth have ever backed a project on the crowdfunding platform!

When you’re working on and launching a crowdfunding project on a platform like Kickstarter, you eat, live and breathe it… and it can consume your whole world.

As with most things, it’s important to touch grass every now and again and remind yourself that most of planet earth has no idea what you’re up to!

According to Kickstarter’s stats, about 24.7 million unique human beings have backed Kickstarter projects since their founding over 15 years ago. On a planet of 8.14 billion, that amounts to roughly only 0.3% of humans on earth who have backed a Kickstarter project.

How rare is this? Let’s put it into perspective… a similar percentage of humans have:

• Earned a doctorate degree (PhD)

• Published a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal

• Held a patent

• Visited all 7 continents

• Completed a full Ironman triathlon (140.6 miles!)

• Earned over $1 million a year

• Created a comic, film or video game that sold over 10,000 units

Kind of wild when you think about it that way, right?

Especially now, in the busy season where over 360 comic crowdfunding projects are live right now on Kickstarter and backers are hard to come by, it’s worth keeping in mind how small a percentage of the population makes up that backer pool…

It kind of makes every one of those backers who DO choose to support your projects feel more important, doesn’t it?

Can We Increase the Backer Pool?

Recently, my pal Ryan Claytor used the Backerkit Launch tool to cross-reference his email subscribers with Backerkit’s knowledge of crowdfunding supporters, and found that roughly half his fanbase have NEVER backed a single Kickstarter project.

Ryan took that as a call to action, hypothesizing that while certainly some of those people may have sworn off crowdfunding completely, a large number of them may be intimidated by the platform, unsure of what’s involved in supporting a project, or started to back a project but got lost along the way.

So, he created a welcoming video specifically for those people… in hopes to help a few of those people in his audience get more comfortable with making their first pledge.

I think this is a great idea by Ryan, and something I’m often reminding my ComixLaunch Pros… just because you have been consumed by all-things crowdfunding, remember that most of the world is not!

Now, the latest SINK launch that ComixTribe is running is definitely exceeding expectations. While we’ve heard rumblings that Kickstarter performance is down this year for many creators, this is already the most backed SINK launch since 2021, and continues to pick up backers… suggesting that when product, campaign design and marketing all align, plenty of good things are still happening in the world of comics crowdfunding.

We’re close to unlocking our $25K stretch goal unlock and with nearly 450 backers, knowing how rare crowdfunding backers actually are on this planet (as rare as IronMen, millionaires and PhDs!) that really makes us feel all the more gratitude to have so many in our corner once again.