Tim Ferriss is undoubtedly the golden boy of the digital world. He has so many achievements under his belt that every entrepreneur on the planet seems to look up to him. For this reason, if you have a unique idea or product ready for the market, Tim’s guide to raising 100k in 14 days might be just what you need to build it into a thriving business.
Kickstarter is a global platform on which a community of creative people helps to give a boost to a new idea. For instance, you might have an amazing and unique idea or product. However, you might be unable to kick-start your project because you lack the finances and trustworthy partners to get things moving. If that’s the case, Kickstarter is the best bet to materialize your dream project. It works on crowdfunding.
At the same time, in order to excel on the platform, it’s important to understand the most significant factors behind a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Tim Ferriss Guide to Raising 100k in 14 days
Back in 2012, Tim Ferriss shared a success story about the founder of Soma on his blog. As part of the endeavor, he shared his venture with Mike Del Ponte. Almost seven years have passed, and we have seen a lot of variations in the trends of the market. Even so, Tim keeps on inspiring dynamic entrepreneurs with his fantastic knowledge.
With this in mind, here’s what you can do to hack Kickstarter in 2023 and raise 100k in 14 days according to Tim Ferriss.
1. Relevant Case Studies are Important
Tim Ferriss has always appreciated the efforts of his friends and fans in terms of his success. What’s more, he never shies away from accepting what he has learned from his contemporaries. On many occasions, Tim Ferriss has even acknowledged the contributions of his fellow entrepreneurs. For instance, Tribe of Mentors proves Tim’s acknowledgment of other successful people.
2. No Hard Work: Smart Work is the only key to Success
According to Tim Ferriss, you should design your Kickstarter strategy to be “smart”. Due to the internet, the consumer market has become more intelligent and rational. He advises keeping the important things in check before getting too engrossed in the process of your campaign.
3. Pre-planning your Marketing Activities
Tim Ferriss always pre-plans the steps of his Kickstarter campaigns. This gives Tim a competitive edge in his projects. As an example, you can prepare the drafts of your emails and marketing materials beforehand.
According to the Kickstarter website, 165,971 projects have been successfully funded by the platform while 281,399 projects failed to collect funds.
But what made these 281,399 projects a futile attempt for their founders?
Yes, you are guessing it right. Slow execution and ineffective planning can be the downfall of any project.
In an interview with ZURB, Tim even outlined his primary strategy for marketing campaigns. What he did for his first Kickstarter was a brilliant move. First of all, Tim identified the demographics for his project and chose 1000 devoted fans who would then spread word of mouth at a lightning pace.
4. Using the Principle of MED
A smart entrepreneur always pays heed to the delicate bond between input and output capabilities.
Tim Ferriss refers to the use of a principle called MED to produce successful results in the 100k campaign. MED stands for Minimum Effective Dose. He advises identifying the crucial factors for raising 100k in 14 days and then focusing on these factors the most.
How Can You Calculate MED for your Kickstarter Project?
Crowdfunding platforms give more privileges to projects that tend to attract more traffic.
While designing the campaign, Tim advises using all the referral resources to bring enough traffic to your project. You can assign the task of bringing traffic to your virtual assistant.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin are your best bet to bring mass traffic to your project. Tim Ferriss advises using websites and blogs to market the project as well. Partner blogs and sites play a very healthy role in your Kickstarter campaign.
Email marketing is an old and reliable way to invite the masses to your project as well. It may not be as effective as it once was because different social media platforms are also available now. Nevertheless, it is still considered the most critical communication channel for Kickstarter campaigns.
2016 Consumer Adoption and Usage Study at Adestra revealed that 43% of the consumers provide their real e-mail for sign-up at a website. It’s a good indication of consumer behavior for your Kickstarter project. Tim Ferriss also considers e-mail marketing the most reliable source of traffic for a Kickstarter campaign.
Consumers of the age group 18-34 always check their emails on their mobile phones. However, according to a study by Litmus.com, the percentage of e-mail checking on mobile phones dropped significantly in 2017.
- iPhone: decreased by 28%
- Ipad: decreased by 11%
- Android: decreased by 11%
This could be worrisome for Kickstarter entrepreneurs in 2022. That could bring a delayed response from the consumers. Perhaps this is a good reason to focus more on social media sites in 2023.
5. Virtual Assistants are the Need of the Hour
Tim Ferriss has given a new ideology to the dynamic entrepreneur. He encourages his followers to liberate themselves from conventional 9-5 and to use their time and energy more efficiently. For this reason, virtual assistants are a crucial need in the modern world.
In fact, the CEO of Hub Staff made a statement that virtual assistants offer a better return on investment than the regular workforce. Tim Ferriss has also credited the success of his businesses and Kickstarter projects to virtual assistants on many occasions in his blog posts and podcasts.
6. Understanding the Role of the Press
Tim suggests that 80/20 is the formula to get press on your side for a triumphant Kickstarter campaign. According to him, 20% of the efforts should result in 80% of the press coverage.
Just so you know, the founders of Linjer Chong and Roman raised 100k in six hours for their startup on Kickstarter. More specifically, they designed their pre-launch campaign based on Tim’s guidelines and successfully garnered from crowdfunding.
In Tim’s collaboration with Mike, their campaign caught the attention of biggies in the media in 10 days. Media houses like Huffington Post and Forbes gave fantastic coverage to Soma. For successful media output, Tim Ferriss gave us a 4R principle to build the media list.
- Relevance: target the audience with similar beliefs and needs for your project. (You can quickly build a media list by using Pressfarm’s up-to-date database of journalist contacts across USA, UK, Canada, and Australia)
- Readership: what is the status of a particular media website in terms of visitor turnover.
- Relationships: how many media houses can you approach through personal contacts?
- Reach: are your partner blogs going to send direct traffic to your Kickstarter project?
7. The Great Importance of Project Research
According to Tim, you can divide your project research into five parts. Each step of research brings value to your project.
- Potential Blog Partners: You must have an in-depth look at the successful people who ran the same Kickstarter campaigns as you.
- Site Traffic Record: you must keep a track record of the blogs that can be potential publishers for you. This will help you to get the bigger picture of your media coverage.
- Make a Record of the Reach of your Promotor Blogs: ask your VA to make an excel worksheet to record the activities of visitors on a blog.
These steps can provide a more clear prospect of your press coverage. When you are done with creating a media list, you can use virtual assistants to carry out the activities. Ferriss claims in his blog that 90% of his press campaign activities were managed by virtual assistants.
8. Friendly Collaboration with Other Bloggers
Blog posts bring a significant amount of traffic to your Kickstarter projects. Tim believes in making amiable collaborations with other bloggers. For the project Soma, he and Mike got an enormous amount of support from their friends. Instead of formal collaborations with bloggers, you can rely on your blogger friends to give a shout-out to your project.
Your Kickstarter page should contain all the necessary information about your project. The more detail you use when you post about your project, the more manageable it will be for the bloggers to write about it. You can upload high-quality images, videos, and embed codes for the convenience of writers.
9. Maximize the Reach of your Project
Tim suggests using your time and efforts smartly. You do not need to do everything by yourself. You can ask your virtual assistant to formulate a list of relevant bloggers. A reverse image search can give you close results about the pro bloggers in your field.
Your virtual assistant will make a list of the top 5 or top 10 bloggers. These are your possible partners in the marketing campaigns. You can approach these bloggers through a formal email pitch. If they believe in you, these bloggers can give a massive shout-out to your project. Tim Ferriss was able to collaborate with a lot of bloggers through his fantastic pitches. Your Kickstarter page is the key resource for bloggers.
Now, your job does not end with gathering the support of the blogging community. Tim Ferriss emphasizes that you need to convince the bloggers to publish a story about your project on weekdays in the morning time. The best bet is to publish all the stories about your project at the time of launching.
Simply put, your promotional activities should aim to increase the visibility of your project on the internet — the success of your project banks on the success of your promotional activities.
10. Utilizing Personal Contacts the Right Way
Kickstarter projects are based on crowdfunding. So every single penny should be spent on a more valuable aspect. You can hire expert marketers to design launch events for your project as well.
Tim advises making sections of your contacts. These personal contacts can be grouped based on their role in the promotional campaign of your project. According to Tim, your contacts will be divided into three categories.
- Friends who could spread positive word of mouth for your projects a.k.a influencers
- Friends who are already helping you out with your project
- People who need to be involved in your project but aren’t aware of it.
Tim Ferriss usually made three categories for his projects, but you can create as many as you need. You need to prepare a different pitch for every group. Personalized e-mail which shows how close and valuable the participation of your friends is a great way to activate your network. Tim suggests using all the e-mail marketing tools to get a quick turnaround in activating your private network.
11. Why you Need Landing Pages for a Kickstarter Project
Tim Ferriss started to create landing pages for his projects to avoid the lengthy procedures of Kickstarter project pages for visitors. Nowadays, a Landing page is a reflection of your project. According to Tim Ferriss, landing pages are proven to boost the sharing campaign for your project.
Tim generated 300k e-mail contact list from one of his first landing pages. That was the breaking point when Tim realized the value of a landing page in a Kickstarter campaign. According to Tim, that landing page wasn’t perfect. It had a lot of distractions, but it still managed to get him email sign-ups in bulk.
In fact, this landing page also inspired other entrepreneurs and marketers and according to Serpstat, 48% of expert marketers build a new landing for every new marketing campaign.
Final Thoughts
Launching a Kickstarter project can be scary and full of unknowns. This is especially the case in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in 2020. At first, it may sound unrealistic to raise 100k for your company in 10 days. Even so, this guide makes this a more achievable goal for the average entrepreneur. Tim has gifted his followers with the best way to create a successful Kickstarter project in the above guide.
Want to know how to use PR strategies to propel your campaign’s success? Reach out to us at Pressfarm and let us help your Kickstarter campaign to generate the publicity it deserves. Our PR team is skilled at writing winning press releases, developing engaging feature articles, and designing creative media kits. All this content will help your startup build a memorable brand image.
In addition to helping you create quality content for your brand, Pressfarm’s team also develops a strategy to push this content out to the media. By building curated media lists for each client and giving all clients access to a comprehensive media database of over 1 million journalists across industries, Pressfarm helps you connect with the right people to tell your story. With our affordable packages, you can tell a powerful brand story that will drive more traffic to your campaign.
Learn why we are good at what we do from our customer success stories.