Advice

Running a KickStarter Part 2

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(More from guest columnist Hannah Lipsky of Chaotic Shiny!  She just finished her Kickstarter from this post, and is going to tell us what we learned).

One third. That’s the magical number that represents the biggest thing I learned about running a successful KickStarter campaign. One third.

One third is the portion of my backers that found my project via KickStarter. The rest – well over a hundred people – found my project via other means.

Why is this such a big deal? Because KickStarter is sometimes considered an “if you build it, they will come” type of platform. Create a slick-looking project, make a spiffy video, carefully calibrate your rewards levels, launch the project, and then sit back and watch the pledges roll in. Post an update now and then to keep your backers in the loop.

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How Blogging Helps Your Career #12 – The Garden

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(The roundup for the “How Blogging Helps Your Career Series” is here)

Last week I wrote about how you could use your blog as a rough draft for your work.  It’s a pretty great way to try things out and find out what works.

The flip side of this is in that many cases your blog already has a lot of great material.  This of course,is because your awesome, or at least because I assume you are, run with it.

Think of all the material you made as part of regular blogging.  Think of the posts, analyses, and charts.  Think of what you can do with that.  Think for a minute about how much you may have forgotten, or how much you did.

You’re out there planting seeds all the time, almost haphazardly.  Any one of those can grow into a book or a class.  A lot of them could be bundled together in a publication.

Your blog is a garden.

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How Blogging Helps Your Career #11 – The Rough Draft

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(The roundup for the “How Blogging Helps Your Career Series” is here)

Show me a person who never edits their writing, and I’ll show you a liar, an incompetent, or someone who walks on water recreationally.

It simply doesn’t happen.  We have to try things out and screw them up.  We have to experiment.  We have to get writing out of our head so it’s out and then we can improve it.

Show me a person who writes but never has to just “get something out of their head” and I’ll show you a rarity.  I have to keep a book of ideas just to keep myself from getting preoccupied.

We have to get our ideas out of our head.  We have to see them.  We have to look at them once they’re not rattling around inside our skulls.  Once they’re out we can refine them.

This is where a blog comes in.

Your blog is a rough draft – and a socially acceptable one at that.

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