Kickstarter pricing comparison

[fireshaper]

I've been looking at how people price their decks on Kickstarter (in an attempt to make my own campaigns match up with others costs) and found some interesting data. I thought you guys might be interested in it. I took two ongoing campaigns that are both doing well (Arcana and Gettysburg) and broke down their rewards, using a base shipping cost of $6/deck + $1/extra deck per order, and assuming that all prices have US shipping included. Not including early bird rewards.

Arcana
# of decks and reward price	shipping	price of decks	price of each deck
1 - $15	6	9	9
2 - $25	6+1	18	9
3 - $36	6+2	28	9.333
4 - $47	6+3	38	9.5
12 - $135	6+11	118	9.8333

If you take the price point of the decks at each reward level and expand it, you get something like this:

1 deck	9
2 decks	18
3 decks	28
4 decks	38
5 decks	48
6 decks	58
...
12 decks	118

So you can see that he is charging $9 for the first two decks and then $10 for each deck after that. This ensures that every deck someone buys makes him more money. As of my writing this, Arcana has sold more than 4,000 decks (probably close to 5,000), basing his price on MPC's Air Linen cost that means his is paying around $2.50 per deck to have it printed. Now, lets take a look at Gettysburg.

Gettysburg
# of decks and reward price	shipping	price of decks	price of each deck
1 - $11	6	5	5
2 - $21	6+1	14	7
4 - $42	6+3	33	8.25
6 - $63	6+5	52	8.666
8 - $84	6+7	71	8.875
12 - $105	6+11	88	7.333

If you take the price point of the decks at each reward level and expand it, you get something like this:

1 deck	5
2 decks	14
3 decks	23.5
4 decks	33
5 decks	42.5
6 decks	52
7 decks	61.5
8 decks	71
9 decks	80.5
10 decks	90
11 decks	99.5
12 decks	109 88

He sells the first for $5, the second he adds $9, then starts adding $9.5 to each deck after. That is, until he gets to the full block (12 decks) where he gives his backers $22 off the price. That's 3 free decks! As of my writing, he has sold about 400 decks, at MPC's cost for their standard Linen stock, he would be paying about $4.60 a deck.

I think the Arcana pricing structure is pretty solid and it keeps the $25 range at 2 decks, which is what most people want from what I've seen (one deck to play with and one to keep wrapped up).

What are your thoughts?

[Don Boyer]

What are your thoughts?

...that you might be overanalyzing it a little bit? 

It's not easy comparing decks that have differing features, printers and shipping locations/services.  Sure, they're all decks, but with so many differences, it reaches a point where you're comparing Hamlet to Star Wars to Animal House.

If you're planning a deck, find a way to give it the features you want while at the same time pricing it competitively AND managing to make at least a small profit, enough to make it worth your while.  Factor in every cost imaginable - packing tape, boxes and wadded-up newspapers have to come from somewhere.  See if you can make a decent deal with some retailers - and know right away that retailers want to buy at wholesale and will quote you ridiculously low prices at which they're willing to buy, sometimes even below your cost!

[fireshaper]

Haha! I understand all that Don, and I was assuming a lot with that post (using my experiences with MPC for shipping and deck prices) so things may vary. But I just wanted to share what I found with everyone.