As a follow up to my previous post (Kickstarter Tool – Goal Calculator), this is the second tool I created and used while planning my Kickstarter campaign. I wanted a quick and easy way of organizing my rewards and plan my tiers while assessing costs and actual value of the items in each tier. The idea is to have costs that are within the project’s budget while also giving people items that have a higher value than the actual pledge. Here’s an example of what the tool looks like:

Here’s the link to the tool: goo.gl/yPHl9B

Same as the previous tool, this one is very easy to use. First, you should start by specifying your rewards and reward tiers in the DARK BLUE area. You can add more if you need more space. After that, you can start deciding which rewards to give in each tier by typing a “1” if you want to add a reward to a tier or “0” to remove it. This should be done in the BLUE area, which is already programmed to have conditional formatting and will color the cells that have a 1 in them. This table gives you a very good overview of how your tiers are distributed.

Now comes the part that I believe is the most important one but also the most overlooked one when planning a KS campaign: Cost vs. Value. You should try to aim to keep your costs low to take the most advantage of the campaign. Remember that digital goods have an initial cost, but after that, getting more copies is essentially free. Use this to your advantage. Now, fill the actual cost of your rewards in the GREEN area and the actual value of the item (or how much you think it costs, as some things like “design a monster in the game” are hard to estimate its value) in the ORANGE area. If you already filled the table with all your rewards and tiers, you should notice the Total Cost and Total Value bars below the table (in the YELLOW and RED respectively areas) fill up.

This might just be my personal opinion, but I believe people that are supporting and believing in you and your project should get all they can for the amount of money they pledged. That was the main idea behind this tool, where I try to always keep the Total Value of each tier be above what the person actually paid to obtain the rewards from that tier.

Again, this tool is public and can be used by anyone. I hold no ownership of it, so feel free to use, edit and distribute it among your friends who are planning a KS campaign. If you have any suggestions, doubts or find any bugs, let me know. I hope it proves useful and good luck with your campaign!