When working with Roberts Space Industries on the Star Citizen project, we got to see first-hand how effective these goals can be. They provide extra incentive for backers, and allow you to reward your supporters for going above and beyond in supporting your project. They’re also great as additional content to keep your audience active and engaged so that they don’t tune out and instead, share your project in attempt to help you unlock the next level.

For nearly two years now, IgnitionDeck has been helping to pioneer the path for self-hosted crowdfunding, and we see stretch goal support as a no-brainer. Which is why we’re very excited to be announcing a brand new member of the IgnitionDeck extension family: The IgnitionDeck Stretch Goals Extension.

This extension requires IgnitionDeck 1.0 RC3+, but aside from that there are no dependencies or requirements. To install, simply upload like any other WordPress plugin. This extension will add a few additional meta fields to your project admin, giving you the option to add as many stretch goals as you wish.

Once you’ve created your stretch goals and saved the project, you’ll be able to add them to your project in a variety of formats:

• If you’re using Theme 500, they are added automatically.
• If you use a content shortcode, they’ll automatically display at the end of your content.
• If you want to use them on their own, simply use the brand new stretch goals shortcode to place them anywhere you wish.

Yes, they are super simple, but that’s not the best part. They are completely dynamic, unlocking automatically as the project progresses.

Watch the demo to see these stretch goals in action!

The Tally

Between October 10th and November 19th 2012, the Star Citizen project (www.robertsspaceindustries.com) raised a whopping $4,104,189.00, using a custom version of the IgnitionDeck WordPress crowdfunding plugin.

The Kickstarter campaign, running between October 19th and November 19th, 2012, raised an additional $2,134,374.00.

Since the campaigns have closed (May 3rd, 2013), Star Citizen has also received an additional $3,044,770.00 through its website using IgnitionDeck.

The Takeaways

• Your starting goal should not be your actual, final goal (that should be much higher).
• Start building excitement early (before you’ve even said you’ll be crowdfunding)
• Have something special for those earliest supporters (it’s incentive to stay excited)
• Start working on the press prior to your launch (Just ask they don’t publish till the launch)
• Create a home for your community to gather (A place away from the money raising)
• Be honest with your community about what you want to raise, but keep the stretch goal incentives of how you’ll get there hidden until the time is right.
• Give the ability for your supporters to customize their rewards and up their pledges.
• Make the final week of your campaign all about your supporters.  They’re the reason this is all going to become a reality, so give them as much praise as you can.

The Project Origin

In the middle of July, 2012, IgnitionDeck was contacted by Chris Roberts and his team to help them create a secret website that would launch on September 10th – to allow for a special ‘preview’ of what was to come.  What was to come, a month later, was a full Crowdfunding campaign in order to create the most ambitious space sim ever conceived.  For those who aren’t aware, Chris Roberts is the creator of the massively popular video game Wing Commander, and producer of a few movies like Lord of War, Lucky Number Slevin and Outlander.

The goal? 2 million dollars.
The hope? 6 million dollars.

In talking to them, we knew that their ambitions were high.  The timeframe was short: five weeks to launch. The goal huge: to design and build a full, private member ready, crowdfunding website with 4 different payment gateways, an extended affiliate system and member dashboard.

With that enormous weight on our shoulders, the IgnitionDeck team set out to build a website that would act first as a secret, member-only ‘behind-the-scenes’ look, at what Chris Roberts was cooking up.  This would consist of a custom HTML5 animated intro counting down to launch day (October 10th), leading to a welcome letter, leading to a registration page, leading to a special members content dashboard, multiple blog categories, forums, another countdown, and The Golden Ticket.

The Golden Ticket

Chris Roberts had the idea to present each early registrant to Roberts Space Industries with a special Golden Ticket.  This golden ticket allowed entry to Chris’ big announcement at GDC Online on October 10th. It also allowed a special in-game skin only available to the Golden Ticket Holders.  This Golden Ticket proved to be a hot item and really got people excited to jump in early.

Those Crazy Fans

For a scheduled stress-test by the whole team, we took down the password-protected member wall for a period of 2 hours so we could really put the registration process through the wringer.  During this small period of time, some amazing Reddit sleuths discovered the site, and managed to register an account.  Before we realized what was going on, seven people that were NOT part of the dev team, had snuck in.  From this small accident came a massive windfall of traffic and super sleuths.  People were discussing heavily what this new project by Chris Roberts could be. What could he be cooking up?

Thanks to all this unplanned attention,  when the countdown went up (before this it was just a ‘coming soon’ page) and registration opened officially there was a flood of new members being registered.  About 20 per minute.  It was so fast that we had to double check everything and ensure these were not bots of some sort (they weren’t).  Let’s just say, we had more new members registered in the first day than we had initially forecasted for the entire month.

We capitalized on this attention by praising those that discovered the site early, and by working overtime to make everyone feel extra special for being there already.  The ‘special content’ that was planned to be released over a course of a month we let loose in a week.  It was very important everyone stay as excited as they were when they first got there.

The Press

While a secret members area was created to build excitement for the project, so too was a press tour setup to enable the rest of the world to know about Star Citizen the day the crowdfunding went live.  Chris Roberts flew round the world to do interviews and demonstrations of Star Citizens current preview build – and all press was scheduled to go live at the exact same time his talk started at GDC Online.  9am CST, October 10th, 2012.

The thing was, the crowdfund itself wasn’t meant to go live until he was finished his talk at 10am.  What ended up happening was an extreme amount of traffic arrived at the site, and all this traffic kept refreshing the page in order to see what would appear at any moment.

This slowed the site to a crawl, and before we’d even gone live our server was overwhelmed.  We worked round the clock for 48 straight hours to get everything into tip top shape once more, and it most certainly affected the outcome of the ‘day one raise,’ which is always considered the most important when starting a crowdfund.

The Community

However, what seemed like a deficit was in fact one of the reasons Star Citizen raised as much money as it ultimately did.  Because of the problems, a lot of the community rallied around the project that much more.  With a strong desire to see it succeed at all costs, we were able to develop a closer knit community because of it.

What we realized working with such a close knit community, while being a project very much in the public eye, was that we needed to focus on making the biggest fans happy first.  These were the people that had plunked down their hard earned money to put their money where their mouth was.  These were the people that were going to bat for us all over the internet, on forums, comment sections on blogs, and in the social media sites.  What they asked for always took precedence over what the sideline critics were complaining about.

When crunch time hits, and you need just that much more to cross the finish line, it’s your existing community that will make that difference.  Ensure those people are your top priority.

The Stretch Goals

Stretch goals have become somewhat of a norm when it comes to crowdfunding.   A stretch goal is when you’ve hit your first goal, and you’re giving your community incentive to go further.  Why should they give more, if you already have enough? With more money, what will your project be able to achieve?

Star Citizen came out of the gate with a goal of 2 Million dollars to raise – already the highest starting goal ever set for a crowdfund project. We knew going into it that Chris wanted to raise at least 6 million in order to truly create the game he envisioned.  The decision was made early on to reveal that number straight away, but to keep stretch goal values hidden for later.  A general outline of what raising 2 million meant versus raising 6 million was provided so everyone went in with the right expectations.

The real excitement inducing stretch goals were revealed slowly, and as each was discovered, the focus became on hitting that goal in order to learn what the next one would be.  Because the stretch goals remained hidden, it kept the community wanting to learn more.  This kept word of mouth flowing, as everyone was telling everyone they could in order to have their curiosity satiated.

Reward Customization

Something that was really introduced during the crowdfunding campaigns for the videogames Project Eternity and Planetary Annihilation was the concept of reward customization.  The ability to look at what you’d pledged for and add to it.  Also get a t-shirt, a book and/or a physical copy of the game.

Star Citizen took reward customization to a whole new level, by implementing add-ons into their IgnitionDeck website.  The ability to pledge more, in order to get that book, or that physical model of your in-game ship, was actually requested by the supporters.  What really took off however, was when the supporters could pledge more money and get in-game items as well.  A way to see the game they so want to play get made, and also have even more fun in that game when it gets released also.

Chris Roberts ensured that all bought items were not extra special in any way, aside from ensuring you had them at the start.  There was never any game imbalancing item that would ruin the gameplay for others.  This was important, and it showed the community that extra money wasn’t going to compromise the game he was setting out to make.

Supporters were able to see every item they pledged towards in their own private member dashboard – and upgrade any item at any time.  This allowed for people to really get whatever they wanted, that was available to pledge towards.  What happened, was there became a select group of ‘collectors’ who began tallying the ships and other in-game items they would be receiving.  When a new ship was announced – these collectors wanted to be able to say they had it.

The Final Week

The general consensus is that the first few days are the most important of any crowdfund.  And this is certainly true – if your first few days don’t go well, it will be hard to climb from that and still hit your goal.  But it’s still possible, as Star Citizen showcased.

The real time to shine is in the final week push, as in the case of Star Citizen, and in watching very closely that of the Double Fine Adventure Game, Planetary Annihilation and Project Eternity.  In each case, that final week represented some amazing numbers as far as new supporters goes, and also the work from the project teams to really up the excitement and showcase their dedication to the project.

As soon as your project campaign ends, there will be an initial high for your supporters and your team.  Then, there will be a period where you need to recoup your energy, and your supporters will wonder what happens next.  Your final week of your campaign gives you a chance to really show your supporters that everything they’ve been excited about has been worth it.  That everything they hope for is going to be a reality, and that they were right to put their faith in you.

Take your last week to give them more than they expected, to give them a thank you gift, and to make them feel like they are the number one reason this is going to happen.  Make that final week about your supporters, and not about you.

Listen To Your Supporters

Make sure you have someplace your supporters can talk.  Make sure you listen.  The chances are VERY high, that if those that have already pledged to you have given you money, they are speaking for those that have not given you money as well.

With Star Citizen, the supporters started asking very early on if they could get T-Shirts, and a boxed edition of the game.  They wanted to pledge more to get in-game items.  We heard it all.  And they kept asking.

Here was the thing – because we didn’t get those things up right away, they thought we didn’t hear them.  They thought we were refusing to meet their wishes.  This wasn’t true, at all.  It just takes time to implement things you hadn’t planned for.  And believe me, they’re going to ask for stuff you didn’t think of.  So don’t try to think of it all ahead of time.  Instead, start slowly and be prepared to iterate fast, and meet the wishes of your supporters.  You’ll help your campaign more than you can ever realize.

$4,104,189.00 in 39 days

This is an incredible number.  And it’s definitely not an easy achievement.  This campaign had a lot going for it from the start, number one being from a superstar game designer in Chris Roberts.  However, that doesn’t mean that one can’t learn from everything that was done to make this campaign a success.  Study what we’ve written out above, and put into action those things that feel right for your campaign.

We’re very proud of the work we did with the Roberts Space Industries team and the success of Star Citizen.  IgnitionDeck was put through the paces on this huge crowdfunding campaign, and came out better for it.  Now everyone who uses IgnitionDeck has the advantage of being battle-tested and ready for anything, thanks to Star Citizen.

Piwik is a web analytics product that has been in development since 2007, offering an open source alternative to Google Analytics now in use by over 400,000 websites worldwide. Their roadmap is public, and like many great open source projects, they have a strong team backed by a strong and growing community.

Recently, they set out to put this community to the test, giving them a chance to back new features with their wallets. Using IgnitionDeck, they set out to fund a new featured called Flash Free Maps, setting a goal of €4,000 and offering a mix of recognition-based and physical rewards.

When asked why he chose IgnitionDeck over other platforms, founder Matthieu Aubry said “we wanted to control the user experience, and make crowdfunding seamless. Being that Piwik.org is built on WordPress, it just seemed like a natural fit.”

Funds distribution was another important aspect, especially for an open source project.

“As an open-source project we need as much of the funds, as possible, to go to development. Using other solutions required us to pay a percentage to a crowdfunding site as well as a payment processor. In this case we are only responsible to pay the payment processor fees and keep the rest for goodies for our donors and our main objective: make an even better Piwik.”

So how did the campaign fare?

Piwik’s first feature crowdfund was an amazing success, raising 107% of their goal via 149 pledges, averaging almost €30/pledge. When we asked Matthieu about the keys to Piwik’s crowdfunding success, he was quick to praise the community they spent years building.

“Piwik’s main success comes from an an awesome community…we have some very passionate fans. We could not have done half of what we have accomplished without their support, their feedback and the generous donations they have made.”

With such success, it’s clear that WordPress crowdfunding provided a brand new opportunity for their platform, one they plan to keep using. Fifty-Five pledges into their second campaign, they’ve raised more than €3,100 to build a custom segment editor for their analytics platform, and their 3rd campaign has reached 4% with over a month remaining.

But as many crowdfunders will tell you, the hard work doesn’t end after the raise, you have to deliver too. Piwik seems to have that covered, already launching their new maps feature and ready to keep iterating on others.

Matthieu sees this as just the beginning for open source.

“I think we will see more open source projects go the crowdfunding route for features, but it’s not as easy as it seems. The real work begins after the campaigns to ensure everyone gets what they pledged and we achieve our goal of delivering a great new feature. Overall it has been a satisfactory journey, that we could not have achieved without the awesome plugin from IgnitionDeck.”

While Piwik’s example provides an exciting glimpse into the future of open source funding, who says it has to stop there? Why not crowdfund an album, open knowledge, a space sim, or a cure? Here’s to the founders that build the future, and the communities that make it happen.

This is something we’ve had in the works for quite some time, but required several modifications to the core, which was prepped for this extension in the B5 h8b release.

So visit the extensions page to get started. The more help you offer your supporters, the more they’ll be willing to donate!

Originally, IgnitionDeck campaigns just kept going and there wasn’t any way to shut them off. The date remained and the days stopped at zero. We thought that was OK, but not nearly as good as it could be. So over the past several months, we’ve watched you run your campaigns and pondered additional options, eventually settling on a solution we think you’ll love.

We’re introducing a new option that allows you to choose between two types of projects, open and closed.

If you leave it open, the date text adjusts to ‘ended on‘ instead of ‘ends on‘, the number of days left hides away, and you keep raising as normal.

If you close your campaign, the text changes similarly and the support button is removed, allowing you to cease accepting payments and move on to the next phase.

To use this feature, you’ll need to install Beta5 h8a or greater, and select an option at the top of the project meta (right next to the pledge what you want option).

But things change, and as we’ve talked with many of you, we came to realize how impactful a 100% crowdfunding model could be when used appropriately.

While we are certainly very passionate about our personal product intentions, we also embrace the thoughts and efforts of our supporter community. After all, IgnitionDeck’s mission is to set the standard in helping independent makers, creators, and entrepreneurs break away from the middle man, and we can’t do that if we restrict the manner in which you can raise money doing it.

So here’s what we’ve decided to do.

As of early February, we’ve been quietly testing an IgnitionDeck Stripe extension that will enable both the ‘pay right now’ funding model and the more traditional 100% threshold model. Once testing is complete, we’ll be offering it to beta supporters for free. Of course, this leaves out everyone outside of the US and Canada, which is why we’ll next be working on a Braintree extension, followed by several more, soon to be decided, gateways.

Why Stripe and not Paypal? Well the answer is quite simple really. Stripe’s API outmatches Paypal’s in every possible way, and we didn’t feel confident that a Paypal 100% integration would be a good match for our customers. This isn’t to say it won’t happen, but with the difficulty users have had getting App ID’s approved, we felt it was time to move in another direction. We think you’ll really enjoy using Stripe.

For those of you worrying about Amazon, Dwolla, WePay, and others, don’t worry. We’re working on those too.

While this still will not enable IgnitionDeck to be used as a complete crowdfunding platform, a.k.a. Kickstarter clone, out of the box, this should remove quite a bit of customization work for those of you wishing to mod IgnitionDeck to achieve that goal.

We’re very proud of IgnitionDeck’s progress, and we hope that you’ll embrace this change and see it as proof that we’re listening.

Have a question or comment? Feel free to fire away below!

With the introduction of IgnitionDeck Beta 5.8, we introduced a new skin installer that allows you to create, purchase, or sell custom IgnitionDeck skins. This is a great feature that allows you to more closely integrate IgnitionDeck’s design with that of your theme in order to create the most professional appearance possible.

While there were many ways we could have approached this process, we wanted to map out a process that was as hassle-free as possible, so much so that even non-technical users could understand. We think we’ve made that happen.

Here’s how they install.

Step 1: Create/Purchase the Skin

In this example, we’ll duplicate the ignitiondeck-style.css in the skins folder and rename it to ignitiondeck-example.css.

Step 2: Upload the Skin

Upload ignitiondeck-example.css to the skins folder inside of your IgnitionDeck installation. This is usually located in mydomain.com/wp-content/plugins/ignitiondeck/skins.

Step 3: Add the Skin

Login to your WordPress admin and visit the main IgnitionDeck settings menu. At the top you should see a text field where you can add the name of your new skin. In this case, you’ll simply enter everything after the ignitiondeck- and before the .css. So in our example, we would enter ‘example’ and click the add skin button.

Step 4: Select Skin

You should now see your new example skin in the skin selector drop down menu. Simply select it, update your settings, and it should now be active. When you’re done, or if you want to remove the skin, simply select it from the list to delete, and click delete skin. You can add/remove as many skins as you like.

We believe that IgnitionDeck should be a full-service plugin that does as much as it can to help your campaigns be successful. Obviously, raising money is a large part of that effort, and we spend a lot of time focusing on improving how we can help you do that. But equally important is web and social traffic, especially when it leads to better project discovery.

While we’re working on many new ways of helping your projects go viral, we felt that supporting the most common social networks was a no brainer. So as of Beta 5, you’ll find a brand new set of IgnitionDeck social integrations.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Google+
• App.net

You can turn them on and off at will, and they no longer require app IDs or network accounts. As always, they display right under the video, where visitors can easily share with their social networks.

Once we’d begun to flesh out the idea, and realized we were going to start creating it for real – we threw names around for what felt like weeks. Eventually we settled on ‘Ignition’ but we never felt that was JUST right. However, it was at that point we began to work from there with a logo.

Being our designer, I started throwing around some ideas in my head. A rocketship came immediately to mind – and at the same time i threw it out. Rocket’s are so overused, I could really find something else. Something more original. Here’s one of my pages of drawings… where I kept coming back to, well, you’ll see.

As you can see, a lot of rockets ended up on paper. I have a few other pages pretty much the same – I’ve highlighted this one for the point of this ‘evolution’. There’s some ideas on this page I actually really love – the entire word ‘ignition’ being a fuse burning up. The ‘T’ in ignition being an old fashion explosive detonator. But both of them felt too complicated for what I wanted.

Eventually, when we settled on IgnitionDeck – the rocketship seemed to fit that much more. I decided that regardless of a rocket not being ‘original’, it fit, was instantly recognizable, communicated a point and if done right, even an ideal.

I went back to my drawings, and spotted a rocket I sketched that seemed perfect for what I wanted (seen in the above image). I tried sketching some other rocketships, along with a one inspired by my favourite from above.

And I still liked the one inspired by the earlier one I sketched, so I created it as a Vector drawing to take it further. I wanted to get it a little rounder, give it more of that space idealist feeling of the ’50s.

And actually – I haven’t changed the rocket in our logo since I turned it into a vector. It’s been coloured – but it’s shape remained unchanged as we kept iterating on ideas. For me, it captures exactly the feeling I wanted it to – it’s original, it’s simple, it feels slightly retro, is instantly recognizable, and will be well suited for animation.

The ‘ideal’ it communicates to us, is that period of time in the history of our world where Space Travel seemed like it was just years away. Where our vision of the future was glass bubbles and white plastic and shiny clothing. That point in time, when anything was possible and the future was something to be looked forward to, to be excited for. Where we as a people could do the most amazing things.

Now that Beta 5 has had a full-run with some of our earliest adopters, we’re finally ready to announce its readiness for production use. It’s been a long time coming.

Beta 4 served us well, but we learned a lot, and received a lot of great feedback for how to improve it. And while there may be just one digit between 4 and 5, the difference between the two products will astound you.

Here’s some of what we’ve added, updated, and improved upon in this latest version of IgnitionDeck:

• Improved Purchase Process (New templates for purchase form and thank you page)
• Paypal Adaptive Payments Integration
• Sandbox Mode
• Pledge What You Want
• All New Deck & Deck Variations
• Level Titles & Level Limits
• IgnitionDeck Add-Ons
• Open Sourced Translations
• Multiple New Sharing Options (LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, App.net)
• Improved Shortcodes & Shortcode Templating

We’ve also squashed hundreds of bugs, improved both the front and back-end interfaces, and made it easier than ever to sort through your order list.

Clearly, we’re far from finished, but we’re very pleased with what IgnitionDeck Beta5 has to offer. We think you’ll feel the same.

You can grab your copy in the members area. And as always, let us know what you think!