The phrase at the top of the list for phrases signaling that the project won't be funded is "pledged" but the 3rd, 4th and 5th ranked phrases signaling that the project will be funded are "has pledged", "pledged will", and "pledged and". How are you supposed to interpret those seemingly conflicting results?
Another fishy thing is that the top of the list for phrases signaling that the project will be funded is the phrase "project will be". It's fishy because whenever you meet your funding goal, Kickstarter puts a blurb on your page saying "This project will be funded on <deadline>"†. It makes me wonder whether their scraper accidentally picked up some text that was not part of the user created promotional text.
Edit: One more thing. I would be much more convinced of the model accuracy if they had tested it on provably out of sample data. I.e. Take their model as it stands today and use it to generate a prediction for the next 1000 campaigns posted to Kickstarter. Compare the prediction results to the actual outcomes and post the results.
Man, tough read, having been away from academia! I tried to write up what would be, according to the paper, pretty much the most effective Kickstarter pitch ever:
"We are domain experts on Christina Aguilera, and we've teamed up with one of the top production teams to shoot a full documentary WITH her participation!!! We're so excited!!!
Everyone who has pledged will get our incredible supporter rewards package. In addition, when you sign up at level 2, we'll mention your name in the credits and you'll receive two VIP tickets to our premiere. That's right--you'll be able to hang out with tons of top industry experts and performers! We have spared no expense and our friends in the industry are excited to see the result. This option won't last long (expires on February 1) so grab the chance to lock in these extra goodies while you have the opportunity. All that plus the good old-fashioned karma you'll receive by being a supporter.
We've also learned that a wave of people from website X just pledged. This is so incredibly humbling and awesome! Your pledges will go a long way toward enhancing the creative potential of people everywhere. Thanks also for your support and encouragement on Twitter, Facebook, and every other social network where we have a presence.
I'm off to feed my cat and tell him the good news. Thanks again everybody!"
I know your comment was mostly a joke but thats actually a great distillation of the paper. Apart from not caring about a Christina Aguilera documentary, it does seem like a powerful pitch to me. I guess it reads somewhat more like an request to help make something happen that otherwise wouldn't rather than a presales channel.
OK, so I'm betraying my ignorance of statistics here...but aren't there just too many other variables that far outweigh the one studied here, and despite attempts to control for them...aren't easily quantified?
The actual product, for one thing. How do the researchers quantify the real world (or hyped) appeal of Pebble and Ninja Baseball? Do they look at the respective markets for such products? Such a factor seems to so far outweigh a textual description that it almost seem a low ROI to spend an inordinate time on exact phrasing.
Edit: OK I read the paper. Seems to be no or very little mention of inherent product qualities...thus, this study seems very limited, and missing the forest for the trees
This seems like a really cool idea, but I'm not sure if the results are meaningful, and I'm very doubtful that any of the results are actionable. Reading the actual paper, all of the phrases are just 2-3 words, and most are extremely generic phrases. ("used in a", "all supporters", "pledged", "information at", etc)
These phrases may have predictive power due to some broad trends in language, but I don't see how to extract meaning or intuition from the lists of top 100 positive and negative words. Perhaps I just lack an understanding of the statistics though.
I'm not one of those sales-types (at least not yet), so I'm glad to have this info now, even if I missed the window to use it with my last Kickstarter. :)
That leaves me wondering: how well do sales tactics work on selling yourself on things like regular exercise, better food habits, and the like?
Thank you for your reference. It tells the real tactics about how to win the trust from people and how to put influence on others. But the same tactics may generate different results from person to person. The same for every Kickstarter project. We all like to be positive, consistent and with integrity. We show our expertise and authority, be friendly. Unfortunately, things turn out to be not working that well. Maybe you guys can help me a little bit on how to improve my Kickstarter project: http://kck.st/JNqv8z
I just launched a successful Kickstarter campaign back in November, so I'll share what feedback that I can:
* The copy focuses too much on the product features, rather than on how you, the backer, will improve as a person for using it.
* The video sounds and feels too corporate. Many Kickstarter backers seem to seek out interesting people as much if not more so than interesting projects. I only watched more than 10 seconds of it for the sake of offering feedback.
* This particular input will hurt to read: the example website's just plain ugly as sin. All those buttons and fields contradict the "one place" promise central to the whole offering, too.
* The service tries to do too do much, straining my imagination rather than exciting it.
* Online services seem to have hard a hard time of it on Kickstarter. Services as a deliverable are also hard to picture (in contrast to the concrete images of books, gourmet chocolate, etc.).
* Millions of dollars couldn't fix web portals for Yahoo and other corporate giants. The offering is a 1990s-style web portal, as far as I can tell.
My actionable advice:
* Start with something much smaller, ideally something you could complete or attempt out of your own pocket. A single-purpose, single-platform app, for example.
* Tim Ferris blogged about running a Kickstarter campaign. Treat that as your bible (scaling your efforts accordingly). I'm including the advice to hire a virtual assistant in this. You will have no free time for mundane tasks while running the Kickstarter.
* Shut down the current Kickstarter. Kicktraq will confirm that it has no chance of succeeding. Keeping the "sunk cost" fallacy in mind, better to devote your time and limited mental energy to starting again.
* Keep trying. I might have succeeded on my own first Kickstarter, but with years of creative effort and outreach preceding that.
Thank you so much for your advice. I love to hear feedback from people, especially from online and Kickstarter project. I'm sorry that I just found your comment today.
I've talked to various kinds of people in real life. It takes about 5-min for them to understand the benefit since it's a brand new Web 3.0 solution. Most of them are convinced and very impressed. They don't need to lie because we didn't know each other before.
I accept some of your comments, but I cannot agree on your conclusion, which is: it's doomed to fail, don't continue. I guess part of the reason is that you haven't seen the entire video which is about 75 seconds long. Even the first question may make sense if you are the people who are looking for more efficient way to find things online. Some people blamed me: why do you even need to ask? Of course everybody wants.
I agree that the BingoBo.com website UI is not fully implemented using the HTML5/CSS3 since I don't have time and resource to do so. The Kickstarter image is boring, but it really show you a pair of public/private views. It means a lot to you. I saw another online calendar project was next to mine looking exactly the same as mine. I know there are two reasons for sure that it's going to fail on Kickstarter, just like one of the project I've backed: lacking of traffic and not being a widget or gadget. I've got hardware product to show, but that's not going to be exciting in most backers' eyes either because those are the applications which will fundamentally change how people's daily life, which they are not quite familiar with.
Before I launched the project, I never expect to have it successful in the first round. My purpose is to have a place for me to explain to people and get the message across. I provided sufficient reasons and evidences to show that it's going to be an important application. If you watch all the videos, you will understand it better.
With all that said, I know that no matter how many reasons I have, if I cannot make people happy to accept in the first place, it's my fault. But that does not equal to: it's not valuable. Look here, another thread when I discussed the similar issues other people raised: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7086320
As you can see, he cannot reject my solution which really can resolve the fair common problem he raised. What he cannot accept is my solution is not an open solution.
I put all three benefit clearly on the top because I need to meet various kinds of people's needs. I do have backers who I never knew before, they do believe in my vision and the solution. And I have a few bets testers who really come back to test and try again and again. It does help people in the long run. Are you sure you don't need a Private Web of your own if you can create it by a few clicks? It's a matter of time and efficient way to articulate and convey the idea.
I agree that Kickstarter project eats me so much time, not only on the information I provided along with my blogs, but also I have to acquire viewers organically from HN and Raddit. It's too time consuming. However, I'm not going to change my direction and I have no idea or intention to create small apps. Those small, cute products everybody loves in the Shark Tank usually have very short product life on the market, just like the apps on the smartphone. See the following blog from the successful company which raised $23M recently. This first point is to have a large vision. And I'll stick to it. It may take longer time to reach the goal.
From action point of view, I've been using virtual assistance to record the voice over. Some people told me that the voice makes people additive to listen. Not many VAs are able to understand this project either. Even if yes, it will cost me a fortune to let him drive the project through.
Last point is: it's not a web portal. I'll explain what the difference is from Yahoo directory in my future blog post.
The Kickstart project is served as my bible where you can find all the important information and frequently asked questions and debates in the daily updates with links to my blogs.
Anyway, your comments are precious to me. I hope that you will have time to get more information from the project, and I'll be happy to discuss with you via email.
My understanding is that psychology works well. Pretty much period. You just have to remember that it is all a statistics thing, though. Usually where none of the interesting results are 0% or 100%.
Fall locations it goes well striving to the builds. If you want one thing: her new crown. Realize the card quarterly, make sure your host will likely school. Free access completing the offer of this new room and achieve their win. Showing the hard work, serious about playing with the builds.
And negative phrases:
For kids, know you mission is meeting pearl. You select a panels way of life at the eyes of the ancient and seem like digging. Make up akin to a thousand dollar professional. To get great, expand and extremely this option a broaden to feeling that stands. Needs a crowd and makes a broaden to come see explored ears. Items that college students and write using some much closer.
If anyone is interested, the buckets mentioned are derived from a book by Cialdini (I didn't read the paper to see if properly attributed - probably was) that I read in grad school, and has had an impact on how I think about negotiation, business, marketing, product, etc. It's one of those great books whose lessons you carry with you many years later. Hope you find it useful.
Another fishy thing is that the top of the list for phrases signaling that the project will be funded is the phrase "project will be". It's fishy because whenever you meet your funding goal, Kickstarter puts a blurb on your page saying "This project will be funded on <deadline>"†. It makes me wonder whether their scraper accidentally picked up some text that was not part of the user created promotional text.
† https://www.google.com/#q=%22This+project+will+be+funded%22+...
Edit: One more thing. I would be much more convinced of the model accuracy if they had tested it on provably out of sample data. I.e. Take their model as it stands today and use it to generate a prediction for the next 1000 campaigns posted to Kickstarter. Compare the prediction results to the actual outcomes and post the results.