Farm and Sustainability Tour Kickstarter Sneak Peek and Feedback

Update

Thank you all for your support and feedback. We have launched!
The kickstarter is live. The official Permies thread is now here.
Here is the official kickstarter page.

...End Update

We are working on a new kickstarter called the "Farm and Sustainability Tour" also known as the permaburn tour.
Do you have any suggestions on how we could polish this up before we launch it?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brinkoffreedom/2057586327?ref=387748&token=450e9918

It looks really great.

From my selfish point of view, I look at two things.

1. what is the kickstarter making?  You have an actual goal that makes sense.  You're making something tangible instead of a different Kickstarter I saw lately who's goal was to 'explore and get matching funding for a grant that helps us investigate this vague thingy we don't really know what we're doing"  

2. Are the rewards attractive?  definitely looking good.  Even your one dollar reward has loads of goodies in it.

There's a big jump between the one dollar and the next level up.  Is there something you can offer for about $6 (the price of a coffee and a pastry at my local coffee shop)?  Then again, it might not be worthwhile.  I don't know much about running a kickstarter.  

Love the video, especially the bit with the piglets.

One other thing, I can't get https://permaethos.com/ to load.  

Just finished 10 months of having my dinner with the Justin Rhodes family as I watched their daily videos during their Farm Tour.  Have you talked with him about what did and didn't work?  How do you think your trip and videos will be different?

Loved the momma pigs tossing the piglets out of the feed trough in your video.

Good luck.

Thank you for your feedback so far. We have updated the page with some new photos and a new logo. Please let us know what you think.

Dakota Brown wrote:Just finished 10 months of having my dinner with the Justin Rhodes family as I watched their daily videos during their Farm Tour.  Have you talked with him about what did and didn't work?  How do you think your trip and videos will be different?

Loved the momma pigs tossing the piglets out of the feed trough in your video.

Good luck.

Yes, we have contacted Justin. That is my favorite part of the video as well.

r ranson wrote:It looks really great.

From my selfish point of view, I look at two things.

1. what is the kickstarter making?  You have an actual goal that makes sense.  You're making something tangible instead of a different Kickstarter I saw lately who's goal was to 'explore and get matching funding for a grant that helps us investigate this vague thingy we don't really know what we're doing"  

2. Are the rewards attractive?  definitely looking good.  Even your one dollar reward has loads of goodies in it.

There's a big jump between the one dollar and the next level up.  Is there something you can offer for about $6 (the price of a coffee and a pastry at my local coffee shop)?  Then again, it might not be worthwhile.  I don't know much about running a kickstarter.  

Love the video, especially the bit with the piglets.

One other thing, I can't get https://permaethos.com/ to load.  

Thank you for the great feedback. I will see what we can do with a $6 level but I think we may be pretty set in stone with what we have.

Dakota Brown wrote:
Loved the momma pigs tossing the piglets out of the feed trough in your video.

Those were my pigs ;)

We hosted the Ponder family for 2 days in July 2017.  They are wonderful people.  My talks with Cliff and Michelle have had a lasting impact on my homeschooling with my son.  I am really excited for them and I hope they are returning to Idaho on their journey.

It looks fabulous!
From a marketing standpoint I would remove the comment from Michelle about not finishing the crotchet project, gives a 'cant follow thru' impression and you don't want that in any context.
Focus more on a statement about the kids and smiling faces  and how she treasures that or quizickle (sp) look they have when being exposed to new things....somethig like that. Everyone loves kids and knowing that they could be contributing to making the next generation better warms the heart.
  I don't see the rewards breakdown  in my views but a $1 reward seems pretty low ball, Even if you have 1000 of them you are only 2% of the way there.
Why not start with $5 which at 1000 rewards gets you 11% of the way  (I know very little about the statistics of what works for Kickstarter and you may have already found that the $1 thing works best!) .

Video and content looks great overall!

r ranson wrote:
From my selfish point of view, I look at two things.

1. what is the kickstarter making?  You have an actual goal that makes sense.  You're making something tangible instead of a different Kickstarter I saw lately who's goal was to 'explore and get matching funding for a grant that helps us investigate this vague thingy we don't really know what we're doing"  

2. Are the rewards attractive?  definitely looking good.  Even your one dollar reward has loads of goodies in it.

Yes, an excellent point.  I heartily agree!  I fund kickstarters because I want to get in at the early stages with someone making something that I believe will be useful to me and to the rest of the world.  I am in no way motivated merely to subsidize somebody else's brainstorming session.

BTW, I just left you some feedback on the kickstarter sneak peak page.  I copy it here:

"Looks pretty good. I will most likely join this campaign upon launch. I particularly appreciate that you offer a large variety of pledge/reward options with finely articulated differences in $ and rewards. I think a bit more info on the planned Quick Win courses would be a good idea: how many will there be, how long will each be, are they interactive, in what format, and what will they look like? There is a brief description of the Understanding Homeschooling Quick Win, but I am left with many questions about it."

Matthew Nistico wrote:
I think a bit more info on the planned Quick Win courses would be a good idea: how many will there be, how long will each be, are they interactive, in what format, and what will they look like? There is a brief description of the Understanding Homeschooling Quick Win, but I am left with many questions about it."

Great point Matthew, we will include more information about the quick-win courses.

Looks like all the feedback I was going to give has been given.

I agree that having another pledge level between the 1$ and 15$ level is a good idea to maximize giving - if that isn't in your plan, your reward levels still look awesome.

Apples to the feedback givers!!

Eden Rudin wrote:...From a marketing standpoint I would remove the comment from Michelle about not finishing the crotchet project, gives a 'cant follow thru' impression and you don't want that in any context.
Focus more on a statement about the kids and smiling faces and how she treasures that or quizickle (sp) look they have when being exposed to new things....somethig like that. Everyone loves kids and knowing that they could be contributing to making the next generation better warms the heart.

Another excellent point.  While we all surely identify with little projects relegated to the back burner and completed years later - sometimes I feel my whole life is composed of such projects! - it isn't really the image you want to project when asking people to pledge money on a promise of quick follow-through.

I would like to offer a counterpoint opinion, however, to Eden's advice that "everyone loves kids and... contributing to making the next generation better warms the heart."  While yes, it certainly does warm the heart, I think there is plenty of footage of the children and their smiling faces already.  Not too much, by any means, but I also wouldn't go doubling down on it.  Instead, I would recommend that the video and the rest of the kickstarter page maintain the existing good balance between "here is the quality product we intend to produce" and "get to know the people whose journey you will be following while we produce it."  It sounds like a fascinating journey, and I look forward to watching it unfold, but without the promise of a quality product at the end that fits my own areas of interest - homesteading techniques, sustainable small scale horticulture, homeschooling, and appropriate technology - the kickstarter wouldn't have caught my eye just because it warms the heart.

Dan Ohmann wrote:

Dakota Brown wrote:
Loved the momma pigs tossing the piglets out of the feed trough in your video.

Those were my pigs ;)

I loved that too!  Dan, with a little luck, your momma pig could become the newest YouTube sensation, LOL!

Dakota Brown wrote:
I loved that too!  Dan, with a little luck, your momma pig could become the newest YouTube sensation, LOL!

Well...we ate her.  That abruptly ended her YouTube career

Dan Ohmann wrote:

Dakota Brown wrote:
I loved that too!  Dan, with a little luck, your momma pig could become the newest YouTube sensation, LOL!

Well...we ate her.  That abruptly ended her YouTube career

Oh no!  So much potential, and now she will never know her 15 minutes of fame.  Oh well, celebrity can be tough, so maybe she was better off not to go down that path ; )

First BACKER!!!

Thank you all for your support and feedback.
The kickstarter is live. The official Permies thread is now here.
[urlhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brinkoffreedom/farm-and-sustainability-documentaries-and-courses?ref=5ghrsq]Here is the official kickstarter page.[/url]