As we all know, crowdfunding is the means to finance a project using large groups of people, rather than a handful of loans or investors. Particularly in Japan, crowdfunding continues to grows in popularity. Considered the largest Japanese crowdfunding site, Campfire boasts an impressive number of successfully funded campaigns. But, how much money were those campaigns able to raise? How many campaigns were not able to reach their goals? And, what does all of this actually mean for the campaign runner?
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SUCCESS RATE
First, let’s look at the percentage of successful campaign run on Campfire. The site doesn’t directly share the success rate of projects run on their platform. It does, however, say that 1117 projects have been successful, and that 4200 projects have been launched. A little math shows us that project success rate on Campfire comes to 26%.
CAN I GET FUNDED?
Campfire splits campaigns into 19 different categories (art, music, dance, products, technology, games, journalism, community, food, photography, fashion, movies, publishing, animation, performance, sports, business, comedy and social-good). Monetary and backer support is pretty evenly split across each category, though the animation category is the leader of the pack. So, if there is no significant difference in success found between categories, perhaps there is a difference found in campaign goals and pledge levels.
GOAL GOALS
With crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, we often hear about the tiny and the enormous projects. A $10 campaign? Funded. A $100 million campaign? Funded. You can find similar projects on Campfire, but we want to look at what works best, what works most often.
The most frequently funded goal amounts on Campfire are in the ￥500,000 range. Success rates start to significantly drop off after ￥800,000. A similar dip happens at the ￥1 million mark.
At the same time, the most common number of backers is around 40. Similar to goal amounts, we find a drop off after 80 backers, and another drop after 100 backers.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
It appears that the most common number of backers to a project is 40, and the most common goal amount is ￥500,000. Depending on your project, this might be the ideal zone to plot your campaign.
But, this doesn’t mean this is the only path to success. Different projects require different goals, and attract different types and numbers of backers. Averages are just that. Personally, aiming for at least 100 backers on a project goal amount of ￥1 million feels moderately exciting and challenging! Ask us what parameters would work best for your project.
About Gloture
Gloture is a Tokyo-based creative PR & Marketing agency offering Japanese market entry services for overseas companies entering into Japan. For inquiries into event management and marketing services please contact us at info@gloture.co.jp
