I think everyone's experience with live-streaming might be slightly different. I laser cut miniature war-gaming terrain. I currently have a live project running (my first ever Kickstarter) and I live stream my laser cutting nightly on Twitch.tv. Every night at about 10pm CST I turn on the cameras and interact with my backers, friends, and the community at large. I show backers the rewards they signed up for and I let them see their things being cut live. I also answer a lot of questions about lasers and design. So far it has been a very positive experience for me and I think it might be the reason that my project was 100% funded in 4 hours and is now holding steady at 600% funded. I think with live streaming people want the interaction, they want the creator to say hi to them and single them out when talking so they feel connected to the creator. So when you live stream you have to be very personal with people and ask how they are doing and be genuinely involved in conversations with them. All 500 of them at the same time. It is a very exhausting thing to do. But after over a month of doing it I already see a very loyal community forming around my brand and what I do. So it is very worth the time. I also feel one single live stream event is just dead hype. People log in to see it but don't stick around until the end. If you consistently live stream more than once a week at set times and days and stick to that, you will find more people showing up week after week and hanging out until the end.My tips?Dont plan every word to say, have a list of topics, but be genuine and engage the audience. the reason people watch live is to engage. If they wanted a scripted speech they would have watched your youtube video.When your stream starts no one will be there. so have something to talk about for 10-30 min where you can just ramble on. Make it fun and exciting, like a youtube video. People will latch onto something you said or an interesting thing that is in frame and make a comment. When they do, acknowledge them and start talking about what they want to talk about. If the tangents get too far off topic just jump the rails and get back on topic.Have interesting items in frame. Wear an interesting T-Shirt that your viewers can ask about.Go to Twitch.tv, go to the games section, and there is a "game" there called creative (normally the 10th or 20th on the list) open that up and watch some creative streamers. See what they are doing and try to do that. Even if you are facebook streaming or youtube streaming, you can learn a lot from those twitch streamers.Have a blank notepad document open with links to places pasted in. This allows you to quickly grab a link via copy/paste and send it to your viewers. Also, great place to put notes.Anyways, My campaign ends on 10/14 at 10:14am (CST) and I will be live streaming that whole day to celebrate. Before and After. Most of it will be a view of the laser cutting their rewards but it will also be me chatting with the viewers and giving shout outs and giveaways. 

We took almost a month to get the page ready for launch, starting with about 2 days to plan out the skeleton and flow of the campaign page, then 2 weeks to shoot whatever photo/video assets we needed to populate the page, then a week to edit the video and touch up our photos and to insert texts and plan captions. Once we had all the assets we needed, the actual "creating" of the campaign page took about three days to complete.During the campaign we were also constantly tracking the google analytics metrics of our page and looking for ways to improve and optimize the flow of our page. For example, the first couple of days the bounce rate was super high (people came to our page, didn't engage and left), and we made some assumptions as to why that was (first couple scrolls of the page was not engaging enough, title was not clear and didn't resonate with our audience) and we made incremental improvements like making the title more relevant to the reader, and putting a point-form summary of our campaign in the first portions of our project page.Hope this helps!

Option #3 - Collect shipping after the campaign.  This keeps your manufacturing costs accurate, and thus your funding goal.  It also keeps your funding goal lower so you can fund faster.  But you still need to estimate shipping costs, and then tell people what those costs will be by country.Then for an album, you're not likely to go huge.  Not yet.  So you'll just want to check with your national carrier (USA = USPS; UK = Royal Mail), etc.  Bring a CD in bubble mailer down to the post office, and get media mail rates.  I can't imagine it's going to be more than $2.83 each.  Then you buy the bubble mailers from ULINE.com, for .17c each, total it, and you ahve an even $3.00.  Then you charge a couple cents  (50?) for labor, cause it can take a long time.  USA Shipping = $3.50!    I do recommend offering "FREE SHIPPING" with your USA tier, by including the $3.50 in it.  Then use the $3.50 as a SUBSIDY for international packages, and let international backers know it.Best to you!John Wrot!Gate Keeper GamesLive Project = https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwrot/halfsies-dice

I'm currently on my 15th Kickstarter project, so I don’t read anything about crowd-funding anymore. But initially, for my first few Kickstarter projects, I read and reread all the info on the KS site. I mean everything. There is plenty of sound advice scattered there.I haven't found any crowd-funding bloggers that have content that helps me. They often seem to be focused on blockbuster technology projects. That's not me.Let me explain where I think I learned the most about running Kickstarter projects. I supported several projects before I even thought about doing my own. I'd say the best way to learn about doing Kickstarter projects is to support Kickstarter projects and pay attention to what people do well. Copy the stuff you like. But more important, I learned from the mistakes of others. Pay attention when you see updates complaining about schedule problems, wonky prototypes, manufacturing fiascoes, shipping delays, and problems with customs inspectors. These are vital lessons from the front lines. Much better than some author or blogger pontificating about their theories. Plus, these glimpses behind the curtain can be highly entertaining.

How about some simple postcards with your artwork on them? My friend ran a similar project.You could offer postcards, digital prints, small prints. Stickers with the artwork on them could be nice, too. To be honest, I often find t-shirt rewards too expensive and then I find myself barely wearing the shirt anyway, but that's just my personal opinion.

Hey Betta Games! Carol from Kickstarter's Community team here. I worked on a few Kickstarter Live broadcasts, so I'll try to take a first stab at your questions:1. Is there a time limit?No. In fact, one creator ran a live stream for the duration of their campaign. Here's a segment of it.2. Have you experienced lag while running a live stream?Not during any of mine that I was aware of. I do definitely recommend running a test stream in advance so that you can make sure your internet speed and webcam quality is up to par. For example, the quality on my MacBook Air was way better than the quality of my MacBook.3. Does it show up as a project update?Not automatically, but at the end of the stream you'll have access to the recording, which you can easily post in an update.4. Is it viewable after the stream has ended?Yepp. A recording will show up on your project page for 48 hours. And once the stream is done, you'll have a link to share the recording wherever you want.5. Can you limit access to backers?No.6. Anything I wish I knew...Testing your setup is so important. Little things like lighting, the height of your computer, and sound, all fluctuate so much. If anything make sure that the spot you pick has really good lighting. (I prefer natural light, but lamps work fine.)If you're using an external mic, don't forget to speak into it. If you're streaming with a friend, remember to pass the mic to them when they start talking. I believe that nothing makes someone leave a stream faster than bad audio.Hope this is helpful! All of the live streams that I did were so fun. Here are links to a few of them and some of my other favorites:Justin Moore demos recipes from his cookbookJohn Kilduff does some paintingI chat with Justin and Nick (one of the engineer's that built Kickstarter Live)I chat with Mariquel (one of the creators behind Hickies)

Congrats on reaching your goal! Here are a few things that you can try to keep your audience engaged and spreading the word about your campaign:~ Host a Kickstarter Live broadcast. You can demo MUB, answer questions from your backers, or just talk about your inspiration for launching the project.~ Find ways to thank backers for supporting you. I loved these cute graphics that the Marshmallow Run team shared (and they encourage people to share your project).~ Get people excited about what you're working on by posting an update that dives deep into your manufacturing/production/design process. You've shared a lot of great and polished photos of what the finished backpack will look like, but what's the process that gets you to that finished product?Wishing you continued success!

We decided to use Integracore in the USA and Ideaspatcher (now renamed "Nift" - please note the edit note below) in the EU.  The main reason for choosing each of these is that they offered a combine-assemble-shrinkwrap need that we had at the time (rare, but needed). The secondary reason we chose Ideaspatcher is that they will act as your "Importer of Record" in the EU.  That means they pre-pay VAT on the manufacturing side of things, so customers don't have to front-door pay VAT on the retail value side of things.Integracore was ok to work with, but pretty pricey.  I don't think we'd choose them again unless more shrink-wrapping shenanigans was needed.  Shipnaked (aside from their not-so-household-friendly name) is now really trying to storm the Kickstarter fulfillment market with a pretty solid business and pricing model.  We'll see if they accomplish what they're setting out to do.  We'll be working with them on our next project to assess what they bring to the table.Happyshops in Germany has been pretty great, but there's a pretty significant language barrier, otherwise has been excellent.EDIT: I dislike saying something disparaging, but I'm here to serve you, not the companies I've worked with.  To this end I share that working with Ideaspatcher has been a terrible experience in the long run.  They delayed shipping our products over 6 weeks (costing us over $3500), and are still holding our excess items that should be returned to us for over 5 months as of the time of this writing, and are now ignoring my emails on the topic.  We are not the only company they have wounded in 2016, and so they have renamed themselves "Nift" to dodge the bad press.  They are strictly to be avoided.  Sorry for the negative news.Warm regards,John Wrot!Gate Keeper GamesMore advice at www.gatekeepergaming.com