In the Time It Takes You to Read This, $1,000 Will Have Been Pledged on Kickstarter

The crowdfunding platform has released some eye-catching year-end statistics.

Data source: Kickstarter

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Kickstarter, the granddaddy of online crowdfunding platforms, has once again released its year-end numbers. One of the more eye-catching statistics is that, in 2013, the average amount of money pledged to the site was $913 a minute.

The company was founded in 2009 on the premise that people would, if given the chance, raise early funding for projects to which they may only be tangentially connected. It seemed a bit of a crazy idea at the time, but the model appears to be working and shows no signs of slowing down. Last year, the company reports, some 20,000 projects were successfully funded. Three million people from 214 countries pledged at a rate of $1.3 million a day.

That’s up from 2.2 million people who pledged $319 million on 18,000 projects in 2012. That year, the daily rate of giving on Kickstarter was $606 a minute. And the past two years represent quite a jump from the $99 million raised on Kickstarter in 2011, which itself was more than a tripling of the $27 million raised in 2010.

One notion that’s key to Kickstarter’s success is that people will have a good enough experience with online crowdfunding to try it more than once, though that isn’t guaranteed. (I’m still waiting for my Founders Playing Cards.) But on that point, while we don’t have the numbers from the company’s early years, the rates have held steady from last year. About a quarter of pledgers back more than one project. Between 2 and 3 percent of funders support more than 10 projects.

Then there those for whom backing Kickstarter projects has gone from occasional habit to dedicated hobby. In 2012, 452 people backed 100 projects or more. Last year, that number more than doubled: 975 people in 2013 backed more than 100 projects.

Kickstarter grew in the public consciousness last year with the kerfuffle over whether celebrity-tied projects, like those of Spike Lee, Zach Braff and the creators of a Veronica Mars film, were abusing a platform meant for the little guy. The company rejected this criticism, arguing in favor of the network effect that increases the value of an innovation the more people use it. “Artists like Spike Lee don’t hurt other projects. They help them!,” Kickstarter staffers wrote in August, adding of the latter two in particular, “Those projects brought thousands of new people to Kickstarter who have since pledged more than $1 million to 6,000 other projects.”

Just fewer than 20,000 projects reached full funding status on Kickstarter this year. In its year-end report, the company highlights some of its favorites, including £14,692 for a photo exhibit on the Berlin Wall, $11,000 for a public skate park in Philadelphia, and $3,600 for an entirely emoji version of Moby Dick, the hardcover version of which is now retailing for $200.

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Nancy Scola is a Washington, DC-based journalist whose work tends to focus on the intersections of technology, politics, and public policy. Shortly after returning from Havana she started as a tech reporter at POLITICO.

Tags: shared citycivic techcrowdfunding

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