Kickstarter gave itself a huge OMG today as it announced that it has surpassed $1 billion in pledges, that's a lot of money given to back people's dreams.
The online fund raising site based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn has come long way from its first day on April 28, 2009 when 40 people pledged $1,084 to 7 projects. Since that day more than 5.7 million people from 224 countries have pledged money to various projects. The United States is home to the majority of the backers with 3.7 million people pledging $663.3 million. The UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and France are the next most generous countries.
To mark this historic event Kickstarter broke down the donations in a variety of ways.
More than half of all donations came in during the last 12 months, for some reason people really like to pledge money on Wednesdays with more than $150 million coming in on hump day. And for companies using Kickstarter 13 is a very lucky number. The 13th of the month tends to draw the most money, about $37 million, and the single day pledge record was set on March 13, 2013 when 54,187 backers pledged $4,029,585.45 to 1,985 projects.
Giving money on Kickstarter must be quite rewarding because 62 percent of all funds are given by returning backers, the site said. It must make some folks feel really good as ,689,979 people have backed more than one project and 15,932 people have backed more than 50 projects.
Gaming start ups receive the most money, according to GameSpot. The games category on Kickstarter is the biggest overall in terms of dollars pledged. Since launch, people have pledged $215.75 million to gaming-related Kickstarters, with $189.84 million of those dollars going to successful campaigns. Gaming projects on Kickstarter have a success rate of 35.15 percent, the fourth-worst overall, only behind technology (34.79 percent), Publishing (32.29 percent), and fashion (29.3 percent).
The money collected has gone to fund a myriad of projects including the TV show-turned- movie Veronica Mars and in general is designed to help people fund creative projects.
The company likes to consider itself a modern day patron, in the same manner that artists from years ago had a wealthy backer that allowed them to pursue their art. Kickstarter makes it clear that it has no control over the projects on the site, but there are some caveats. Funding on Kickstarter is all-or-nothing - projects must reach their funding goals to receive any money. All-or-nothing funding might seem scary, but it's amazingly effective in creating momentum and rallying people around an idea. To date, an impressive 44% of projects have reached their funding goals.
