Your Personal Goal for Kickstarter Donations

I've made my mind up that I'm going to give at least $100. But I want to give 10x that. If I could, I'd do more.

Big Finish REALLY need to make sure that PayPal is a viable option for donations, right from the get-go. Otherwise, I think a lot of people won't bother to donate, because the easiest (and let's face it, laziest) method of money transfer isn't available.

they REALLY CAN`T

Ian Regan wrote:Big Finish REALLY need to make sure that PayPal is a viable option for donations, right from the get-go. Otherwise, I think a lot of people won't bother to donate, because the easiest (and let's face it, laziest) method of money transfer isn't available.

PayPal is REALLY awful for collecting donations. I don't trust them one bit. PP can disable people's accounts without warning or reason. And they have. Thank goodness Google and Amazon are helping to stop its monopoly.

When Regretsy started a charity donation drive, PayPal froze the account and didn't lift a finger to fix it until Regresy's fanbase rose hell. And PP is still up to its tricks. Somethingawful.com stopped using PayPal years ago after it froze their doantion drive also.

James' is probably safe but if you want BIG money on PP, you could get PPed on.

But I'm not talking about large sums of money here, where issues are more likely to be encountered: I'm talking about the potential 'casual' donors who are more likely to pledge only $10 or $20. These individuals may well make up a significant percentage of the putative contributors to Project Fedora.

In light of the restrictions imposed by the Kickstarter website, I think the best approach would be to aim for a modest target, then implement a Paypal donation system for sums of a maximum of $50.

Seriously, it's not hard to make a Kickstarter account. And if you've ever bought from Amazon, the funding is a snap.

Maybe we could research some ways for people to pay to the Kickstarter who don't have a credit card (required by Amazon) based on discussions surrounding other past/current Kickstarters and compile it into a list for Big Finish to use. I should have no problem since I have an Amazon account but just thinking of others.

I found this useful thread on Double Fine's forum:
http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/5981

Also I looked at some ways that other Kickstarters offered PayPal (I think the approach the Shadowrun campaign used for PayPal payments was a good idea and seemed to be successfull, though I'd still wish a PayPal staff member would confirm it beforehand):
http://www.unofficialtexmurphy.com/mess ... 309#p48309

Maybe if we could get an idea of the different options it might be a good advantage for the Big Finish guys to have it all written out in 1 organized page/thread ready someplace before the inevitable questions come rolling in.

the only reason why Kickstarter doesn't use PayPal is due to Amazons frankly monopolistic policies towards the system. Hence my frustration with it, Amazon are assholes too, they're just as bad as paypal.

And PP is still up to its tricks. Somethingawful.com stopped using PayPal years ago after it froze their doantion drive also.

As I understand though this is normal PayPal policy to stop people from scamming- if a large sum of funds come in then paypal keeps the money on there end until given a reason to release it. However the BEST alternative is to use a distributor, since they've already got arrangements with PayPal to accept these transactions in large numbers- its the safest and probably the easiest way to do it. For charity organizations though obviously kickstarter is the way to go, but we're game developers, we can use Distributors for this purpose which uses paypal. The problem is that with a distributor you still need to have a product before you can accept funds.

I thought that the problem with Paypal is that it takes your money straight away, where the way Kickstarter works (I think) is that they only take your money if they reach their goal.

So with Paypal, you could pay money, never see it again and the project never reach its goal.

I know Big Finish have been looking into Paypal, but I think that it's not really 'compatible' with Kickstarter.

I just want to see what the rewards are going to be!

So with Paypal, you could pay money, never see it again and the project never reach its goal.

And you don't have that risk with kickstarter?... you're still paying money, you're still at risk that they never reach there goal.. there is no protection. The only thing is that with kickstarter unless the project is fully funded it wont go ahead.

If its through a distributor there is protection- because the distributor conforms to trade laws, it is in fact a sale and a product, not a donation. The distributor filters out the bad projects.

Demonlawyer wrote: I just want to see what the rewards are going to be!

I am really wondering as well. Top donators to Leisure Suit Larry get a meet-n-greet and a meal with Al Lowe. A top reward for this project could be a meet-n-greet, too. I'd better practice my fawning!

I noticed the Shadowrun kickstarter had a PayPal donation page (no longer live so its the Google cache) which listed each seperate reward tier. Though they also limited PayPal donations to no higher than $500 I guess because they were "limited tiers" that would get "Sold Out" on Kickstarter before those paying with PayPal realise. Also another key thing is they decided to only add PayPal as an option after they reached their Kickstarter goal. Wasteland 2 and Banner Saga did a similar approach I think (starting PayPal after reaching goal, no donations over $500).

The Leisure Suit Larry Kickstarter had a PayPal drive running at the same time towards the end of the campaign but I wonder if they were funneling PayPal payments into Kickstarter, as people in the LSL Kickstarter comments were including the PayPal amount. For the issue with limited tiers above $500 they seemed to not offer it directly like the Shadowrun people but asked people to request first by sending them an email before submitting the $500+ so they could edit the Kickstarter limited reward amounts. However perhaps they just got lucky and was skating on thin ice, I guess Paypal could of deiced to review and close the account at any time. I would love it if the PayPal total could run during the campaign and added somehow to the Kickstarter goal but I wonder if that is even possible.

I think it would be good to have some kind of PayPal option at least after the fact for something extra. Banner Saga Kickstarter got about $2,000 (but apparently the PayPal link wasn't well advertised), LSL got an extra $19,416, Shadowrun at least $52,969 (likely more since that was the total 12 hours before the end), Wasteland 2 $108, 578.

I've already put about $500 towards the cause, but in other areas... which will come to light soon. When the kickstarter comes around I am hoping to have a good chunk go to that too.

-Cub. =o)

I think no matter what we intend to donate, we should all buy lottery tickets this week