Affiliate marketing is extremely hit or miss. Most times, participants are being paid to spread the word about products they couldn’t care less about, resulting in a poor experience for all parties involved.
Enter Kickbooster: an affiliate network for crowdfunding campaigns.
After signing up, users can share links to interesting campaigns, and receive a 10 percent referral fee when someone clicks their link and backs the campaign.
So, if a user refers a friend to back a $200 drone, they would receive a pretty hefty $20 kickback for the referral. Scott Adamson, founder of Kickbooster, explained that while companies are free to choose their own percentage, most stick with the standard 10 percent.
While anyone can sign up and create referral links, the company specifically targets users who have already backed a campaign.
The idea is that people who have already made a financial commitment to back a campaign are much more likely to be genuinely enthused about a product. Kickbooster takes advantage of this post-pledge excitement by encouraging backers to recoup some (or all) of their pledge by sharing the campaign with friends.
Interestingly, the site also offers a feature where users can refer themselves to a campaign, essentially giving them a 10 percent rebate on any campaign they back. This turns Kickbooster into something along the lines of a discount store for crowdfunding campaigns.
Just a few months old, Kickbooster has already partnered with over 200 campaigns, who each pay the company a 3 percent fee on top of whatever referral rate they choose. The company also offers services to campaigns after the crowdfunding period ends, like helping them set up an E-commerce store and migrating users from the crowdfunding site to their own self-hosted platform.
While affiliate marketing has been around almost as long as the internet, the trend has been slower to make its way to the crowdfunding space. However, a service like Kickbooster seems like a natural fit, especially since most backers are already sharing the crowdfunding projects that they are a part of.
Kickbooster currently works with all Kickstarter campaigns, with Indiegogo support coming soon.