Back of the envelope Amanda Palmer

[nickellis]

Hey guys,

Been talking a lot with my girlfriend about Amanda Palmer and new ways of producing creative content. My girlfriend is in her final year of a fashion design degree and is focussing on non-traditional methods of funding design.

Amanda Palmer has just raised over a million dollars on Kickstarter.

I put together some back-of-the-envelope calculations about her Kickstarter project. These are really, really reductive, but I thought they might be of interest, especially as Kickstarter style funding seems to be being used a lot by comics people.

Back of envelope calculations:

Amanda Palmer has 300K followers on Twitter. Total audience possibly 2 million (Neil Gaiman's followers minus people who aren't interested in her, plus people who like her but don't follow her online - very rough).

21K of those people have pledged $1 million.

21K = roughly 1% of 2million. 21K = roughly 7% of 300K.

On average, per person, they have pledged roughly $47 each.

Please note: my maths is terrible. And again, this is reductive, but interesting.

N

PS - I also think it's very interesting that her entry point is $1 (you get a download of the new album). The highest rate is around the $5 (download + PDF) - $25 (download + PDF + CD) marks. It goes up to over $10K.

PPS - I originally pledged $5, then upped it to $100 after seeing some of her stuff for the art book, in an email for the release of one of the songs.

PPPS - She works really, really hard to both engage this audience, and give stuff to them. Like I said, the calculations are reductive.

[Karen Mahoney]

Interesting stuff. (My maths is terrible, so I'm not gonna judge! )

I pledged for the art book, too. It looks A-MAZING!

I really love AFP. I think if I met her I would faint, or at the very least hug her and cry a little bit.

Kaz

[nickellis]

Quick update.

The Amanda Palmer Kickstarter has closed. Final figures:
24,883 supporters
$1,192,793.00
558,364 Twitter followers (checked just after I got the Kickstarter email saying the project had closed).

This makes it:
4.46% of her followers pledged [(24,883 / 558,364) x 100 = 4.46 (rounded to two decimal places)]

Average of $47.94 per pledge [$1,192,793 / 24,883 = $47.94 (rounded to nearest cent)]

I think it's unfair, actually, to count Neil Gaiman's followers as her audience, even though she does reach those people. Also, she seems to have had a spike in Twitter followers, so I'm assuming anyone who followed Gaiman but didn't follow her, now does.

I don't know how to guess at how many people don't follow her but did pledge.

Also: the $47 average and 24K figures might not be accurate, as you don't know how many people made multiple purchases on the same pledge (ie: bought two tickets to a show, bought a CD for a friend).

Still, interesting.

N