Analytics: Kickstarter May 2014

With the increased interest in crowd-funded playing card projects particularly on Kickstarter, we are publishing a monthly tracking report as part of our popular Analytics series. The goal is to give an analytical insight into the month-on-month performance of projects and how these numbers are tracking cumulatively year-to-date.

May was an interesting month. The launch of Deckstarter and the impending launch of a few high profile decks did not slow the momentum of the popular crowd-funding platform- the number of funded projects in May have increased. The year-to-date (YTD) numbers continue to surpass 2013 numbers. The chart below describes how 2014 is tracking against the numbers from 2013 as benchmark.

Playing Card Projects 

The number of unsuccessful projects remains at 13% in May while % of successful projects ended higher (34%).

Here is what the month looked like in numbers:

Projects launched in May were equally distributed across the month.

Here's a look at how projects performed over the month. The % of successful projects this month ended higher than April. This is predominantly due to the lower funding goal of more than half of the successfully funded projects this month. See YTD funding goal in the next section.

Funding

A total of $721k was raised by all projects in May, basically on par with last month.

The Atelier playing cards ($66k) was the most funded this month. The project had an average start but it took off when major news networks made the connection between the creator, Robert Padbury and his former employer, Apple.

Here is a look at the top 5 most funded playing cards:

The top 5 successful playing cards projects for the month contributed 50% to the overall funding of successful projects!

The average YTD funding goal of successful project had dropped to $11.2k. 52% of the successful projects in May have a funding goal of less or equal to $10k, puling the YTD average down.

Backers 

This month, approximately 19.3k backers were recorded across all projects. The average pledge per backer for successful projects continue to decrease. This month it stands at $41.3.

Line chart below is a month-on-month comparison for 2014 with the 2013 curve used as benchmark.

Top 5 funded Projects by backer numbers below:

Launched Projects 

Here are the top 10 most funded projects launched in May:

The Muertos- Day of the Dead playing cards is the surprise winner this month after going viral on 9gag. From where it stands, it is on track to join the elite $100k club.

From the numbers this month, it looks like the momentum is picking up as we draw closer to summer. However, this could be dampened by the news of a new playing cards crowd-funding platform launching in late July/early August. This should have a slight effect on June and July numbers as backers remain cautions.


Data provider: