D.I.Y.

Track Kickstarter Campaign Progress With Kicktraq

Kicktraq-logoThough Kickstarter does provide a variety of stats and analytics for both the public and for project creators, tools for people wanting to track specific campaigns or to research and compare campaigns are relatively limited. Kicktraq is a useful campaign analytics tool that allows you to follow the progress of specific campaigns, including projections while a campaign is live, and to research finished campaigns.

Kicktraq is the creation of Adam Clark who described himself in a Twitter exchange as "just one guy who likes data." He's responsible for most of the work and was inspired to create the tool due to efforts to track the campaigns he was funding:

"I'm a data nut, so it wasn’t long before I started keeping track of campaigns I pledged on within a spreadsheet. This morphed into trying to see if I could find trending patterns to see if project A would fund as well as project B."

I would hesitate to call it a "Google Analytics for Kickstarter," though I imagine that headline helped get Wired some extra traffic, but if a creator combines it with Kickstarter's own tools, including the Creator Dashboard and Video Analytics, they have a lot to work with.

But for those tracking campaigns who aren't creators, Kicktraq pulls back a few curtains. To track or research a campaign, simply go to the homepage, enter a project name or Kickstarter URL and check out how things are going.

Currently Kicktraq offers "Funding Progress" and "Pledges & Backers By Day" plus a couple of experimental features that display a "Projection" chart and a "Trend" chart. However Clark is careful to note in the Kicktraq blog the limitations on prediction inherent in such a tool.

In an earlier interview, Clark said that his "favorite bits of information to correlate is when projects get noticed by different sources and how it impacts them." He discusses some examples on his blog. Actually having a way to record media attention and other such factors on or below the graphs would be a nice addition to Kicktraq (hint, hint)!

To get a sense of Kicktraq in action, I took the URL for The Jamie Baum Octet's CD campaign and plugged it into Kicktraq.  In addition to analytics, the "Share" feature offers an embeddable Kictraq Mini Chart which should be useful for promoting your campaign in progress.  Unfortunately you can't alter the size and it's a bit wide for display in this post.

Clark has also created browser add-ons for your tracking convenience.

Be sure to check out his KickBlog as well. In addition to info about Kicktraq, Clark has shared some useful Kickstarter tips.

More:

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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