What is a Gamecrafter Crowd Sale?
This is TheGamecrafter’s version of a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign. While it doesn’t offer the fanciest upgrades to packaging or super-fancy cardstock (beyond their delightful 320gsm black-core stock) it is an opportunity to band together multiple orders to reduce costs. Stretch goals that might only appeal to some users instead become a lower price for everyone.
Buyers’ payments goes directly to TheGamecrafter; the designer is paid out their proceeds only after orders are shipped- no risk of projects or payments disappearing into the ether.
Decks must be fully designed and ready to go at the start of the campaign. That doesn’t allow artists to raise money before creating artwork, and payment is only made after orders ship, which may be limiting for some. But if they can work with that, a Gamecrafter Crowd Sale is a much less stressful project. Those other campaign sites often consume the bulk of the artist’s time and energy for 8, 12, or even more months.
TheGamecrafter handles payment and production, but also any delivery issues. They self-insure orders rather than waste time and energy trying to get a refund out of delivery services. Orders may take longer in production than individual orders, but there’s no waiting for stock being shipped across the Pacific Ocean.
Setting Up Your Gamecrafter Crowd Sale:
Once your deck is set up and ready to go in The Gamecrafter’s webshop, setting up a Crowd Sale is super-easy. Each request is manually approved, so make sure the Sales Page is ready to go: your description and images are on point, clear and focused.
In addition to the usual Sales Page, a Crowd Sale requires you have a short video (hosted on youTube or Vimeo) and a 525px x 700px ad for the Crowd Sales Page.
There are only a few online forms to complete, and they’re pretty self-explanatory. There is a Crowd Sale Creator FAQ as well as one for Crowd Sale Backers. As with regular orders, the estimated production time for the Bulk Order Queue tends to be generous. As of this writing it’s 3 months- which is significantly longer than the regular, but not that different from bulk orders shipped to the US from overseas.
