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Has Kickstarter Peaked?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Kickstarter has taken off in the past year, raising big money for a wide variety of projects. Look at some of their stats: in June 2012, only seven projects raised more than a million dollars apiece; in the past nine months, another 16 projects have passed that threshold. Since the site began operations in 2009, several of the 38,000 funded projects have broken out as superstars, including the Pebble Watch and a new gaming console. With all this competition, has crowdfunding gotten, well, too crowded? Is Kickstarter peaking? As the dollar amounts have grown, so has the potential for abuse. Hidden amidst all these success stories and multi-million dollar payouts are some sadder tales. The majority of the nearly 50,000 unfunded Kickstarter projects received less than 20 precent of their funding goals, with 11 percent never even getting a single pledge."
Has "Has X peaked?" articles peaked?
Monstar L
Kickstarter didn't really change anything. The success stories have been on the back of great marketing campaigns done by experienced marketeers. Hence, Elite and Ouya were able to make money, without really offering very much that couldn't have been done anyway (Braben couldn't get publisher money for Elite? Of course he could - but the Kickstarter money has fewer strings attached, and no penalty if he screws it up). Often, Kickstarters will already have funding and just need a bit more to launch - it's a pre-order system, and really does nothing to help start new ventures. And as with everything else, you need to get your head above the crowd. Not everyone can do that - by definition - so there's bound to be a majority of failures and a few stars. But the market already worked like that, so nothing has changed. Fundamentally you still need a business with a product that people want to buy, and you have to reach those people with marketing. Kickstarter doesn't help with any of that - why would it?
Saying it's "peaked" is missing the point. It assumes that Kickstarter was meant to be something it never could have been anyway. Once you ignore the hyperbole of what Kickstarter thinks it is, and look at what it actually is, there's no case to answer. It's a website serving a purpose, and that purpose hasn't gone away, but nor is it greater than what it really is
No.
Seriously though, probably not. It's experiencing a dip after it's initial surge of interest. It's not a roller coaster, or a rocket, it's a company. It will have ups and downs. Demand will fluctuate over time. It can experience market saturation (those of us who have now kickstarter-ed so many projects that we need to wait for some to finish before we pay for more).
Also; what's this nonsense about 50,000 projects and not getting near their total, as if that's a bad thing. It's not a magic money tree; most of those projects probably didn't interest people, so they failed at the first hurdle. That's not a tale of woe, that's someone being saved from spending months/years of their life developing a product that wasn't going to sell.
Not every project can be successfully funded.
If "the crowd" don't like your project then it's not going to be successfully funded. The site isn't an automatic "setup project receive money". The harsh reality is that most ideas don't receive funding, this is true whether the source of funds is a crowd of people or one very rich person.
a) your idea isn't very good
b) your idea isn't very well presented
c) nobody sees your idea
Blaming any of the above on the platform you use to get funded is silly.