Kickstarter. Scams. Influencers

Kickstarter is a useful platform for people to raise the necessary funds to make and bring products to the market. Unfortunately, as with anything that involves money, there are also scammers who use Kickstarter to cheat money. Identifying scams on Kickstarter is not easy, just like nobody knows you're a dog in the internet.

Cartoon: Peter Steiner

Case study 1: Reckless Deck
I'm disappointed to say that I've this product that was never released. In 2017, I wrote about Reckless Deck which are idea cards on character designs. That Kickstarter raised US $68,196 but the product was never launched and 1,362 people lost money.

It should not be that difficult to print some cards, right? After all, I did receive a pack of cards for review and promotion?

Anyway, the Reckless Deck creator Clark Huggins did not deliver for whatever reason and now I consider that to be a scam.

Case study 2: 13.3 Android e-reader
In 2016, 620 backers raised US $369,376 for a 13.3-inch Android e-reader that was never launched.

The creator of the Indiegogo campaign is Michael Kozlowski, a contributor at Good E-Reader blog and YT channel. That was a scam too. And the guy still has the audacity to show his face on the internet. This scam is a stain to the Good E-Reader brand and it's not like the company cares.

Case study 3: Buccaneer 3D printer
This was a 3D printer designed by Singapore startup Pirate3D. It raised US $1,438,765 from 3,520 backers. The product was never released.

The product was even featured on these credible websites.

How do you identify a scam?

If the creator has the intention to deceive, it can be quite easy to deceive people. And even influencers can be deceived so it's important to do your own checks.

Kickstarter will pay the creator at the end of the campaign. Some creators see the huge monetary reward as an incentive to scam because there really isn't any penalties for not delivering. Kickstarter does not have any liability since they have warned of the risk that backers can potentially lose all their money. And Kickstarter doesn't really do anything to test the credibility of these creators.

In short, you as a backer will have to do your own due diligence and do background checks. Red flags should appear when it's a new creator and when there's no consequence to loss of reputation. But there really is no sure way to tell whether a creator is credible.

Scams on Kickstarter are not the too-good-to-be-true types, and that makes it even harder to identify scams.

If you have other ways you check for scams, let me know in the comments section below.

Do this before you back a campaign on Kickstarter or Indiegogo

The first thing you should do before you back any campaign is to do a check to see if such a product has already existed. Search on Taobao, AliExpress and Alibaba first. These are three huge Chinese retail e-commerce websites with huge variety of products.

Some Kickstarter creators are actually just selling white label products, which are generic products marketed under a different brand.

I've seen so many white label portable monitors being promoted as ad on Facebook. And many of these portable monitors already exist for sale on retail websites including Amazon.

I've reviewed one monitor called Desklab that raised US $685,000 from 2,220. Many backers did not receive the products, and when they do receive the product the quality wasn't as expected, and the customer service was horrendous. Each backer lost at least US $299 to $399 for each monitor purchased.

At the time I reviewed the Desklab monitor, it did not occur to me to check Taobao, AliExpress and Alibaba. But now I know, and that's why I'm writing this article to share what I've learnt.

Understand that influencers are biased

Influencers may be paid by companies to promote products, or they may receive free products in return for featuring the product. Sometimes companies may dictate what influencers can say or cannot say.

Even if there's no payment involved, the act of accepting a free product already creates the conflict of interest. Would you feel bad talking negatively about a gift you received? So what is suppose to be a video review has turned into a sponsored ad talking about the features of the product, the same features that you can already find online on the product page.

So nowadays whenever I receive any offer to feature products on Kickstarter, I'm extremely wary.

I won't want to feature products when it could be a potential scam. I also won't want to feature products where I'm prevented from saying certain things.

Before I agree to receive products, I always state that the video is going to be a review. I don't create sponsored ads because a biased review only helps the creator or company, but harms way more people. Just look at the Desklab monitor I've featured that has affected so many backers. On hindsight, I should have highlighted the risks more prominently and also did more checks. But even influencers can be deceived.