Kickstarter Pre-Launch Timeline: 12 Weeks, Week by Week
An honest Kickstarter pre-launch timeline. 12 weeks, one deliverable per week, and the bits most founders skip until it's too late. British founder view.
Twelve weeks sounds like ages. It isn’t. By the time you’ve sorted a video, a landing page, an email list that actually converts, ad creative, reward tiers, shipping estimates, VAT, and the campaign page itself, you’ll wonder where it all went.
Most founders I speak to underestimate pre-launch by at least half. They think six weeks will do it. Then they push back their launch three times. As an official Kickstarter Expert Partner, I’ve watched enough of these slow-motion delays to know they’re not caused by laziness. They’re caused by not knowing what to do in what order. So here’s a proper kickstarter pre-launch timeline, week by week, with one clear deliverable each week and no fluff.
Weeks 12 to 10: foundations you can’t skip
Week twelve is where you make the boring strategic calls. Your funding goal, your all-or-nothing sanity check, your rough production budget, your target audience. If you can’t say in one sentence who this product is for and what problem it solves, don’t move to week eleven until you can.
Deliverable for week twelve: a one-page campaign brief. Product, audience, price, funding goal, launch month.
Week eleven is your landing page. Not the Kickstarter pre-launch page, your own. Domain, headline, hero image, email capture, and a story that makes people want to hear more. Keep it simple. You’ll iterate for the next eleven weeks.
Week ten is early audience seeding. Post in three or four communities where your target buyers already hang out. Not “buy my thing”, more “we’re building this, what do you think”. Reddit, niche Facebook groups, Discord servers, subreddits with actual engagement. You want signal, not spam.
Weeks 9 to 7: content, video, and the campaign page skeleton
Week nine is video pre-production. Script, shot list, location, budget. If you’re paying a videographer, book them now. If you’re filming it yourself, at least buy the lighting kit and stop pretending your phone will do. It won’t.
Deliverable for week nine: a locked script and a shoot date.
Week eight is the shoot itself. Or, if you’re going lean, this is when you record the founder-to-camera piece and gather product footage. Rough edit by Friday. Reward tier photography while you have the setup lit.
Week seven is the campaign page skeleton in a Google Doc. Headline, sub-headline, story sections, reward tiers, stretch goals, FAQ, risks. Write it as if you were selling to someone who’s never heard of you. Because you are.
Weeks 6 to 4: ads, email list, and reward tier pricing
Week six is when the ad machine switches on. Meta ads, small budget, £30 to £50 a day. Two or three creative variants, one landing page, one goal, get the cost per lead down. If you’re seeing under £2 per email, keep scaling. Over £5 and something’s off, either the creative or the offer.
Deliverable for week six: at least 500 emails on the list, ideally more.
Week five is reward tier pricing. This is where most founders freeze, so give it a full week. Jellop’s analysis of thousands of campaigns suggests pricing your main reward at three to five times your incremental production cost, and add-ons at twenty to twenty-five percent of the main product price. Prices ending in nine tend to outperform round numbers. Sanity-check your shipping estimates. Get quotes from a real fulfilment partner, not a guess.
Week four is the campaign page build inside Kickstarter’s editor. Copy in from your Doc, drop in the images and video, format the reward tiers, write the risks section like a grown-up. Get someone who isn’t you to read it end to end.
Reward tiers and pricing are the bit I get asked about more than anything else. If you want a second pair of eyes before you lock them in, my £60 strategy call is designed for exactly this.
Weeks 3 to 2: pre-launch page, VIP list, and Kickstarter’s own machine
Week three is when you go live with your Kickstarter pre-launch page. This is the one that lives on kickstarter.com and collects “notify me on launch” follows. Send your email list to it. Ask them to hit follow. Kickstarter’s algorithm rewards pre-launch follower growth, so this fortnight matters.
Deliverable for week three: 500 to 1,000 pre-launch page follows, minimum.
Week two is the VIP list. Take your email list and slice off your top hundred or two hundred most engaged people. Tell them the exact launch date, exact time, and exactly what you need them to do in the first hour. Not “please back us at some point this month”. Something like “back at 4pm UK time on launch day, ideally the £99 tier, thanks”. Specificity converts.
Also in week two: ad creative for launch week. New creative, tested small, ready to switch to full spend the moment you’re live.
Week 1: the final sprint
Week one isn’t for building. It’s for double-checking. Reward tiers proofread. Shipping table correct. Stretch goals ready but hidden. FAQ answers written. Post-launch email sequence drafted. Ad accounts topped up. Press list ready to email at 8am on launch day. Cash in the bank for ad spend.
Deliverable for week one: a launch-day runsheet, hour by hour, for the first forty-eight hours.
Then, ideally, you take a day off. Because launch week is the actual work.
The bits most founders skip and regret
Here’s the honest bit. In my experience, the things founders skip in pre-launch are almost always the same three: the video, the pricing model, and the pre-launch page follower push. And they skip them because they feel less urgent than the product itself.
The product is the reason for the campaign. But the campaign is what raises the money. A brilliant product with a limp campaign will underfund. I’ve seen it too many times to pretend otherwise.
Skipping the video and hoping “the product speaks for itself” is a lovely thought that has never once been true on Kickstarter. Backers watch the video, then they read. Not the other way around.
Under-pricing rewards to “make it accessible” is another classic. You end up funded but broke, which is worse than not funding at all. If your maths only works because your production costs stay perfectly flat, they won’t, and you’ll be writing an apology update in month six.
And the pre-launch page follower push. Kickstarter’s algorithm gives you a small nudge on launch day based on how many people have hit “notify me”. Skipping it doesn’t kill you, but it makes the first-day hill steeper than it needs to be. Free momentum. Take it.
What twelve weeks buys you
Twelve weeks buys you the option to launch when you’re ready, not when you’ve run out of runway and money. It buys you a warm list, a tested funnel, a campaign page you’re proud of, and a launch day that isn’t a panic attack.
Compressed timelines can work. I’ve seen eight-week launches hit six figures. But almost always because the founder had already done the hidden pre-work before they started counting weeks. If you’re starting from zero, give yourself twelve. If you can afford sixteen, take it.
The founders who do best on Kickstarter aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones who understood that pre-launch is the campaign. Launch week is just the visible bit.
Want a hand with yours?
If you’re staring at a spreadsheet trying to work out where you are on this timeline and what’s realistic, that’s exactly what my £60 strategy call is for. Bring your funding goal, your rough timeline, and your product. I’ll tell you honestly what’s missing and what you can skip. If you’d rather have a proper hand on the tiller through the whole twelve weeks, the coaching and done-for-you tiers on the same page are built for that.
Better to sort it now than three days before launch.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a Kickstarter pre-launch take?+
For most founders, twelve weeks is the sweet spot. You can push it to eight if you already have an audience and manufacturing sorted, and it stretches to sixteen or more if you're starting from zero. Anything under six weeks and you're basically launching to friends and family.
When should I start collecting emails for my Kickstarter?+
The moment you're ninety percent sure you're going to launch. Ideally three to four months before launch day. The list is the single most valuable asset you'll build in pre-launch, and it takes time to grow, warm up, and convert.
Do I need a landing page before I launch on Kickstarter?+
Yes. Kickstarter's own pre-launch page helps, but a separate landing page you control lets you run ads, capture emails, and A/B test messaging. It's the foundation everything else sits on.
How much should I spend on pre-launch ads?+
Depends on your target raise, but most founders start with £500 to £2,000 in the last four to six weeks of pre-launch to test creative and build the email list. If your cost per lead is coming in under £2, scale it. If it's over £5, fix your funnel before spending more.
What's the biggest pre-launch mistake founders make?+
Leaving the campaign page, the video, and the reward pricing until the last fortnight. Those three things carry the whole campaign, and they can't be knocked out in a weekend. The founders who wing it usually miss goal.