14 Feb
2013
14 Feb
'13
1:54 p.m.
It seems to be working quite well for you for this run of SBC6120/FP6120 kits. Any chance
you'll revive any of your other products using Kickstarter once you're done with
this one?
On Feb 14, 2013, at 4:32 PM, "Bob Armstrong" <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
PS. How is
kickstarter different from the old way?
Email me XX orders and I will consider making it, payment in advance.
"Payment in advance" was always a problem because services like PayPal
specifically prohibit taking payment in advance for a product you can't
ship. Also having a large influx of money in a short period of time is a
recipe for getting your PayPal account frozen, which leaves you in a world
of hurt. Yeah, I'm sure you can come up with examples that violate that
rule, but PayPal is nothing if not inconsistent.
I was willing to front the money myself, but "email me XX orders" also was
a problem. After having done it several times, I can say that only about
50% of the people who say "sign me up" will actually cough up the cash when
the time comes. The only safe thing from my point of view was to take the
airline approach - sell twice as many tickets as you actually have seats.
Of course that leads to unhappy customers, and, well, you know how that
goes...
Kickstarter solves both those problems. It brings its own set of issues,
of course, but I decided to give it a try.
Bob