To run a successful Kickstarter campaign, you have to understand the concept behind the Kickstarter Ladder. I’ll use the Kickstarter for my next graphic novel — which is in full swing right now — as an example.

The Kickstarter Ladder works like this: You start your backer with a reward at a very low price. A digital reward works great here. Low cost and no shipping.

I’m Kickstarting two books at the same time, so the first rung of my ladder is actually two tiers at ten dollars each. Now, here’s where the ladder concept comes in.

For just fifteen dollars more, you can get both digital comics — which “saves” the backer five bucks.

And it’s a small. manageable jump to $25 dollars, which offers a whopping EIGHT digital comics. That’s a huge savings. All of these together would cost over sixty dollars in my store.

Here’s where I do something a little unusual… the jump here isn’t monetary — it’s a jump from digital rewards to a physical one… the book itself.

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Let’s stop and consider shopper psychology. Supposedly, I’ve already got my backer considering a $25 buy-in… now they can spend the same money AND get the physical book. It’s a no-brainer.

The NSFW version of my book has an extra 30 pages and it’s only five dollars more. Another easy step up the ladder.

And if you’ve been paying attention, you should have already guessed that I’d be offering both books for fifty dollars. My backer saves ten dollars.

Now that I have my reader considering a fifty dollar purchase, I start throwing in extras. For only five dollars more, I’ll draw a special illustration in the book.

For an extra ten, I’ll do the same thing, except with the NSFW version of the book.

And, once again, you shouldn’t be surprised to see artist editions of both books available for $110. That’s a saving of ten dollars if you had bought them separately

The ladder continues… each time offering more and more exclusive extras for reasonable increases in the price.

My highest reward tier is $500, at which point, the backer can actually write a five-page story that I will illustrate! I already have two backers at that level, and I expect to see it fill up before the end of the campaign.

If you take time to build your Kickstarter Ladder with an increased value at a reasonable jump in price, you will see each of your backers walking themselves up the ladder and stopping when their own perception of the dollars-to-value ratio hits its maximum. And that spells success for your Kickstarter