BackerClub Forums

I'd love to know what criteria is used to decide what projects are "BackerClub worthy". I've refered several projects and they've been rejected. It's embarassing. Looking over the projects page I can't figure out what is similar about them - what makes them BackerClub approved over other projects. Some kind of guidelines would be great so I don't waste creators time and look foolish would be fantastic.

Thanks.

Ditto!

I dropped a note to admin email. Figured I'd put topics up and let others comment & add additional questions.

Bad news - we won't be getting an answer on this one for a number of reasons.

Ah well. Thanks for trying.

And another creator rejected today. So frustrating.

I'm sorry for not sharing the info Mark provided me on why he won't share criteria. In general I treat private correspondence as private unless I'm told its ok to share the details. Emailing me to ask privately for more details will not result in additional info.

Anyone who wants to know more should write to the admin address explaining why you feel we deserve a better answer... Like the founders are making money off of us and we should know and/or have some say. We look foolish recommending the group only to have a project rejected. Whatever else you can think of. Feel free to ask if you can share your answer with the group - I didn't ask which I should have.

I no longer directly recommend projects because the 2-3 I have we're rejected. I've got passive referal links in my Kickstarter profile. This way I don't look foolish or take a chance on being marked as a spam bot. May not be best for the group and cuts down on chance I'll get referal $$s but I'm in the play it safe & don't look stupid mode.

After reading through this thread I'm feeling a bit taken advantage of.

As a member of BackerClub I'm obliged to provide feedback, opinions and criticisms as well as to backing the projects that the Admins list here (at a cost to the project creators). I accept that our "payment" is with the extra BackerClub only project perks and being a part of a group of like-minded folks in this area.

...But it still doesn't seem equally-balanced to offer-up our services and support, for the profit of this site, and at the same time withhold information from us about the criteria for which projects are accepted to receive said services and support.

I'm sorry I didn't post the co-founder email earlier [email protected] . Write to them if you want to know why they won't share the criteria. They might share why not. They didn't share criteria with me any of the times I've asked.

We also get chances every few months to win prizes... Not sure if anyone has gotten far enough through the process to hear back from creator about prize or recieve prize.

Hi all,

I'm sorry to hear your frustrations and can certainly sympathize a bit. Kickstarter has a similar policy for approving/rejecting projects. Their community guidelines really don't get very specific and when they don't approve a project there is no specific reason given or any real opportunity for back and forth exchange between the creator and the site. I had multiple projects rejected by Kickstarter over the years and still to this day don't know exactly why.

But, now being in a position of having to make calls about approving/rejecting projects for BackerClub, I can see why they do what they do. We've tried to put together an explanation and some broad criteria that might help a bit, but as you'll see, there is a lot of subjectivity to the nature of this.

Here it is: http://backerclub.co/criteria.php

Hopefully that helps.
Mark - Co-Founder

PS: There were some comments about bad/low quality projects I've seen on the forum and have received via email. We'd love the community feedback about projects we approve that you don't feel are beneficial for the community. I considered starting a thread where "bad approved projects" could be listed, but that probably wouldn't be helpful as the creators of these "bad projects" are also a part of the forum. So, if you are interested I'd be curious to get a few emails at [email protected] with the subject "Bad Project Feedback" listing your least favorite 5 projects that have been on BackerClub in the past few months. This may help steer our approval process a bit if we see some common themes...feel free with the 5 to list the reason for each.