Pre-launch page: what successful projects did
Kickstarter lets a creator publish a pre-launch page that collects followers before the campaign opens (help article). The platform's own Pre-Launch Editor post says, verbatim: “50% of campaigns use Kickstarter pre-launch pages, but 70% of successful campaigns use Kickstarter pre-launch pages”. The public crawl records a prelaunch_activated flag per project, so the same share can be read per subcategory. Share of successful projects with the flag:
Highest use
| Subcategory | Successful projects | Used a pre-launch page | Median goal | Median backers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TTRPG | 32 | 91% | $380 | 113 |
| Fiction | 1403 | 90% | $1,000 | 60 |
| Hardware | 205 | 89% | $5,000 | 177 |
| Comic Books | 1083 | 88% | $1,500 | 91 |
| Graphic Novels | 356 | 88% | $2,835 | 114 |
| Gadgets | 900 | 86% | $2,555 | 214 |
| DIY Electronics | 61 | 85% | $3,827 | 139 |
| Anthologies | 44 | 84% | $1,700 | 86 |
| Product Design | 1602 | 83% | $3,149 | 138 |
| Anthologies | 49 | 82% | $2,000 | 87 |
| Textiles | 64 | 81% | $2,370 | 60 |
| Wearables | 54 | 80% | $3,611 | 142 |
Lowest use
| Subcategory | Successful projects | Used a pre-launch page | Median goal | Median backers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dance | 1173 | 1% | $3,027 | 50 |
| Public Art | 1860 | 4% | $3,192 | 55 |
| Workshops | 68 | 4% | $2,500 | 34 |
| Community Gardens | 97 | 5% | $2,161 | 38 |
| Theater | 359 | 5% | $2,612 | 41 |
| Residencies | 72 | 6% | $3,000 | 42 |
Reading: in product-style categories (comics, games, design, publishing) most funded projects ran a pre-launch page; in performance and local categories (dance, theater, music) most did not. This is a share among successful projects, not a cause: a pre-launch page is a cheap thing to turn on, and the free check tells you whether your page is in a subcategory where most funded peers did.
Source: webrobots.io crawl 2026-10-12, successful projects only, 51,693 rows. Full table on the norms page.