Kickstarter reveals its crowdfunding stats

By Ryan Faughnder

June 22, 2012 12 AM PT

How well does crowdfunding actually work? Fundraising website Kickstarter is giving a picture of some of its own numbers, including statistics on success rates and dollars pledged.

The New York company, through which customers raise money to fund creative projects, has received pledges of $261 million so far, according to data published on the company’s site.

Only successfully funded projects -- those that reach their pledge goals by their deadlines -- collect money; for those that fall short, the pledges are canceled. So far, 60,786 projects have launched on Kickstarter. Of the projects that have reached their deadlines, 44% have been successfully funded, the site said.

“We’re big fans of numbers here at Kickstarter, and we’ve shared many Kickstarter stats and trends on this blog,” co-founder Yancey Strickler wrote in a blog post. “Those posts have typically been tied to milestones, but we’ve always wanted a way to share our numbers consistently.”

The site breaks down the data by project category.

Film & Video has had the largest number of projects launched -- 17,808 -- and a success rate of 40%. Music projects, which number 14,501 so far, have had a 54% success rate. Music projects have posted the greatest number of successes so far: 7,378.

The category with the highest success rate was Dance, at 69%. The one with the lowest success rate was Fashion -- just over 1 in 4 of those projects have reached their goals.

Film & Video easily wins for most money pledged total, at almost $72 million. Nearly $10 million of that was pledged to projects that failed to meet their goals and therefore canceled.

“Most successfully funded projects raise less than $10,000, but a growing number have reached six and even seven figures,” Kickstarter said on its site.

The data page is to be updated daily.

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