Once you’ve decided on rewards that appeal to your community, you’ll find tools and options within the Rewards tab of your project that will help you to: itemize the rewards you’re planning to offer, build a range of reward tiers, create add-ons, and organize everything to reflect your estimated delivery timeline.
When building rewards, we encourage creators to ensure that they are setting reasonable backer expectations in terms of estimated delivery dates, the options that they are offering for shipping, and how shipping will be charged. Creators can also use our tools to itemize and add the cost of shipping for every reward tier and/or add-on, in order to best make use of the fulfillment dashboard and backer report to track a project’s fulfillment progress after the campaign funds.
Items
Before you begin building your reward tiers and add-ons, you will first need to itemize everything you plan to offer.
By creating an item for each individual reward that will form your reward bundles, you will be able to easily put together the building blocks of all of your reward tiers and add-ons, as well as get a clearer insight into the quantities you will need in order to fulfill. Itemizing your rewards also helps to give a more detailed overview of what each reward tier includes for your backers.
- Select the ‘Items’ option on the Rewards tab of the project editor
- Click the “+ New item” button to the right
- Enter a title for your item, something that quickly and clearly describes it (e.g. Deluxe board game)
- Add an optional image to help your backers understand what comes with their reward
- Each image must have a 3:2 ratio, be no smaller than 348 x 232 pixels, and no larger than 200 MB
- We accept JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, or BMP file types
- Remember, our rules for visually presenting your project apply. Check how to honestly and clearly present your project here
- When finished, click the green “Save item” button in the top right corner
Once you’ve finished adding all of the items you plan to offer you’re ready to start creating your rewards. The items you’ve added will appear in a drop-down for you to select and include in the reward tier or add-on being created.
For example, if you are planning to offer a combination of 2 board game versions, a normal and a deluxe one, you might add the following 2 items:
- Item 1: Board game
- Item 2: Deluxe board game
After creating these items, you can then go ahead and easily build out a variety of bundles using these items:
| Reward 1: Basic Tier | Reward 2: Upgraded Tier | Reward 3: Deluxe Tier |
| - 1 x Board game |
- 1 x Board game |
- 3 x Board game |
This way, once you are concluding a successful campaign, it will be super easy to download a report to see how many of each item you need to prepare for your backers.
If you are planning to offer multiple variations of a reward item (e.g. a T-shirt in a variety of colors), you will be able to collect a backer’s preference when sending out surveys after your project ends.
Reward tiers
Next, you can begin to create your reward tiers for your project. Most creators offer 3-10 reward tiers, which can be physical items, digital rewards, experiences, or a combination.
- Select the ‘Reward tiers’ option on the Rewards tab of the project editor
- Click the “+ New reward” button to the right
- Fill in all of the fields: title, amount, description, estimated delivery, items*, contents (specify if it includes physical goods), and shipping (specify shipping destination, location for in-person receipt, or digital receipt), as well as the quantity and time limit, if applicable
- Please note: Things you can eat or drink, like chocolate or hot sauce, though physical, are not considered physical goods
- Add an optional image to help describe your reward. We recommend that you focus on the contents of the reward
- Each image must have a 3:2 ratio, be no smaller than 348 x 232 pixels, and no larger than 200 MB
- We accept JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, or BMP file types
- Remember, our rules for visually presenting your project apply. Check how to honestly and clearly present your project here
- When finished, click the green “Save reward” button at the bottom of the page.
If you plan to have a few reward tiers with similar information (for example: 1 x my new cookbook, 2 x my new cookbook, etc), you can simply click “Duplicate” on an existing tier. This will auto-populate all fields ready for you to edit as needed.
At this time, it isn’t possible to change the display order of reward tiers or add-ons. They will always be sorted by price, with any that have the same price being sorted in a random order.
Pledging without a reward
All projects on Kickstarter include the option to pledge without a reward. This allows backers to contribute to your campaign at any amount simply because they believe in your idea. This tier defaults to an amount based on the project’s location, for example $10 for US projects, although backers are able to edit the amount they wish to pledge to their preference.
Add-ons
If you have extra rewards that you’d like to offer outside of your tiers, you can manage these via the ‘Add-ons’ option.
- Select the ‘Add-ons’ option on the Rewards tab of the project editor
- Click the “+ New add-on” button to the right
- Fill in all of the fields: title, amount, description, estimated delivery, items*, contents (specify if it includes physical goods), and shipping (specify shipping destination, location for in-person receipt, or digital receipt), as well as the quantity and time limit, if applicable
- Please note: Things you can eat or drink, like chocolate or hot sauce, though physical, are not considered physical goods
- Add an optional image to help describe your add-on. We recommend that you focus on the contents of the reward
- Each image must have a 3:2 ratio, be no smaller than 348 x 232 pixels, and no larger than 200 MB
- We accept JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, or BMP file types
- Remember, our rules for visually presenting your project apply. Check how to honestly and clearly present your project here
- When finished, click the green “Save reward” button at the bottom of the page.
Remember, backers will need to select a main reward tier before they can select any add-ons. If the main reward tier is a digital reward, it will not be possible for backers to increase their pledge with shippable add-ons. Similarly, if the main reward tier selected is marked for local in-person receipt from a designated location, only digital add-ons and those from the exact same location will be available.
Backers will also only see shippable add-ons that are available to be shipped to the destination country they selected for their main reward. For example, if a backer selects a main reward to be shipped to Canada, they won’t see any add-ons that have been restricted to the United States.
* As of May 1, 2023, all reward tiers and add-ons will need to be itemized.
Need to edit a reward? Take a look at our “Can I edit my rewards after I've launched my project?” for more information on the changes you can and can’t make while your project is live.
Further reading:
What can be offered as a reward?
Can I schedule a reward or limit the quantity?