Using k-Means Clustering to Mine Kickstarter Data

Executive Summary

  1. I use k-means clustering to mine Kickstarter data for insights about how to run a successful funding campaign.
  2. I determine that products with a funding goal of about $8000 for items with broad public appeal do best.

CLICK HERE for the JUPYTER NOTEBOOK.

My goal with this project was to mine kickstarter data for insights about how to run a successful campaign on this popular crowdfunding website. The notebook in the link above contains a clustering analysis of scraped data from Kickstarter. The data were obtained from this Web Robots page. This data set contains a wide variety of different types of projects from 2022/2023. My goal in this analysis was to mine the data set to understand what types of projects would be considered, "good bets" when using this platform to raise funds. Based on my analysis, I have drawn three conclusions:

  1. Campaigns, across all categories, with a fundraising goal of about $8,000, on average, have a good chance of being funded. In contrast, campaigns with goals above $15,000, on average, have a lower chance of being funded. Moreover, campaigns that are funded have a good chance of obtaining about $2,000 more than their asking amount, on average.
  2. Some categories of project fair better than others. Campaigns that are centered around products that are relatively modest in scope and with obvious appeal to normal people, like books, music albums, and household products are very often funded. In contrast, campaigns that are pushing products having to do with space exploration, tv-series, and movie theaters have less of chance of being funded; they are too ambitious in scope. Other categories that fair poorly are those campaigns which are selling a product to an audience that is too small or too niche. In this last case, there are not enough users of the platform to make such campaigns successful.
  3. Finally, successful campaigns have, on average, 100-200 backers. Less than this means that a campaign may fail. Apparently broad exposure to the public is essential for anyone wanting to run a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Please take a look at the notebook through the link above for much more indepth information.