Kickstarter is making it easier for creators to give their backers more perks when supporting a campaign. The company is launching “add-ons” today, or a la carte additional rewards that creators can offer on top of their standard backer rewards. For now, the feature is only available to select creators, although people can apply for early access by clicking the “offer add-ons” button when making their campaign. Kickstarter says it’ll expand the feature in the future and will take these applications into account.
Before this feature, creators had to ask backers to do the math on their end and manually increase their pledge amount to account for the extra rewards. An add-on, like is the case with the TalkSocket campaign, can be for extra accessories that don’t necessarily warrant their own reward tier but might be of interest to backers.
Add-ons do come with a few restrictions: if an add-on requires shipping, backers already have to be receiving a reward that requires shipping. Also, the add-ons can only be sent to countries where the regular campaign rewards are available, too. Creators can edit or delete the add-ons as the campaign progresses, although they can’t delete them if backers have already paid for them.
The company suggests that creators only include add-ons that they already have produced to avoid overpromising and not being able to ship all of their rewards. This is an obvious concern for Kickstarter, as many tech-related campaigns have failed to ship on time or at all. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission settled a lawsuit with the founder of iBackpack, a Kickstarter and Indiegogo product that raised nearly a million dollars, only to not ship.