January-June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Pt 3: $100,000+ Campaigns and Fun Stuff

Closing out the half year review, here's part 3. Check out parts 1 and 2 and the raw data if you haven't already.

$100,000+ Campaigns

As you've probably already suspected, most TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns don't necessarily make that much money. I already showed that in Part 2, with the median project across all platforms across all six months making $4,120.80. But what's the distribution of money raised across all these campaigns, you ask?

Distribution of US Dollars raised across 1030 campaigns:

• <$1,000: 155 campaigns
• $1,000-6,000: 458
• $6,000-11,000: 142
• $11,000-16,000: 63
• $16,000-21,000: 38
• $21,000-26,000: 19
• $26,000-31,000: 8
• $31,000-36,000: 10
• $36,000-41,000: 11
• $41,000-46,000: 9
• $46,000-51,000: 10
• $51,000-56,000: 5
• $56,000-61,000: 4
• $61,000-66,000: 6
• $66,000-71,000: 6
• $71,000-76,000: 4
• $76,000-81,000: 3
• $81,000-86,000: 4
• $86,000-91,000: 3
• $91,000-96,000: 4
• $96,000-100,000: 1
• $100,000+: 67

It's stark, honestly, to see the long tail trailing off towards the $100,000+ category. Out of 1030 campaigns, only 67 make it into the six-figure category. 755 (fully 3/4 of all campaigns) make $11,000 or less!

And the disparity in total money raised across these campaigns is stark too.

Proportion of total money raised:

• Campaigns that raised less than $100,000
• 963 campaigns (93.5% of campaigns)
• $11,641,364.54 (34% of total money)
• D&D campaigns that raised more than $100,000
• 22 campaigns (2.1% of campaigns)
• $7,321,232.25 (21% of total money)
• Non-D&D campaigns that raised more than $100,000
• 45 campaigns (4.4% of campaigns)
• $15,393,145.74 (45% of total money)

Ultimately, 6.5% of all campaigns in the first half of 2024 raised almost 2/3 of the money in the same time period.

Fun Stuff

Full disclosure, most of this is entirely stats about when campaigns start and end.

Campaign Length

Distribution of campaign lengths:

• 1-3 days: 6 campaigns
• 4-6: 15
• 7-9: 21
• 10-12: 21
• 13-15: 132
• 16-18: 47
• 19-21: 87
• 22-24: 85
• 25-27: 40
• 28-30: 453
• 31-33: 53
• 34-36: 18
• 37-39: 5
• 40-42: 12
• 43-45: 12
• 46+: 23

It's no surprise to me that the largest categories of campaign length generally fall on the 2, 3, and 4 week marks, but I do find it interesting that more people prefer a roughly 2-week campaign to anything between that and a month in length.

Start and End Days

Campaigns have very clear start day preferences: people don't like to launch campaigns on the weekend.

• Sunday: 29 campaigns
• Monday: 103
• Tuesday: 383
• Wednesday: 183
• Thursday: 204
• Friday: 98
• Saturday: 30

End day preferences are less clear.

• Sunday: 92 campaigns
• Monday: 89
• Tuesday: 134
• Wednesday: 124
• Thursday: 285
• Friday: 198
• Saturday: 108

It makes sense that these are a little more evenly distributed: I imagine few people are thinking about what day they want a campaign to end on. The broad frequency of the middle of the week tracks though; considering that so many campaigns last 7/14/21/28 days give or take, campaigns will tend to end on the day of the week that they started on or a few days later.

Start and End Dates

I will not be including the histograms for these data, as they will be too complicated and lengthy to write out, but I will share some interesting tidbits.

Most common date for a campaign to start: the 1st (118 campaigns)

Least common date for a campaign to start: the 24th (8 campaigns)

Median date for a campaign to start: the 13th

Most common date for a campaign to end: the 2nd (65 campaigns)

Least common date for a campaign to end: the 24th (18 campaigns)

Median date for a campaign to end: the 15th

And that's it...for now

That's all folks! At least, for the first six months of data. As I write this, it is August 1st, 2024, which means I have another month of data to look at. See you back here in a few weeks or so!