One of the drawbacks of being a curated platform is that Kickstarter must approve each project individually and make sure that each creator has adhered to the website’s guidelines and comply with the terms of use.
For some projects, this can take more time than others. If your project is still in the pending approval queue, you may be wondering how long it will take Kickstarter to approve your project, especially if you have coordinated advertisements or media coverage to coincide with the launch of your campaign.
From my experiences talking with creators, the majority of projects do adhere to the advertised approval timespan “Most projects are initially reviewed within 48 to 72 hours. Hardware and Product Design projects have additional guidelines and often take closer to a week.”
However, there are a significant portion of projects that take longer than 72 hours and hardware and design projects that take longer than a week to be reviewed. For example, take a look at what some users have said in the KickstarterForum below.
Users from the KickstarterForum
Hi – anyone have this issue with Kickstarter? We submitted a project back on Nov 1st and we didn’t hear back anything at all. We later sent 3 follow-ups to the “specialist” through the website contact form and still nothing.
We verified it’s “in the queue” as it says “submitted on nov 1, status pending” on the review page. – Took 17 days to be approved.
We submitted our project on 9/12/13 in Technology category. We received feedback from Kickstarter that on average it takes up to 7 business days to review a project. Now, it has been 17 business days since we submitted our project for a review. – Took more than 17 days to be approved
I submitted my project to Kickstarter for guideline review on May 30 and haven’t got anything back yet. Every minute is sooooooo long to wait. I read on KS that it usually takes 2-3 days to get approved or not. But now it has been my THIRD days and I am so anxious about my project. Update: I got approved on Tue. It took 4 business days to get the lovely approved letter. – Took 4 business days to get approved.
Spent nearly 3 weeks getting approved by Kickstarter.
I actually had the project completed ported onto IndieGoGo when Kickstarter approval came through.
It took me less than 30 minutes to set up an IndieGoGo account and the crowdfund project vs. 2 weeks for Kickstarter setup plus 3 weeks for approval – this 5 weeks doesn’t include any original content creation time.
I do totally appreciate what Kickstarter is doing and why – also I believe a big part of the problem is that the technology submissions are looked at a lot more carefully. On the other hand, as a creator and business planner – I’d ideally like to see faster turnaround times on feedback. – Took 3 weeks to get approved.
What are the implications?
Knowing that it can take up to 3 weeks to be approved (not including the time it takes to get your project to the point where you can submit it for review), it’s important to plan in advance for this possible delay. This planning is especially important for design and technology projects.
Have you been waiting to be approved or have a question about the approval process? Leave a comment below.
