As you may imagine, we receive a lot of requests to promote things–websites, videos, books, gadgets, games, apps–and lately that includes crowdfunding projects. If you’re trying to get our attention about your project, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind.
1. First, be familiar with our site. We’re a family site, written by parents for parents. Sure, not everything we cover is kid-friendly, but we do steer away from things that are wildly inappropriate.
2. Writing up an article takes time. We don’t cut-and-paste press releases. So if you’re looking for coverage of a crowdfunding campaign, you should contact us as early as possible–ideally, well before you launch. Writing to us in your last week because you’re at 50% of your campaign and really need a boost is probably too little too late.
3. Our preference is to cover things that we’ve actually gotten to experience. Whether you’re making a gadget or an album or a movie or a game, we’re more likely to write about it (and our readers are more likely to be interested) if you give us a chance to try it out for ourselves. Give or loan us a prototype or see if one of us lives close enough for a hands-on demo. Get in touch early enough to make these arrangements, and our review will be that much more effective.
4. We understand that prototypes can be costly to produce and may be in limited quantities. If you would like to have the prototype shipped to another reviewer or back to you, we would be happy to, but it should be at your expense, whether that is with a prepaid mailing label or reimbursing us for shipping costs. Please be sure to let us know ahead of time so we’re expecting it.
5. Please share your Kickstarter preview link with us and your planned launch date and time (with time zone!) as early as possible—we understand that the page may not be complete, and we will not share the link before launch unless otherwise requested, but it helps us prep our review. Also: the preview link automatically redirects to the campaign once it is live, so that way we can include the link while we’re writing up our post, rather than having to wait for the campaign to launch to finish our review.
6. It would be nice (but not required) if you pledged to send us a sample of the finished product if the campaign is successful. We’re helping to promote your product with our time and effort; knowing in advance that we’ll get a review copy later would be a nice gesture.
7. We can’t guarantee that we will write up your campaign, even if you do follow these guidelines. Sometimes we’re just not interested, or we tried it and didn’t like it. And sometimes there’s just not enough time. We’re all parents and most of us have day jobs, and writing for GeekMom is something we do on the side. Because of the sheer volume of requests we get, we just can’t cover everything.
8. Finally: if we can’t write about your crowdfunding campaign, consider getting in touch with us when your product is completed and available. We still do traditional reviews as well, and maybe we’d love to write up your game/gadget/book once it’s been released.
These aren’t hard and fast rules, but they’ll make it easier for us to continue writing about your cool projects. Send your pitch to our publisher, Ken Denmead, and if it gets our attention, we’ll be in touch.
When sending us your pitch, please be sure to include the following:
- Product name
- A brief description of what it is
- The planned campaign launch date
- A preview link to the campaign if you have it
Thanks, and happy crowdfunding!