Kickended: Where $0 failed Kickstarters go to die
Kickstarter projects that received not even a single dollar of love have been collected into an archive of futility that is equal parts sad and amusing.
A lot of Kickstarter projects don't make their funding goals, but there's a special purgatory for projects that garner absolutely no backing at all, and it's called Kickended. Kickended catalogs all the Kickstarter projects that failed to attract a single dollar of funding and puts them at your fingertips. It's part cautionary tale, part source of amusement.
There are an impressive number of music projects listed in the archive, ranging from acts like Mr. Blister (ZZ Top-style southern rock) to Anthony T. (salsa). Other projects that managed to scare away backers included a double deep-V-neck shirt for muscle men and a project aimed at raising money to create a series of jam-band bobbleheads. If you've been hoping for a complete set of String Cheese Incident bobbleheads, then I'm sorry, my friend, but that Kickstarter ship has sailed.
There are currently 9,021 projects on Kickended. That's not as bad as it sounds once you realize 73,492 projects have been successfully funded on Kickstarter. Kickended pulls its data from Kickspy, a site that lets you search and track Kickstarter projects. Kickended creator Silvio Lorusso describes the site as "the place where campaigns with no backers live a second life. Free from the pressure of money raising, these retain the purity of abstract ideas."
A lot can be learned by slogging through an endless litany of failed projects. Many lack a video, or feature a poorly made video. Some have cryptic, vague or short descriptions and no images to show you what the project is aiming for. There isn't a single one of these projects that you'll shake your head at and say, "I wonder why that wasn't funded?" Anybody considering launching a Kickstarter campaign should take a few moments and scroll through some Kickended projects to see what not to do.
Kickended isn't necessarily all about futility. There's still passion and hope to be found in these projects, they just didn't have the vision, execution or marketing sense to attract any funding at all. Take James Shipley, for example. He launched a project in 2012 called ControversaTees to make t-shirts with controversial messages on them. It raised $0. But that didn't stop him. He has 22 Kickstarters to his name, of which nine were successfully funded. Just because your project ended up Kickended, doesn't mean you're doomed to crowdfunding purgatory for all time.