Step 3 - Set Up Items
Set up Items in BackerKit
Setting up your items in BackerKit is the first step in getting your backers their rewards. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- The best way to begin setting up your campaign is to follow the steps in the Quick Start Guide. While there a few ways you can edit and adjust items, SKUs, and pledge questions, it’s best to follow the Quick Start Guide and make any adjustments once everything is set up.
- If you want BackerKit to handle your customer support, you must have add-on items in your project. If you set up your items following the Quick Start Guide, then your items are also set up automatically as add-on items.
- Your backers will want to order add-on items. You can create additional items or offer items from your other reward levels. Add-on items are a great way for you to generate extra revenue and for your backers to get more of your items.
- Keep in mind that BackerKit will review your project before you can send out your surveys. This review is part of the service provided by BackerKit to make sure your backers have no confusion when filling out their survey, and to make sure you get accurate item counts. The review can take up to two business days from when you submit your project for review.
Set up your First Item
To see a video tutorial of how to set up your items, check out our video.
You’ll begin by setting up all the items for your most popular pledge level. You’ll see the dollar amount of the pledge level and the number of backers you have at this level.
To set up your first item:
- Under What’s the name of this item, specify the name of the item in a few short words. The name of the item is the basis for the SKU associated with this item.
- Next, under Does this item have any options, specify if the item has any options. If you’re not sure of the distinction between an item and an option for an item (also referred to as a variation), review the information in Overview: SKUs. You can specify up to three options per item.
- Type a description of the option and the choices for that option. Once you’re done typing an option choice, click the Add <item name> menu to create the choice.The choices you enter here are the choices your backers see. If you make an error, just delete the choice and make a new one.
Note: The order in which you enter the choices is the order in which your backers will see them in the list in their survey. Be sure to enter the options in an order that makes sense to your backers. For example, if your item is a t-shirt and you offer three sizes, small, medium, and large, you should consider entering the sizes in ascending order. Notice that SKUs are automatically generated based on the item and option names you enter. BackerKit automatically generates an individual SKU for each possible item and option combination.
- Sometimes you won’t offer an item in a particular combination, such as a certain size and color combination. To remove items that you aren’t offering, check the exclude check box next to the combination not offered.
- In Do backers receive this item as part of their pledge level, specify if this item is part of a pledge level and if so, which pledge levels receive this item.
Pro tip: If you are assigning the same quantity of an item to multiple pledge levels, specify the quantity in the first pledge level and then click the arrow next to the QTY box to fill in the same quantity for all of the following pledge levels.
- Finally, in Can backers select this as an additional item, specify if this item can be purchased by your backers as an add-on item. Be sure to list the price. You can set up additional details for add-on item sales in a separate step. For more information, see Manage Add-on Items.
Best practice: Set up all of your items as add-on items, even if you don’t intend to sell them separately.
- Click Create Item.
After you finish creating your item, you’ll be taken to a sample of the survey your backers will receive. Here you can see what your item looks like in the survey. You can edit your survey question later, just make sure everything looks right for your backers.
Set up the Rest of your Items
After creating your first item and reviewing how your pledge question looks in the survey, you can create the rest of your items:
- On the menu on the left, click Quick Start Guide.
- Under Set Up Your Project, click View Checklist.
- Click Generate Items to return to the Item Generator.
- Set up your next item following the steps above.
- Repeat until all of your items are set up and have an associated SKU.
When you finish setting up your items, you can mark this step as complete:
- On the menu on the left, click Quick Start Guide.
- Under Set Up Your Project, click View Checklist.
- Under Generate Items, select the Yes, I have created all my items check box.