A Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign is 30 days of compressed intensity. The team lives in the campaign dashboard, refreshing obsessively, trying to feel the rhythm. A live pledge counter on a TV in the war room changes the whole emotional experience.
This guide covers the specific operational setup.
Step 1: What to count
For any crowdfunding campaign, the useful counters:
- Total raised (the headline number, thermometer against goal)
- Backer count (growth of audience, often grows faster than dollars in final days)
- Stretch goal progress (visualizes the next milestone after initial goal)
- Average pledge (stays roughly constant; sudden drops can indicate a cheap-tier surge)
Most campaigns display total raised as the big thermometer, backer count as a secondary counter on rotation.
Step 2: Get events from Kickstarter (the tricky part)
Kickstarter and Indiegogo don’t publish public webhooks for campaign owners. Options:
- Zapier’s Kickstarter trigger. Uses Kickstarter’s unofficial API. Polls every few minutes. Reliable but not instant.
- Stats-page polling. A service that polls the public campaign stats page and computes deltas. 30-90 second latency.
- Scraping plus BackerKit. If you use BackerKit for pre-campaign pledging, BackerKit has a direct webhook on pledges.
For most campaigns, the Zapier path is the fastest to set up. PingBell has Zapier-compatible counter URLs that work out of the box.
Step 3: Set the goal and stretch goals
In the broadcasting tool:
- Primary goal: Your Kickstarter funding goal
- Stretch goal 1: First stretch milestone
- Stretch goal 2: Second stretch (if applicable)
- Stretch goal 3: …
The thermometer visualization fills to 100% at primary goal, then continues past with color changes for each stretch.
Step 4: Configure the war-room TV
War rooms are typically dedicated rooms during campaign weeks. Equip:
- Large TV (55” or bigger, so the numbers are readable from anywhere)
- Fire Stick or Apple TV
- Secondary laptop running analytics (Kickstarter’s dashboard, ad-spend tool)
- Phone chargers for everyone (the team will be glued to devices)
Install the PingBell TV app, pair the counter, put the thermometer full-screen.
Step 5: Custom sounds for different event types
Campaign-specific sound design:
- Regular pledge: Bell (classic)
- Larger pledge (e.g. $500+): Distinct sound (applause)
- Stretch-goal crossing: Celebration (cheer, horn)
- Campaign-goal reached: Big moment (champagne cork, fireworks)
Each sound is a distinct emotional pulse. The team’s day gets shaped by the sound patterns.
Step 6: Share access with stakeholders
Beyond the war-room TV, add subscribers:
- Founders: Real-time push, full details
- Marketing team: Real-time push, aggregate only
- Investors / advisors: Daily digest (not real-time)
- Social media person: Real-time, so they can post in real time when milestones hit
The mobile app supports different notification frequencies per user.
Step 7: Integrate with Stripe for direct pledges
If you’re accepting direct pledges outside the platform (via Stripe, for business customers or special cases), connect Stripe as a second source. Those pledges combine into the total counter automatically.
Step 8: Embed on the external landing page
Many campaigns have a separate marketing site outside Kickstarter. The PingBell counter embeds as an iframe:
<iframe src="https://app.pingbell.io/embed/[counter-id]"
width="400" height="120" frameborder="0"></iframe>Your landing page shows the live dollar total, synced to Kickstarter. Convinces skeptical visitors that momentum is real.
Step 9: Stretch-goal announcements
When a stretch goal is crossed, the TV celebrates. The team sees. The social media person posts. The campaign cycle repeats.
Configure the stretch-crossing to trigger:
- Visual effect on the TV
- Celebration sound
- Push notification to all subscribers (including team members remote)
- Optional: Zapier webhook firing to your social scheduler (auto-posts “We just hit $X!”)
This creates the flywheel. Crossings generate social content, social content drives backers, backers drive crossings.
Step 10: Post-campaign archive
When the campaign ends:
- Archive the counter (preserve the full 30-day history)
- Export the pledges graph as an image for retrospective
- Clone the counter configuration for your next campaign
The historical data becomes the baseline for future campaign planning. Same campaign structure, year 2 pledges vs. year 1 at the same day: do you know if you’re ahead? The archive tells you.
The pricing
Most campaigns use PingBell for only the 30-60 days around their launch. The Core plan at $10/mo is perfect for this: one counter, subscribe during the campaign, cancel after.
Plus plan ($25/mo) makes sense if you have a big team (beyond 1 admin) or want multiple counters (total + backers + stretch-goals as separate displays).
Start here
Stand up the war room. Plug in the Fire Stick. Connect Kickstarter via Zapier. Start the free trial. Your next pledge lands on the wall in 3 minutes.
Related: crowdfunding live counter, event ticket sales counter.