The KickBack Machine is a research tool. It's designed to help artists, creators, and entrepreneurs do their crowdfunding homework.

Before you launch your own Kickstarter campaign, it's important to research past projects, so you can understand what works and what doesn't.

Kickstarter's website does a good job of helping you find past successes. But it can be very difficult to find past projects that failed to meet their funding goal.

The KickBack Machine allows you to browse past successes and failures to help you better plan your own campaign.

Examples

Here are a few of the sorts of things you can find with the KickBack Machine that you can't easily find at Kickstarter.com:

• Documentary Film projects that tried to raise approximately $25,000
• Design projects that tried to raise approximately $100,000
• Performance Art projects that didn't meet their funding goals

Who cares? Why collect links to old Kickstarter projects?

Because it's important to learn from the past. For aspiring crowdfunders, there's much to learn from past campaigns, both successes and failures.

As Scott Steinberg writes in The Crowdfunding Bible:

Whatever your approach to crowdfunding, your first order of business is to take a hard, analytical look at projects that have succeeded, as well as ventures that have failed. Your goal: To observe and learn how successful projects work, and to understand the subtle nuances and tactics that determine why some triumph while others don't.

Unfortunately, Kickstarter makes it difficult to find examples of "ventures that have failed." That's why this site exists.

How far back does the archive go?

Not far. The KickBack Machine started collecting Kickstarter projects in June 2012. Because of the way Kickstarter's website displays information, we can't accurately capture projects from before then. That said, new projects are being added to the archive every day.

Are you affiliated in any way with Kickstarter, Inc.?

Absolutely not.

What's with the name?

It's like the Wayback Machine (and to a lesser degree, the WABAC Machine), except it's for Kickstarter projects. Kind of. Sorta. Get it?

How did you make this?

The KickBack Machine was written in Python and runs on Google App Engine. The layout is based on Twitter Bootstrap with the Spacelab Bootswatch. This site uses jQuery and jQuery UI. Also, Ben Davies's PagedQuery, Paul Irish's Infinite Scroll, Addy Osmani's jQuery UI Bootstrap, and some other stuff.

Who is that fellow on the front page?

Gordon.