As investor funding becomes harder and harder to attain, crowdfunding becomes a more and more desirable route for founders to get access to startup resources. In 2015 alone over $34 billion exchanged hands in crowdfunding, with about $2.5 billion enacting over reward-based crowdfunding and equity-based crowdfunding each.

Many people attribute success in crowdfunding to a proportion of how much money is spent before and during the campaign, but this defeats the purpose of getting access to startup resources. SUAVS Shoes proved these people wrong when they closed a Kickstarter campaign with $80,000 in funding, over 4x their initial goal, more than 800 backers, and not a single penny spent on marketing or campaign development.

Regardless of the route of crowdfunding you choose, the rules for success are the same. After sitting down with founder of SUAVS Shoes to talk about how they realized such a successful Kickstarter campaign to launch their latest line of shoes, these were the major takeaways of how you can see similar levels of success.

1. Transparency

What is too often ignored as founders beg for money on crowdfunding platforms, is that backers have no guarantee of delivery. In this respect, founders need to reach a high bar of trust with backers in order to convince these potential donors that what the campaign is saying is actually true and the vision will be realized. The only real way to build this level of trust and commitment to delivery, is to be as transparent as possible and eliminate as much of the risk as possible.

Many campaigns will often leave the issue of manufacturing and fulfillment slightly vague and not have a concrete idea of what that will look like until after the campaign finishes. However, since fulfillment is the most problematic part of a campaign and where backers’ money is inevitably lost and rewards delayed, this information is important. Backers want to know that you can actually get the rewards created and delivered on time.

SUAVS had already lined up their manufacturing order beforehand and treated the Kickstarter campaign as more of a preorder form than a way to fund a future manufacturing run. In their campaign, they conveyed this information and had a specific date of delivery with no variability. This took risk out of the equation and let backers evaluate the product for its merits and not whether or not the shoes would ever actually see the light of day.

2. A picture is worth a thousand words

One of the worst ways to tell the story of your campaign is with words. Unfortunately, when people shop, they do not like read. If your campaign is dependent upon getting people to read a novel, people will move onto the next option. It is your job to convey your storyline with as few words as possible and instead use graphics, pictures, and a video to express these sentiments.

Additionally, in line with being transparent with backers, you need to include so many pictures of your product that you cover every possible angle. Whether or not the images are the perfect representation is not important. Backers want to know what they are getting from every side, so they can evaluate the good with the bad and prevent any surprises upon delivery.

In combination with pictures, try to mix in graphics. Clean graphics allow readers to more easily digest information rather than having to read a paragraph and are more inviting than a block of text. If you execute the graphics well, they ought to reinforce your brand aesthetic as well and function as yet another example of what your product and company stand for.

3. Planning

There are varying numbers, but in general people state a proper crowdfunding campaign requires 1-3 months of preparation before launch. Aspects to consider in this preparation include not just getting the campaign page perfected, but also engaging with your current audience and getting them pumped to begin sharing the campaign once the launch happens.

Also, when the campaign is live you will have so many things to think about that content creation will be the last thing you want to deal with. Generating and scheduling your content ahead of time will make your job easier and let you focus on engagement and promotion rather than thinking up tweets and posts.

While these is not a clear-cut formula to make a lot of money on crowdfunding, if you have a viable idea, put in the work, and are transparent with what you are doing backers should buy into your vision. From there you just need to build as much trust as possible and eliminate risk for the backers.