When a new project launches, the first thing its creators do (if they hope to be successful) is promote it to their friends and fans. This starts a ripple effect of promotion and backing that often accelerates if the project is picked up by a well-read blog or online community. This is how the majority of audiences are introduced to projects.

As we've grown, we've heard people worry that it will be harder and harder to fund projects as the total number of projects grows. They wonder: Do more projects mean greater competition for the same dollars?

And when there's a blockbuster project, they ask: Are these projects stealing backers from other worthy projects?

For both questions, the opposite actually appears to be true. Projects aren't fighting over a finite pool of Kickstarter dollars or backers. One project's backer isn't another project's loss. The backers that one project brings often end up backing other projects as well. Each project is not only promoting itself, but the Kickstarter ecosystem as a whole.

How's the health of the Kickstarter ecosystem right now? Currently there are more projects funding on Kickstarter than ever before — more than 4,500 in all. That big number is good news for both current and future project creators.

To illustrate that point, let's look at two recent blockbuster projects: the video game Double Fine Adventure and the webcomic Order of the Stick. Both projects raised more than $1 million — and brought a flood of new backers in the process.

Double Fine Adventure

Double Fine Adventure is the largest project in Kickstarter history by pretty much every metric, including dollars pledged and number of backers.

Dollars Pledged: $3,336,371

$3,336,371 Total Backers: 87,142

87,142 First-Time Backers: 61,692 (71%)

Double Fine brought a lot of new people — more than 60,000 first-time backers — to the site. Did that activity extend to other Video Games projects? To measure this, we calculated the average number of pledges per week to projects in the Video Games category before and after the launch of Double Fine. The dotted line marks Double Fine’s launch; pledges to Double Fine itself are excluded.

In the month before Double Fine, the Video Games category averaged 629 pledges per week. After Double Fine's launch, the Video Games category averaged 9,755 pledges per week, excluding pledges to Double Fine itself. The jump is similar in terms of dollars:

$1,776,372 was pledged to the Video Games category in Kickstarter's first two years. In the six weeks after Double Fine, $2,890,704 was pledged ($6,227,075 counting Double Fine).

Before Double Fine, one video game project had exceeded $100,000. Now, nine have.

Wasteland 2, a million-dollar game project that launched after Double Fine, has received nearly $400,000 in pledges from Double Fine's first-time backers.

Did only the Video Games category benefit? Of the 60,000 people whose first-ever pledge was to Double Fine, 13,715 of them (22%) have backed another project. Here's their activity after their Double Fine pledge:

Dollars Pledged: $877,171

$877,171 Distinct Projects Backed: 1,266 To date, new Double Fine backers have pledged an additional $875,000 to 1,200 projects. Here are those pledges by category: Category Pledges Dollars Pledged Games 18,055 $639,862 Design 986 $64,557 Film & Video 1,137 $46,245 Comics 897 $45,772 Technology 366 $27,022 Publishing 503 $15,552 Art 231 $12,862 Music 404 $11,918 Fashion 82 $6,034 Food 153 $4,813 Theater 36 $1,304 Photography 30 $1,147 Dance 9 $83 Games had most of the activity, but every category — even Dance — got pledges from new Double Fine backers. About $250,000 has been pledged to projects outside of Games. Order of the Stick Let's look at the same metrics for the webcomic Order of the Stick: Dollars Pledged: $1,254,120

$1,254,120 Total Backers: 14,952

14,952 First-Time Backers: 11,343 (76%) How did Order of the Stick affect pledges to other Comics projects? Here are the average pledges per week before and after its launch. All pledges to Order of the Stick itself have been excluded. Even in Comics, one of the more established categories on Kickstarter, you can see a big bump. In the month before Order of the Stick, the Comics category got an average of 780 pledges per week. After the launch of Order of the Stick, that doubled to 1,653 pledges per week. How about for non-Comics projects? Of the 11,343 people whose first pledge was to Order of the Stick, 2,455 of them (22%) have backed another project. Here's their activity: