I don't think it's that. It looks like you did a good job of getting media coverage.
You just picked a really hard product to make successful.
The problem is J. Random Gamer has no reason to buy it, unless enough of his gaming buddies have it that he gets shut out of games if he doesn't have it. If he's the only person in the game who has it, or even if half the people in the game have it, the cheaters are still in the game and he's spent $125 without any benefit. And that's assuming the games support it - if no games support it properly, there's even less point.
There's a chapter about this sort of thing in Thomas Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehaviour, if you're interested. Not cheaters in pc gaming (the book was written in 1978) but the game theory around similar situations.
One option is to make the product known to people who run the competitions, then wait for a major cheating scandal and lobby them to make it compulsory - but obviously that would only give you pro sales, not the much higher volume consumer sales. It might be possible to arrange a bunch of great servers where the device is mandatory, so early adopters get some benefits.
In the longer term I'd also suggest some sort of IP licensing, where something compatible with your product is built right into gaming mice. That way users have one less thing to cart around, and companies who know how to make and distribute hardware can take care of that for you. And you'll have a much easier time getting it made mandatory if it's "$1 in every gaming mouse from a variety of competing manufacturers" rather than $125 with a single source :)
Yes, there's a lot of planning that goes into a successful campaign. We prepared for six months. It's not hardware, but similar business/marketing challenges. Here's how we raised $484k on Kickstarter: http://blog.glowingplant.com/post/85922974558/how-we-raised-...
You just picked a really hard product to make successful.
The problem is J. Random Gamer has no reason to buy it, unless enough of his gaming buddies have it that he gets shut out of games if he doesn't have it. If he's the only person in the game who has it, or even if half the people in the game have it, the cheaters are still in the game and he's spent $125 without any benefit. And that's assuming the games support it - if no games support it properly, there's even less point.
There's a chapter about this sort of thing in Thomas Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehaviour, if you're interested. Not cheaters in pc gaming (the book was written in 1978) but the game theory around similar situations.
One option is to make the product known to people who run the competitions, then wait for a major cheating scandal and lobby them to make it compulsory - but obviously that would only give you pro sales, not the much higher volume consumer sales. It might be possible to arrange a bunch of great servers where the device is mandatory, so early adopters get some benefits.
In the longer term I'd also suggest some sort of IP licensing, where something compatible with your product is built right into gaming mice. That way users have one less thing to cart around, and companies who know how to make and distribute hardware can take care of that for you. And you'll have a much easier time getting it made mandatory if it's "$1 in every gaming mouse from a variety of competing manufacturers" rather than $125 with a single source :)