Potential pledgers are encouraged to browse Kickstarter much like Pinterest. While most of the funds will be generated by personal effort, Kickstarted certainly offers a good boost for those who need it.
A successful campaign under flexible funding or fixed funding will have a 4% fee applied. If the goal isn't met in a flexible funding campaign, a fee of 9% will be applied, and the campaigner will receive the amount of money that has been raised.
No fees are applied to pledges because startups are required to pay $299/mo if they want to earn up to $500,000, or $999/mo to have unlimited access to investment. For small projects, this is expensive. However, other crowdfunding platforms charge around 5%, meaning that the fee applied $500,000 would be about $25,000 instead of $299.