So, you've selected and drafted your contract, you've formed your offering to be legitimate but also appealing, and you've decided whether you will be listing your coins to an exchange or not. It's time to build the ICO page, list your ICO with the news websites and you raise your funds. Right? If you want to keep your ICO running for ever, yeah, that would be right. But ICOs run for a relatively short period of time (about one to one and a half month), so your contract terms may be enforceable.
Just like in crowdfunding campaigns, when your ICO goes public, you will raise the vast majority of funds at the beginning and at the end of your ICO public sale - for a one-month ICO, that would be the first and the last week. Now imagine a potential investor being the first to visit your campaign page, and seeing no funds invested. Do you think they would invest? They would not. While people love to be first in many things, when it comes in investing they want to be among the last.
But someone has to be the first. And this need has created the three stages of an ICO.
Private sale
In this stage, you try to attract friends, family, and partners. Not only your personal friends, but also the friends of your team members. If you have a crypto-investor in your social circle this is the time to approach him/her and ask not only for an investment, but also for support and referrals. If you plan for airdrops, this is a good time to set aside the part of your tokens that will go to those who will participate to the airdrops and also look at any other incentives you may offer. In some cases, a well executed private sale might be so successful, that oversubscribes may cover most of not all tokens in offer, so you won't even need to move to the next stage.
Typically, though, a private sale may cover some 25%-30% of the tokens in offer, or at least the soft cap of your offer (that is the minimum amount you are looking to raise). Typically, at this stage you offer your tokens at a discount of 30-40%.
Pre-sale / Pre-marketing
During this phase, you will have to start recruiting affiliates through airdrops or other incentives and start spreading the word about your upcoming ICO. You may have a dedicated pre-sale (hidden) page in your website, or simply set-up a Google form to receive submissions. At this stage your tokens discount should not be above 25%, and you would be looking to cover at least 50% of your offer. However, you don't really need to collect funds at this stage. A commitment that would be paid just hours before your next stage goes live, should also be fine.
Public sale
This is the last stage of your ICO. It's what most people call an ICO - while in fact it's only the last push of a long journey. To have better chances covering your sale, an early bird discount is recommended for those subscribing during the first week, maybe 10-20%. The first week also offers an indication about whether your ICO will be fully covered or not - typically, succesful ICOs have 85-90% of the offer covered by the end of the first week.
Bear always in mind that since you are technically not an IPO, you should not advertise your ICO the same way an IPO would be promoted. Don't be tempted to spend any funds on promoting your ICO to the listing websites, as this - although such sites have crypto experienced audience - may get you in trouble with regulatory authorities.
