For certain types of projects (like hardware projects), some of the mid-tier rewards are essentially pre-sales. For example, with Pebble, the most popular tier

For certain types of projects (like hardware projects), some of the mid-tier rewards are essentially pre-sales. For example, with Pebble, the most popular tier was the $115 watch. People interested in the product, I suspect, are more likely to contribute to the lowest-price deliverable tier rather than the lowest-tier. Of course, for other projects, there are some high-tier rewards that garner significant interest and skew the average. For example, the Veronica Mars kickstarter had a speaking role as the highest-tier reward. The median contribution, from what I've seen, sits somewhere in the 50-250 range