15 Hacks to Raise the Most Money for Your Indiegogo Campaign. Indiegogo is no longer just for filmmakers. The largest crowdsourcing campaign in history was on Indiegogo… and it wasn’t a film, it was tech; Ubuntu Edge open source, a smartphone and desktop PC device getting over 12 million dollars in contributions. There are 3 vital questions to ask when putting together a campaign; 1- Is the thing I’m raising money for a great product?
2- How am I talking about my product? 3- And the most important question – To whom am I talking to? In this article we’ll get into how to effectively answer these questions. Adam Chapnick, was Indiegogo’s first employee, gave a talk produced by LA Chamber’s BixeExchange, to a small group of local business owners about how powerful Indiegogo can be in launching a product. He shared, ‘When creating a campaign it’s key to remember that people are fans of you – not the actual product, so you want to be sure to communicate your why.’ Crowdfunding is meant to be engaging. 1. 2. First, you must form relationships with bloggers. Amanda Palmer – The Art Of Asking. (Breathes in, breathes out) So I didn't always make my living from music.
For about the five years after graduating from an upstanding liberal arts university, this was my day job. I was a self-employed living statue called the 8-Foot Bride, and I love telling people l did this for a job, because everybody always wants to know, who are these freaks in real life? Hello. (Laughter) So I had the most profound encounters with people, especially lonely people who looked like they hadn't talked to anyone in weeks, and we would get this beautiful moment of prolonged eye contact being allowed in a city street, and we would sort of fall in love a little bit.
And I would get harassed sometimes. And meanwhile, I was touring locally and playing in nightclubs with my band, the Dresden Dolls. And then Twitter came along, and made things even more magic, because I could ask instantly for anything anywhere. And I love this kind of random closeness, which is lucky, because I do a lot of couchsurfing. Crowdfunding Canvas.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Crowdfunding. Slava Rubin: IndieGoGo Founder: Crowdfunding Tips For Entrepreneurs On The Hunt For Cash. Aspiring entrepreneurs face new challenges in the new economy: credit card limits are down, banks are stingy with loans, grants are harder to find and odds are that once-rich uncle is now underwater on his mortgage. Put simply, once reliable shortcuts for startup funding aren't so reliable anymore. But in some ways, startup funding is actually more accessible now thanks to social networking and crowdfunding platforms that match amazing new ideas with people who want to be part of the next big thing. At IndieGoGo, we connect aspiring innovators and creators -- inventors, entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, designers -- with the millions of people worldwide who want to be a part of exciting new ventures. Anyone can create a campaign to fund any dream, any passion, any idea that just needs some capital to get started.
The secret to creating a dynamic campaign that engages people is appealing to their sense of inspiration while providing confidence that the funding idea is viable. 1. 2. 4. 5. 6. Is not available. Schooltipline/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/RocketHub-SchoolTipline-Crowdfunding-Tutorial.pdf. Crowdfunding Bible: Top Book on Crowd Funding, Kickstarter. How To Run a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign. Looking for advice on how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign? This article lays out some of the most important considerations you’ll need to take into account if you want to build your crowd, get them engaged, and drive them to a rewarding conclusion.
So first things first: you’ve got to have a crowd to crowdfund something. Who are you going to reach out to with your pitch? How do you know if they’ll care about what you’re doing? How will you identify your early adopters, those precious individuals who step up first and get the process rolling? And how much money should you ask for from your community of potential supporters?
To answer these questions, you’ll need to: What Are You Trying to Accomplish? Figuring out who’s in and who’s not is all about identifying a shared purpose. What Can You Achieve This Time Around? With every crowdfunding campaign, you’ll want to start out with a set of realistic expectations that fit your situation. How much money should I ask for? Best of luck! 10 Secrets of Successful Crowdfunding - From Scott Steinberg. With the recent passage of the JOBS Act, crowdfunding is about to get even hotter. Serial tech entrepreneur, speaker and consultant Scott Steinberg, author of The Crowdfunding Bible, explains how to make crowdfunding work for your startup. Steinberg, CEO of TechSavvy Global, answered ReadWriteWeb’s most pressing questions with these 10 insights into successful crowdsourcing: ReadWriteWeb: Are particular types of tech startups better suited for crowdfunding than others, and why is that so? Scott Steinberg: It’s best for [startups] with a strong consumer focus that can easily communicate their value proposition.
Crowdfunding works for creative projects - apps, consumer products, software - that resonate with average, everyday people. What crowdfunding is not typically best for is something very technological in nature or B-to-B oriented. RWW: How do you know whether crowdfunding is a better approach for your startup than seeking traditional forms of financing? SS: Talk to your backers. s3.amazonaws.com/ezs3-51dda223-1422-1d54-b1ad1219245607d9/Crowdfunding Formula/Crowdfunding Formula Handouts.pdf. How to Crowdfund to Raise Money. Blog Post - The 3Cs of Crowdfunding. Posted: Mon, 16 January 2012 by Michelle Create: You’ve got an idea. It might be for a startup, a student business, a new product, a community or social venture, but you have an idea.
You created that idea. To turn it into reality you need to create a compelling campaign, to tell your story in such an engaging way the people not only want to help you, but they will ask their friends and family to help you too. Be creative with your project, create a must-see video (it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money), something that people will watch and share, and create a series of must-have rewards, from a spectacular public thank you to an all-singing all-dancing first off the line product that they helped fund.
Look at every aspect of your crowdfunding campaign and ask yourself if it’s the most creative, most exciting, most rewarding, most inspirational, most desirable, most memorable you can possibly make it. @Alonymous’ 5 Tips for a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign, The Video! "More than just another crowd!" - A Lesson in Promotion from a Punk. Over a year and a half ago I recorded a little video with my 5 Tips for a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign. We share it with new Invested.in users that need a little help, and I honestly hadn’t watched it in its entirety since the week I recorded it. Today I got an email from YouTube that directed me to it, and so I watched it.
Not bad. Besides the references to MySpace (insert obligatory insult), and the absence of my glasses, I think it holds up. The things that are kind-of a bummer are that I made it so long, and that PROMOTE is the last tip. “If you build it, they will come” is great, but if nobody knows you built it, nobody’s coming. Promotion is a skill that I began learning in high school. Below are some of my lessons learned from my punk rock life, applied to my business life. Crowdfunding: When an unknown band takes the stage in a small club, nobody is up front, champing at the bit for them to start playing.
Events: Believe it or not, not all noise is the same. Components Of A Good Crowdfunding Campaign. Like everything, there is no secret recipe for a successful crowdfunding campaign. From our previous posts it should be clear that there are lots of options, motivations, possibilities and tools behind every single crowdfunding project and similarly there is no single approach to creating a successful campaign. However, we have used our experience and analysis of crowdfunding to come up with a bit of general advice that should be useful to anyone wishing to start a crowdfunding campaign. 1. Clarify objectives, targets and time frame It might sound obvious but it is important to clarify early on exactly what it is that you are seeking to achieve and share it amongst the team tasked with delivering the project.
This is an important step because it should encourage you to come to an agreed position and also help bound the scope of your aims. If you are planning on selling equity, establish how much and what value it is, and get the right legal advice before proceeding. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Kicking Ass & Taking Donations: 9 Tips on Funding Your Kickstarter Project. Kickstarter is getting pretty hard to ignore. In 2011 alone, creatives used the crowdfunding platform to raise nearly $100 million for projects that ranged from feature-length films and industrial design products to print magazines and pop-up restaurants. Over 11,000 projects successfully met their funding goals. So how can you use Kickstarter to get your creative endeavor off the ground? To create a simple reference guide, we rounded up lessons learned from some of our favorite Kickstarter projects — Scott Wilson’s TikTok+LunaTik watches, Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt’s Glif iPhone stand, Edward Boatman’s Noun Project, and more. 1.
“Story is everything. 2. Ryan Koo of NoFilmSchool.com ran one of the highest grossing film campaigns in Kickstarter’s history at $125,000. Story is everything. 3. If you look at the videos that do well on Kickstarter, almost all are professional, or near-professional, quality. 4. 5. Execution really is always the hard part, isn’t it? 6. 7. 8. 9. Crowdfunding: Kickstarter How To (with a nod to IndieGogo and Touscoprod) Lessons from a Floundering Kickstarter Project » The Kickstarter Blog. Earlier today I got an email from a man named David Lang linking to a blog post he had written called Lessons From a Floundering Kickstarter Project. In it, David discusses his project The Great Mate Journey, which has raised $240 in its first 30 days, 10% of its total. He’s disappointed in its performance thus far, and his post offers an extremely frank assessment of why he thinks that’s true. It’s a must-read for everyone. The post is striking because of its honesty — it takes courage to be open about potential failure.
Regardless of how it turns out, his advice could not be better for people starting their projects. As I write this, my Kickstarter project is half way through the funding period. 15 Steps for a Successful Kickstarter Project » GMSarli Games. On Twitter, Gareth M. Skarka (@GMSkarka) asked me for some advice about a Kickstarter project he’s planning, so I shared these lessons I learned from the e20 System project. This advice is largely oriented toward game design projects (since that’s my experience), but most of this should apply to any Kickstarter project: Phase I: Preparation (1) Create a detailed outline for the final product; you won’t necessarily be sharing all these details at the beginning, but it will give you enough information that you will be able to answer questions and give potential backers a firm idea of where the project is headed.
Insider access and input are the most important things you’re selling to your backers, so give this very careful thought. . (2) Figure out a reasonable production schedule, complete with benchmarks for starting and ending major phases of the project. . (3) Calculate a comprehensive budget, including fair payment for freelancers (yourself included!)
See how that works? The Crowdfunding Rockstars. David Branin's CROWD-FUNDING CHEAT SHEET. 2 weeks ago, we reached our all or nothing fundraising goal of raising $15,000 in 52 days. Thanks to 227 amazing backers, we ended up 108% funded with $16,203 in Post-Production monies for our film Goodbye Promise. As I crunch the numbers I see that 85% of contributions were $50 or less. I have had a number of folks approach me for advice on how we did it. I thought it would be best capture some of my ideas, principles, and lessons learned in one place for all to benefit. ....At long last, here are some of my thoughts on Crowd-Funding. I wish I had read this before I started my campaign. 1) Believe in your project, LOVE your project. 2) There are NO short-cuts. Here is what I fear, we are going to see a number of folks diving blindly into a Crowd-Funding campaign expecting miracles and magic to happen for them just because their idea is “the most unique thing the world has ever seen.” 3) Your work begins BEFORE you launch your campaign.
You should research other successful campaigns. NEW BREED: The Crowd « WorkBook Project :: an open creative network. By Lance Weiler, March 16th, 2010 By Gregory Bayne – As some of you know, I recently completed a successful funding campaign using Kickstarter.com to raise the initial capital needed to get my new film, Jens Pulver | Driven, an intimate documentary about legendary UFC Champion Jens Pulver, off the ground. The end result of the campaign was $27,210 pledged, my goal was $25,000, via 410 contributors, in 20 short days.
Since the close of the campaign I have received a number queries as to how this was accomplished, especially since 72 hours out from my deadline, I was still $10,000 short of my goal. I will attempt to explain my guiding principles, and overall approach to the campaign here. I also recommend reading the Kickstarter blog post on the project. . * Since what I accomplished has been commonly dubbed as ‘crowdfunding’, for clarity in this article I refer to the gracious funders of our work out there as ‘The Crowd’ The Crowd, remember, are people. It’s simply not. Hints and Tips | WeDidThis. Ted hope | Hat & Soul. UPDATED: 2/18/13 –– Same three Ps. Even more recent examples! Long before I worked at Indiegogo, I was given the opportunity to step in for the company’s co-founder Slava Rubin for a presentation on crowdfunding sponsored by New York Women In Film and Television (NYWIFT).
Though the seminar was primarily focused around grant writing and more traditional ways of getting money for films, more of the attendees seemed ready to merge onto the more active freeway of crowdfunding rather than take the passive back roads of grant writing. If a Buddhist, a Confucianist, and a Taoist each tried to crowdfund, which would be successful? Although crowdfunding has been around for years now, it’s still the big buzz word amongst the indie community. That said, there are three aspects of crowdfunding that should be thoroughly sketched out before your campaign goes live: pitch, perks, and promotion, or what I call my Three Ps of Crowdfunding.) A few weeks later I received a Tweet from Jeanie with a link. Successful crowd funding – my mantra | Vinod Bharathan. Yes, i have managed to raise 4000$ in 60 days using the crowd funding platform IndieGoGo .
I would like to share my mantra with you. There are tons of sites teaching you how to go make a successful campaign. I’m not going to give teach you anything. I’m just going to tell you how i got about my campaign and made it work. Research. yes, take time to do that. The Pitch A video pitch with a pretty girl narrating will sell, but when you are selling to your friends, you better be honest. Setting target amount I set it at 4000$ because i felt that any amount lesser than that would look less serious. Setting the length of the campaign I chose to run the campaign for 60 days knowing that it will cover two salary seasons . The perks and promises The perks and promises to which you sell are of very less importance unless you are handing over private autographed photos of Tom Cruise , You know what i mean?
Sorting your network Making the move Time to seal the deal. How to Get Crowdfunding for Your Small Business : The World. Why Your Crowdfunded Campaign Failed. How to Lose Everything on Kickstarter and Still Raise a Production Budget. Crowd Funding LIVE :: Just another WordPress siteCrowd Funding LIVE. Five Lessons Learned from the Crowdfunding Trenches from the Founder of olloclip®, on the One-Year Anniversary of Kickstarter. 6 Mistakes We Made In Our Crowdfunding Campaign. Insight: Campaigns That Take These Six Actions Raise 8 Times More Money Than Campaigns That Don’t | Indiegogo Blog. Tips and Tricks for a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign.