Are the dumbest and smartest words ever said. Why? Because crowdfunding is the hardest money you will possibly spend.
There is no making money in crowdfunding. Even if you make way more than you tried, if you only tried to cover costs, you will still have to pay for shipping and perks and parties and time and everything else.
So you have to raise way more than what is cost. But now your cost includes PayPal and fees to the crowdfunding platform.
So to avoid grief and misery, let me tell you how to crowdfund.
This will be a three part story so stay tuned.
Crowdfunding is like sex. You’ve got your pre-game or foreplay to get them excited, then there’s the sex which is tiring and fun and exhilirating and a lot of work if you want to climax. Post climax is the dirtiest but most essential part, the clean-up and cuddling. You’d better not screw any of it. up.
Part I: Pregame
With any commerce, you cannot sell before you have a community. So before you begin selling something or making a plea to a community, you have to have a community first. You have to have some cred in this community and you have to have trust and you have to have a good product. An easy test is if your family and friends won’t throw in 2k into your project, no one will.
But mom and dad would probably fund anything, you really do this not to scam money from friends and family (unless it is) but because you want to actually create a product that would be valued by the community it serves. For this it is important to know who they are, where to find them and get their response. So that requires “marketing”. Marketing is the study of the market. There’s a market for your product and there are people in the market for your product. You need to know what problem your product solves for them in order to get to those people. This means searching inside your soul to find out why you developed this. To make money is the wrong reason, no one is in the market to give you money, they are in the market to buy peace of mind, or time or love, or satisfaction, something of human value. Your product somehow gives that to them regardless of whether your product is a game, a song or a tech thingy. Figure out what your thing does, for whom and then start going after those people.
Those people will need to be directed somewhere once they showed that they are interested, direct them to a website that talks about your product and has an email for them to put in where they have a chance to have their problem solved by your thingy.
Once you have those emails, 300-500 or so, you have a community. Some say you need 1000 or 2000, that’s for those who want to go bankrupt. I don’t believe in big campaigns for small people like you and I. You can do as good of a job as an agency, make as much money as they will without the fees and you will have more than enough hassle trying to get your product to the 200 or so people who will buy your product.
200 people is really perfect because it is about how many you alone can take care of. Any more and you need a team, you can probably use a team anyway but that is optional.
Well that’s part I. We’ll get to things like picking the right crowdfunder, filling out the fields and running the campaign in part II. Here’s a preview bellow.
First, pick the crowdfunder:
Kickstarter:
Pros:
- Big Community
- Great tools
- Looks nice
- Great Support
Cons
- Can’t donate to causes.
- Review process.
not-rushin 