What is crowdfunding? you may wonder, so let me explain. If someone or an organization of some type (it can be a loosly formed group or a corporation) has an idea, but not the money to see it come to fruition, they can go to the global masses to finance their plan. For example, charities are all crowd funded, as are churches. Political campaigns are crowd funded. And crowdfunding has financed independent films, music albums, and many other projects via the different crowdfunding sites online. In this short article, let’s look at some of them and what they do.
Indiegogo (http://Indiegogo.com)
In the year 2008, one of the most popular crowdfunding sites was born — Indiegogo. Three partners (Slava Rubin, Danae Ringelmann,and Eric Schell), each interested in a different aspect of the business, got the site up and running. In less than two full years, Indiegogo has had people from 100 different countries participate in 3,500 different projects. The site says that “… as long as you have a bank account, you can participate.”
Like the majority of crowdfunding sites online, Indiegogo is free to add your proejct to, and also like a majority of the sites online, Indiegogo takes a commission from the successful site. At the time of this writing, it’s a 4% fee, so when you’re deciding on how much money you need to complete your project, add that amount into your request.
Kickstarter (http://Kickstarter.com)
Kickstarter is a bit different from Indiegogo in one respect: If you put up a project, it must have a deadline, and if you don’t bring in your goal, you won’t get the money that has already been pledeged. For example, if you offer a project with a goal of $5,000, and get only $2,983.45 in donations, the project will have failed and you’ll get none of the funding promised. The potential backers won’t be charged for their pledge, either. So, it’s safer for backers, in a way.
But people who make donations have to understand that they’re not investors. They don’t get a say in whether or not the project is completed or when. In fact, they can’t be sure that the project ever will be completed, but here’s the thing: When people searching for crowdfuning money put a project up and never complete it, there goes their opportunity for getting any money from the crowd again. People do pay attention, and if you have major donations, you’re going to have some very angry people. Kickstarter makes the donator/donee relationship very clear.
On the other hand, your project will run on Kickstarter until the dealine you set for it to be fully funded. If your project is funded early, people can still donate and you’ll end up with more than you asked for. For example, a recent project for social marketing software asked for a mere $10,000 and came away with $181,535!
Kickstarter allows folks from around the globe to participate. using Amazon Payments and they charge 5% of the amount you receive in donations.
Other crowdfunding sites about and some of them are very specific. For example, SellaBand.com is for musicians, whereas Quirky.com is for people who like to invent new things. You can also start your own crowdfunding site at CreateaFund.com. There are sites for just about every purpose.
Whether you have some money you’d like to give away or whether you have a crowdfunding idea of your own, you can participate on many levels. To learm more about putting up a crowdfunding project that succeeds, visit us at http://90MinuteCashAdvance.com