Lessons

Lesson Info

Choose a Crowdfunding Platform

In the last lesson, we determined that we want to do a campaign and we're going to do a campaign, so the next thing we get to do is start building our campaign so what we're going to talk about now is the nuts and bolts of building your campaign page, so the first step, of course, is to pick your platform so the two that most people have heard of our kickstarter and indiegogo as we've mentioned, there are a lot of options, so there's also group meet there's, a go fund me and patri on and crowd tilt and many others devoted to specific types of crowdfunding, but for the most part, I'm going to focus on kickstarter and indiegogo so there's a lot of similarities and love differences. For the most part, they're very similar. Kickstarter is bigger by quite a bit. They've done over two billion dollars in money raised so far they've done two hundred eighty thousand projects, they have a higher success rate than indiegogo. Kickstarter is carrie aided, meaning that every project that is put up g...

ets approved they have, you know, an actual process by which the projects get approved in this initially they were actually quite conservative, but which presently approved as time has gone on, they have become a little more open nevertheless, though you know it's not every single project, so indeed go go on the other hand there's no approval process you can put up whatever project you want it's just a neutral platform and so there's been quite a bit more campaigns actually over six hundred thousand campaigns on indiegogo that they've raised now on eight hundred million dollars so they haven't been quite as big they've had fewer huge campaigns and they have a lower successfully overall because they've run far more campaigns the question is, you know which one is better or which one is the right one for you and the answer is it's not actually is clear cut you might look at this and think, well, kickstarter is the obvious choice though personally for me you know what we've done more campaigns on indiegogo in the reason for that is in a go go is a little more aggressive and supporting the campaign creators in our experience there like they have customer happiness agents who like wolcott in the customers you the campaign creator we'll reach out to you and support you and give you coaching especially if you have a campaign that looks very promising there are a lot more business friendly in their approach kickstarter is a little more backer friendly this in my experience that this is in fact but my opinion is is that they're both awesome platforms who are doing great work and in the end I don't think you're going wrong either way with either platform and it's really just a personal preference, there are some types of campaigns that I would say definitely air more towards kickstarter more like hips, duri type of things I have done better on kickstarter and maybe on the more text side and corporate side and indiegogo, so it really depends on what you're doing, take a look at the platform, see the other projects that are doing well or have done well, and then you get get to make a decision about which one the the platform fees air similar the overall cost of doing business on them is similar, so it's not a huge cost difference, and you can have hugely successful campaigns, and there have been campaigns that have raised millions over twelve thirteen million dollars on both sites, so you can't really go wrong, but you get to choose first and then there's little idiosyncrasies and differences between each of them. I'm not going to go into detail on what those differences are, but you'll find out if you know which one you choose there's a lot of tutorials. They both offer a lot of materials about how to use their sites. So in addition to what I'm teaching you here, both of the sites offer support materials. That because they benefit by you having a successful campaign so they're going to give you all the support they can in terms of information to build and run a successful campaign. So when you're thinking about building your campaign campaign page the first thing you really get to understand is that this is e commerce except we call it pre commerce and it's people you know, buying the product in a sense pre ordering it they're backing her campaign but bottom line they're preordering product if you're doing an invention or even a show they're paying for it before it actually exists and so your campaign page is like an e commerce pace so I can think of it just like any kind of e commerce site and ultimately your success is based on your conversion rate times the number of people who come to the site so there is of the two focuses of everything you're doing is improving your conversion rate so if someone makes it to your page that they stumble across your campaign either because of drove them there through social through paper click or they stumble across it organically then how many of them convert is it you know a tenth of a percent or is it five percent and whether they convert or not is going to be a function of the quality of your message, the excitement of the product and the compelling this of the offer you're making so if you're offering a perk that's an incredible value that's going to encourage people to convert if they're going to save eighty percent off retail on a product they really like, well geez, people are going to jump on board so that's a you might get a higher conversion rate than if you're offering a twenty percent discount on something there moderately excited about and how excited there are is a combination of again what the product is and then how compellingly you presented to them and so it's simple math but ultimately it's important math and so let's talk about campaign pages so have any of you back to campaign and this is also for you on the online watching this broadcast I'd like to know what campaigns have you back and then why did you choose to buy him sort of you guys back many campaigns tip what you give back the crew is going why did you choose to back the coast? Because it was cool cool, right? Like was it the product primarily or it was like the whole page it was everything is just so vivid the images and everything about it and it was more so just the enthusiasm of it all and was the page two was just the way it looked and just the excitement of the video kind of got me to say ok, I'll give this guy a chance cool yeah, I tend to back more content arts related stuff because I'm a musician I know a lot of musician friends and typically goes tip for tat I owe back you've you bet me kind of your back before you know right but a ce faras like an actual campaign where I wanted some sort of of the perks usually I say noted person just donate but I was a big fan of mystery science theater back in the and they just recently raised I think six million dollars to bring the show back again so I got really excited and they had some really cool fan packages so is really engaged in their whole presentation they brought on some really cool new actors and then they had, you know, discount downloads of all these episodes and so it was a good deal and I was a fan so because both of us together perfect um usually back up artistic endeavor so bands not spans but also like I just funded my friend he's filmmakers get her film funded um but the other ones that I generally contribute to our the personal ones, the personal like someone's if friends or going through go from me to it yeah supporting people using love yeah, right supporting the people I love and I know we're going through a hard time like that and colonel have supported of productivity planner campaign it was just a couple of a couple that I met at a weekend summit and I just wanted to support the great work they were doing so I funded their campaign through kickstarter right? So we're getting sort of like the range of reasons why people back campaigns right here so why do people way we've got some more here red scorpio in the chat room just back something called that california hiking trail map so it was an artistic map of california hiking trails and because she's very interested in hiking taylor stone says that I backed a few campaigns and it's always just how much do I need to pay to get the thing whatever it was an art book movie even just a nap they they look for the price and that really brings them in michaela has back yo yo mats on kickstarter because it's a very useful invention for people who do yoga and trevor joran has done pink box they're awesome temporary tattoos but they say that they've been slow on the delivery so you know that's an issue for people that will talk about you know we'll definitely be talking about delivery times so well right so why do people back campaigns ultimately there's a few key reasons number one is people I want the thing you know whatever is being created whether it's a product or on event they just want the thing and there's a good deal so that's, the number one reason why most people back campaigns is is that number two is they are what they want to back the person because they have a personal connection with him, where they were enrolled with their energy through their site, so they're, like actually backing products that they want to support the people because they're connected to them or feel connected to them, whether they're actually connected there's that in another reason why people back campaigns is because it's like a field they want to support. So, like, I support the arts and I want to support people who are making an effort in the arts and taking a risk and putting themselves out there, and I want to be a part of that, and another reason people back campaigns is because they know it's, a friend of a friend, so someone in their network was activated and enrolled them and back in the campaign. So when you're creating your campaign, you want to think of all these reasons why people might be supporting you, so number one is like, well, my offering something in a way that people are going to be excited about it both the thing, the way it's presented in the value that's being offered to people such that they're going to, you know, buy it before it exists and take the risk because ever knows where they should know that there's always a possibility the thing will actually come true so they're taking a risk and that's I guess a little piece of coaching for people considering back in campaigns is campaign creators they're taking a huge risk and almost always the vast, vast, vast majority of time their intentions are pure and oftentimes they may discover that things that take longer more challenging than they anticipated and we get to get, you know, cut campaign creators of break so obviously they get to do try their hardest to deliver on time, et cetera. But it's crowdfunding it's not amazon dot com it's not walmart it's or target it is something that doesn't exist yet and there's a path between here and there and if anyone has ever done any kind of substantial project, you'll learn that not everything goes according to plan and the farther out the end, the more murky it is. And so you make your best guess and oftentimes if you're an entrepreneur who's doing stuff your bite, nature and optimist like you're just by nature and optimists and so that's a common thing so we get to give people slack and going back campaign don't do it if you're not prepared toe wait didn't don't do it if not prepared for the possibility that they may not be able to deliver despite their best efforts and I've met people who have completely failed to deliver on their promises despite, you know, bankrupting themselves and it's. Not because they chose to fail.