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Q & A on Crowdfunding

Yeah, I was thinking about how you know try funders are pretty much investors yes. So is there a legal obligation to fulfill what you say you were going to fulfill if if they found your projects decisively? Well, this is like this is like the kick starters in the world talk about this kind of stuff and like you can find all this information on any one of these platforms the fact is it's like uh I don't believe so at the end of the day now are you would you destroy your reputation? It's another lesson we talked about how you build up this brand and you build up you know what? You're all about everything and then I'll send you can destroy your reputation and, uh, very quickly uh should you live up to it? Of course, and I think every platform actually goes through this type of stuff to really make sure that anybody who does this and it's funding the project they're starting a project to get funded what the obligations are how these things were handled. There's fax I think on the sites and...

stuff like that, but it is a good it is a good question and it is it is analogous to, uh you know, the world being investors into a particular project or a particular product and you're right to think that way, yeah I don't know if there's been any lawsuits or anything that have proven out that it's like a promise and they have to meet it or I have to return the money. I don't think that there is no well, yes, I mean, there is there's no reason you really should do it. And the platforms are on top of this stuff, so they have actually have a lot of it it's it's in their interest to make sure that this is all sorted out so that they can continue to do this. They do make a cut. Yeah, things of course. Thank you. Yes, I think of it in terms of, like, um is a crowd funder like, even kind of higher on the scale or higher on I guess, uh, empirical scale than a, uh, superfan oh, that's an interesting way to put it. I it's a different type. Yeah, it's a different type of is analogous to look their customer. Yeah, and that they're a super food you want to get them tow, promote you wouldn't share I mean that's the kind of thing so within the marking funnel that's what you're talking about from the previous listen yeah, yeah, they're in the they're in your they're caught in your funnel by that point yeah, yeah, yeah you know that reminds you something tio is it relates to this I mean, super fans of course are people who promote you there's a interesting article online and it's actually probably worth mentioning at this point since we're nearing the end and it's it's just something that's a concept that's out there that we really need to be aware of and it's called thousand true fans like if you have a thousand true fan and check it out it's an interesting article if you have a thousand true fans and they're all buying like your album and a t shirt and something else, you can make a living because that starts to add up to the kind of money that you would need in order to make your living at it and I've seen that type of thinking and jason and I are not sold on it and the and the key reason we're not sold on this idea is because ok, so let's say you have a thousand true fans that by whatever you need we'll whatever you put out how often are you going to put out a new album we once a year the most can you can you kiss, sustain that and continue to get like an income from it? We think you actually need necessarily perhaps more fans than that, but then some of them might spend a little bit some of whom might spend a lot this is an intriguing way to funnel this and that article I think came out a number of years ago before crowdfunding really, really love this is an interesting way to channel all of the types of fans that do want to support you and dubai everything you have and be able to not just by the things that you've come out with before but helped fund the things that you would like to bring out into the world and come along with you. And so yes, I mean it channels them in an interesting way. The super fan's style thinking on top of what you're talking about here is the people who promote your video and campaign and really try and get other people to contribute to it that's what your super fans they're doing in that case they're like we want to see this successful they'll not only plunk down money bill hustle and try and get you more and more fans and more things our audience members online are international. Yes, we do have another question about where you reside if you are you are using crowds funding like this a r m wants to know do these sites still work if you reside outside of the u s and is this the same sort of deal where you need a u s tax I d to go on kickstarter or indiegogo and actually it might be and this is where we'll we could do is actually put up the sites and then you're one click away dialling into that just find out what what uh what they recommend and what they're allowed to do because the fact of the matter is you're making money from one like one country but you exist in another and you're pulling funds from one country to another and then so tax implications are seems like that there's no tax implications there I remember that there were some sites that started on this before kick started really got along and it came along and start to do what it did and people inside the u s could use it because of the way that u s law is written and they've just recently passed some legislation to make it more possible for people even in the u s to use this type of thing in order to raise money for their businesses so yes, this gets very deeply into money law and money laws like the type of thing where yeah you sure enough you might not be able to use kickstarter in your country because how it is so I mean the only thing you can do is research it find the ones that are ok to use in your country do some research and take the one that works best for you yeah the platforms again will tell you they have this information you know well, james one, two, three, and hannah both had similar questions in regards to the rollout time, and they were just asking if it matter. Three pm roll out, does it timesown matter? Or you want to just do the time zone where most of your fans are time zone where your fans are great because they're that's what they're going to be a working board, you've got to figure out where that is that's a very good question that we like again, we didn't pull that time and that date out of thin air. There is research, you know, there's a lot of research I'm trying to figure out when do people really pay attention to social media, to facebook, to twitter and all that kind of stuff? And so that's the one, the target? Um, there's something about that middle of the week where people start, I wanted to explore what their followers were saying. All right, now, do we have any other questions from the audience members here? I'm curious from you guys. Have any of you done any of these crowds funding before? Have you thought about it before coming in this class? Or is this kind of brand new to you right over here, you see, if you run across it before no oh, wow. This is the whole nother place for that you could make like a ton of money and like fund everything and it's always interesting to us like is we run into this? This is why we do this research because you find like the last session probably had some new stuff for you to assume where were you familiar with affiliates before? Uh I wasn't it wasn't really with philly. Yeah, so there's a lot of new stuff and it's interesting to us and as we've said repeatedly we don't all we could do is introduce you to these ideas you don't have to do crowd funding it. You may not want to deal with it. Look, the crowdfunding sites have to accept your project they don't it's not automatic they now some of them are more friendly than others and that's why it's another reason to choose a platform carefully. Some of them are known to be more friendly to music projects and others others are even have better tools for music. And I don't want to tell you which ones are which because it could change tomorrow it could be changing now as we talk to you as they roll out new features we do and can tell you to go along with our concept of goa, where the party is where's the party right now it's which once kickstarter kick starters where the party is at the moment and so people are familiar with the reason why you might want to consider kickstarter first at this time is because the people who would be pledging also might not have heard of kickstarter, right? If you haven't run into this before, they might not have run into before either this is a money thing people don't trust their money to some new site they've never heard of so you go and then you know like let's say they're familiar with kickstarter and you choose to go with fred's crowdfunding site dot com and raj and garage and you start to say wait a minute, I'm not going to give my money into a place like this you might make it less likely even if it's got better terms for you that your fans are even going to fund you on that site, there might be more likely to do it on something that they trust and that's how this stuff works. We talked about a little bit earlier whether the's crowdfunding sites work in other countries and this is just one user who says hannah says that she actually funded a project that was based in portugal. So if that's used to anybody you know, I'm sure you need to go to each of the sites and check it out for yourself but she did say that she's done that ok, great. And she funded. So congratulations. Yeah, that's great. So I know that I know that you mentioned that you wanted to get this out on wednesday three pm is there a day that you want your campaign to end? Should that be on a friday, for instance? And I know there's a lot of different schools of thought about how long the campaign should be. Is this something where maybe you try to do a tour that corresponds with a kickstarter campaign? Or I mean, how long should people think about running these campaigns? Well, the length that should be what I think they set up the after mel's, for we are weak, you can adjust this back to you, but um four weeks tend to be the just the right amount of time with the right amount of messages the right amount of keeping people engaged a month. Um as for a specific time and date or day, I think it's saturday night at ten thirty two k way don't know it's just the most optimal ties it down wait don't even know if that's a good question I mean you want it, you're going to be putting out a lot of messages at that point, you want to choose a time when people are eligible to get their pledges in at the last minute, but, um again, why? Why is it on wednesday at three already? Because the research shows that a lot of people pay attention to social media and what what are you trying to do is kick it off? Maybe it should end wednesday at three two of people are paying attention or maybe a couple days fire after or thereafter because you're trying tio it's, your last ditch effort is one of your last milestones is like we're almost there, we're almost there when we have a very funny line, something like that might be good, okay, so you could make use of that fourth wednesday, ok? Well, we're into learning more, and one of the things that we talked about in the indie band survival guide is creating a marketing plan. This is this actually deserves a marketing plan better than pretty much anything that we've talked about also how to organize your websites and everything else so that you have a structure so that you can bring this stuff in and of course, how to promote yourself online without spanning now as it relates to all of this stuff. Crowd funding is not something you should dio unless you've done just about everything that we've talked about before here before this session, this is near the end, I think you can see that you need your brand, you need the marketing and all of that stuff settled? You need your music out there if it's already out there? I mean, if you're doing it in the first place and you never had any music, you're actually probably going to have a time doing kickstarter ironically, cause you don't have anything to show them that you're even a musician. You really need toe have this going. All of your web presences, social presences, and you need to have been interacting with your fans for all this time. Why is that the case? Will who are you? How are you going to get your message out in the first place where those first kick start going to go? If you finally have your twitter and everything else, and if you finally been building all this stuff off now, you've got something to work with and of course, your campaign's goal is to go outside of everywhere that you couldn't talk tio that said that said, um, you need to pull together everything that you do have in order to get it make it is effective as possible and have it resting on a solid foundation and then there's. One other thing that you probably should have under your belt, which we're going to talk about in the very next session, which is how to run a pr campaign. Because if you do this right, if you have the right kind of message and amanda palmer, and in particular had a great message that did get picked up by the media, which is that she was with the label, I believe this, her story, and I'd have to check this is that she was with the label and it didn't work out, and so she wasn't going to be able to even put out her stuff without her fans help that's the kind of story that the press gets really interested in and pick it up. Now, as we like to say, indie band releases new album is not much of a story indie band can't release album unless they get more money. Is it much of a story with most of the story it's not going to really work, you need to take it somewhere beyond that. And so when we say that you really should be trying to get your funders, your pleasures to actually feel like they're part of your story, we mean that it's beyond that it's, the kind of thing that you should be able to get the press interested in as well. So so you you do graduate to this, this is something like this there's a reason why we put this toward the end of the course it cz one of those things that you do have to graduate I don't think you could even do it with just one person I mean maybe you can if you if you have nothing else going on but I think you also need a team teo pull this off the right way you certainly will need your initial backers you certainly will need the initial people who will share the video for you starting it out because that plants the seed and gets it working out there but considering that you really need to put all the rest of it together and it hopefully will come together and make you successful from there you should be able to build this success by the way is successfully funded project is another story and it's a story that actually the press that's usually pretty interested in as you build it up from there so we wanted to just leave a little bit of time for questions if there's anything else yeah you guys we've seen a turtle done any crowdfunding before yourself your projects uh no we have actually not done that ok do you plan on doing it any time in the future? I don't know because we've actually funded over albums and we still have two in the works deal I mean there were actually done s o we don't really have anything at this moment where we would need to draw on funds well, to be clear, we were going to talk about this in the last session we've researched all the ways to do this stuff for zero dollars you don't really need money for this way, so you know, we look into it and the only other thing that we would need a lot of money for would be a studio which we have and well, we have to rebuild it got thirsty, we've got these women and we've had that so like and that's how we're able to do some of the day project once you have your own digital audio work station set of microphones get going, space doesn't really in space and that's the key one it doesn't cost a lot to get that machine going in fact, getting money to produce an album tends to have to do with more with studio time, maybe mastering, but we have enough funds from what we've done before that we can keep it going. Then again, we work with some artists and help them do it. I just did recently with a band in chicago tow help him do these crowdfunding things so that's how we became familiar with it and see it is a very viable wait and get started question this segment was packed with info on crowdfunding and fund raising in general for our music projects and when we come back we're going to talk about publicizing yes don't add to that at all well, yes, we're going to be talking about publicity now the interesting thing about publicity is that you may be thinking well, what does that have to do directly with making money and it's not direct but the truth is it's so important that it's very often the last bit of budget that accompany cuts because without publicity the sales don't keep coming publicity though nowadays is more than just traditional media, it includes new media that's well within your reach and we're going to give you a method of doing pr that starts from nothing at all starts from the very beginning and lets you grow it is large is you can actually get your message out so we'll talk about that whole thing in the next session and since it's the very last one will be doing a wrap up. Another thing we're going to be covering is as we talked about before how to start an entire music business for zero dollars will go into every category and we'll give you zero dollar options for all of them. But before we go we wanted to share some more quotes coming in from online um thx says, sitting in a recording studio watching this right now actually watching sorting studio and hannah says I'm so grateful for all of their expertise and how easy they make it to understand difficult, complex concepts and last but not least, trade cash. Thank you, guys. This has been like a college course on making money in music. The price on this course is a major bargain that will make you much more after you apply the techniques and ideas they advocate.