You cant swing a lightly inebriated jaguar by its tail without hitting half a dozen crowdfunding campaigns these days. Looking at some campaigns, it seems like it could be the ultimate get rich quick scheme:you dream up a harebrained idea, create a pretty video and BOOM. Make it rain. Except running a successful Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign is a lot more complicated than that.In thisvideo, we take a closer look at some of the common pitfalls.
Creating a campaign is only part of the battle pressing the big red go live button is the culmination of a lot of work, but what not a lot of people realize, is that creating the campaign is only the start of a long process. In a way, crowdfunding campaigns are mini-startups in their own right.
Crowdfunding can be scary for startups. Instead of operating in the relative comfort blanket of being in stealth mode, youve shown your hand to the entire world. Your customers know what youre planning to do, which limits how agile youre able to be at that point. Your competitors will definitely be following the campaign carefully. Hell, theyll often back your campaign with a single dollar, to get access to the backer-only updates further down the line. Theres a definite art to it.
You have to figure out a business model, including who your customers are, why they might want to back your campaign and how you are going to reach them. You have to figure out how youre going to design, iterate and really sell your project.
The crowdfunding page itself is a pretty big project, especially if you want to create a video that really wakes peoples imaginations.
And finally, once the excitement of the campaign itself dies down, its time to deliver on your promises. At that point, yourereally hoping that all the math you did up front turns out to be correct. There is no shortage of crowdfunding campaigns that end up shipping $50 backer rewards that cost the company $60to make.
We looked at hundreds of crowdfunding campaigns and, in the video above, highlighted some of the pitfalls that we see many startups make. But dont worry; we wont spoil it all for you. There are still plenty of mistakes left that you can make all by yourself. Hopefully, itll get you thinking in the right direction to make your crowdfunding a success.
So thats a little bit about crowdfunding. If you want to know how to run a successful campaign, let TC teach you in the video below.Good luck!
