So last we left off talking about the basic features and regulations that each site employs and were working towards making a decision as to which provider to go with for our campaign. Besides just the numbers here are a couple more things for you to consider.
Scope of the project.
How big are you going and what are you looking to get out of the crowdsourcing effort. For us, this is something that is paramount to consider. We are going to be utilizing this campaign not only to raise funds but also to raise awareness. Our project is fairly large. We are creating a feature length documentary about a living legend and the budget is fairly large in comparison to many of the projects you’d find on either site. The money raised will be a supplement the traditional financing that we’ve secured but will still be a fairly large amount.
Know Your Potential Audience.
How many people do you need to reach and who are they? Something to be considered is who will be interested in your project and which site will they likely be visiting. There is obviously no clear cut way to figure this stuff out but based on our observational research niche projects abound on both sites but Kickstarter seems to draw in the bigger projects. This is likely due to their impressive site traffic. It isn’t uncommon for over 400,000 people to visit Kickstarter in any given day providing over 2,000,000 page views. Kickstarter being one of the first to market also has name recognition and as mentioned already, has made a name for itself in our industry by helping out very legitimate film projects. This is not to diminish IndieGoGo’s place in the market however. They are squarely aimed at the independent industry but don’t yet have the mass brand recognition that Kickstarter has.
So who did we choose?
Drum roll please…
We chose Kickstarter. As you might have been able to glean from the slight bias above, we feel that at this point, with this particular project, Kickstarter makes the most sense. We like their all or nothing model because we feel it gives backers the confidence that they are backing legitimate projects that will be completed. While Kickstarter’s fee are potentially a little higher, we feel that the brand recognition, site traffic and reach of the website will make up for that. Also, because of the scale of this project, we’re looking to raise a good amount of funds and reach a large, diverse audience, Kickstarter is a good match. Since we’re in the middle of this process, I can’t tell you if we choose wisely or not but we’ll certainly get into that as the campaign gets under way.
So now what?
Believe it or not, that was the easy part. Choosing a partner is only the tip of the iceberg. Regardless of who you choose to go with, now comes the hard work of determining your desired fundraising goal. Figuring what it would take in terms of backers to achieve that goal. Creating, pricing and sourcing the rewards that you’ll offer your backers. Not to mention, starting to plan how you are going to get your project out to the world. It doesn’t matter if you choose Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, if all you do is put up a post on their site and hope to get funded you’re doomed to come up short.
We’ve been working on our plan now for almost a year now and next time we’ll get into goal setting, marketing, campaign planning and all that other fun stuff you’ll need to do to make this dream a reality.