Month: September 2015

How to Market Your Crowdfunding Campaign

admin Leave a comment

4 Things to Consider Before Creating any Crowdfunding Marketing Pitch

The ongoing recession has made it more difficult for people to get the funds needed for setting up their startup businesses. This has also made crowdfunding more popular, and startup owners and even people with financing requirements for projects of all shapes and sizes are turning more and more towards this type of funding. However, not every crowd funding marketing pitch is successful and this is exactly the reason why you need to consider these 4 things before making a pitch.

Think about the business idea

First of all, you need to have a proper idea about the business plan that you intend to make a pitch for. Your business idea and model should be attractive enough for investors, and interest them enough to put their money into your venture. Analyze whether or not you have such a business model. You should also be clear about the kind of profits or rewards that you will be able to offer to your backers on crowdfunding platform in exchange for the investment.

Be clear about the capital

You should also have a clear conception about the kind of capital that you need. On crowdfunding sites, do not ask for less than the total amount of funds that you require for starting your project or venture. Make a list of the expenses that you will need to make, and work out an investment amount that will help your business to start comfortably. Make a pitch for that kind of funds on the crowd funding websites.

Consider the platforms

There are lots of crowdfunding sites on the internet, but not all of them accept all types of project. You need a crowdfunding platform that will accept the type of project you need to gather funds for. It is a good idea to research on the internet and know about various crowd source funding sites and find out which ones accept your type of business project.

Have proper marketing tools in place

Finally, you should also have the right marketing tools in place for your crowd source funding pitch. Once you create the images, videos and posts for your marketing pitch, show them to your friends and family members, even to outsiders, and ask whether they look up to the mark. If the feedbacks are negative, you should try and make them look as professional as possible. With amateurish creations, you cannot go too far with your crowdfunding campaigns.

Keywords: crowdfunding, crowd funding, crowdfunding platform, crowdfunding sites, crowd source funding

Creating Community Awareness and Support thru Crowdfunding

admin Leave a comment

How to Use Crowdfunding to Obtain Community Support?

You must have heard about how crowdfunding has become one of the newer ways of funding, and is even being considered as a viable alternative to traditional lending institutions such as banks. This is actually one of the ways to raise money from many supporters for a single goal or project. It takes online fundraising to the next level, and helps people and organizations to get the support from a community of likeminded individuals in order to get finances for a project. Read on and know how you should use crowdfund to get support from the community.

Express yourself well

There are lots of crowdfunding websites, such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, which can help gather the necessary funds for a project. With these platforms, you can get a prominent position from which you will be able to run a fundraising campaign. These offer some of the best fundraising ideas, and you have to offer a small amount of money as fees. But it is important to express your ideas well to the crowd of potential crowdfunder investors and customers that you are trying to reach out to. Clear expression and articulation can help you to get people crowdfund your business. You can easily get the capital required and get your project started.

Mention the idea and the business plan

Some people hesitate to come clear about their business models and plans on crowdfunding websites, for fear of imitation and concept thefts. But you need to realize that without a proper idea about your business plan and your background, crowdfunder individuals will hardly feel enthusiastic about supporting you and get your venture off the ground. It is essential to tell them where and how you intend to go with your proposed venture. Be real, honest and transparent on the crowd funding sites and you can get the trust of people. You can make them crowdfund your project with less insecurities and greater amount of confidence. As the concept of fundraising online revolves around gathering community support, it is important for you to be serious in your efforts and make sure that you leave no stone unturned.

Mention the results and end goals

You also need to come clear about the kind of results that contributors can expect to witness and the time frame that they can see it in. You should tell them about your business model and the type of revenues or rewards that you expect from the venture. You need to tell them the reasons why they should feel the urge to be interested in your campaign, and prefer to invest on you instead of others. Keep in mind that crowdfunding is one of the best ways to raise money based on trust. Naturally, the more that you can get people on crowd funding sites to trust you, the better you will be able to get their support. The kind of support that you can get may go beyond simply monetary contributions. Your investors can spread word about your campaign and enhance your online fundraising efforts.

Keywords: Crowdfunding, fundraising ideas, crowdfunding websites, crowd funding sites, crowdfunder, crowdfund, ways to raise money, online fundraising

Crowdfunding for Medical Research

admin Leave a comment

3 Ways Crowdfunding Helps in Medical Research

The new century has seen a lot of advances in the field of science and medicine. Technological advancement has made medical practice better, more economical and quicker. The best thing about this advancement has been the type of benefits that patients are now able to get. The innovations and scientific advancements in the domain of medicine has helped also doctors and medical researchers to devise newer and easier methods of treatment, and experiment more as far as treating patients is concerned. But the lack of funds can kill the progress, and it is a fact that only grants are insufficient where medical innovation is concerned. Added to these, there are continuous budget cuts in these programs which make it quite tough to initiate and carry on meticulous research. Crowd source funding, one of the best ideas for fundraising, proves to be assistive in at least 3 ways.

It can help raise money more easily

With medical research, it can be quite tough to get government grants and even private organizations seem disinterested at times to loosen their purse strings without enough scope of profitability. However, there can be a major benefit in the field of medical research with the help of crowdfunding. It can help research organizations to publicly advertise their requirements and make use of online ways to raise money. It is able to create awareness even among investors who have been hitherto unaware of the scope of this type of investment. Investors can be wooed into backing these types of research projects for various reasons – any personal interest in the research, an interest to earn decent returns on investments or an inherent interest in the domain of medicine and medical science.

There are many platforms available

There is a wide range of crowdfunding platforms available, which are reward based in nature. These have assisted researchers to gather enough money from many investors, even total strangers, to finance their medical experiments which would not have been finished otherwise. With the availability of many crowd source funding platforms, there is the scope to get more and more backers interested. However, it is tougher to set up a biotech firm or a life science organization only from donations. With reward based crowdfunding, funds can be raised for the starting research. Once enough information is obtained and experiments are carried out for the medical trials, researchers can catch the interest of many VCs, economical strategic partners and dynamic partners more easily.

It helps broaden the investor population

Online fundraising is also one of the best ways to raise money for clinical research, considering the fact that it helps democratize investments as it lets any individual earn through investments in private organizations that solely aim to improve life science There is enough chance for patient communities to lend their own support to researches and innovations in medical and life science. Crowdfunding platforms are helping even people interested in bringing about a change in the healthcare system to make their monetary contributions, in however small way possible. This is undoubtedly one of the best ideas for fundraising.

Keyword: crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, online fundraising, ideas for fundraising, ways to raise money, crowd source funding, grants

Top Crowdfunding Sites for Raising Capital

admin Leave a comment

5 Unique Crowd Funding Websites to Use for Gathering Finances

Are you considering opening up a business that requires taking a small business loan, you need to think about acquiring crowdfunding as a possible way of gathering investment capital for your venture. Those who know what is crowdfunding and how powerful it is come back to it again and again and exploit its power for online fundraising. This is actually a way of gathering funds from a large pool of contributors who might or might not be into professional investment of ventures. It makes use of the internet in order to gathers funds from lots of small investors. It works as a profitable strategy for business when you are unable to get enough venture capital or loans from traditional banks. The following are 5 unique crowdfunding sites that can be used for easy fund generation.

Prosper.com

This is one of the best crowdfunding platforms which offer personal loans as a substitute for investment capital options, credit card debt and bank loans. As a borrower, you can avail a fixed rate of interest. You may even get a short term, unsecured loan which can be paid back in the form of equated monthly payments. If you are fed up with asking for loans from traditional lending organizations, you may try this for a change.

Kiva.org

It is one of the specialized crowdfunding sites which make use of a global network of microfinance organizations that collaborate with self-organized teams which are ready to lend as little sums of money as 25 USD to poor borrowers from across the globe. Alongside funding projects, it is also a global community comprising of individuals who come together in order to pool their finances and help the poor people across the world.

RockThePost.com

This is another of the best crowdfunding platforms that is loved a lot by entrepreneurs, and used by them for online fundraising. Other than entrepreneurs, it also helps creative people, professionals and creators of projects to get in touch with investors and generate capital that can help them to set up an idea, project or business and grow the same. This business social network attempts to close the gap between potential investors and entrepreneurs and helps the latter to get money to get their projects started. The platform can also help entrepreneurs to get ideas and tips on getting their ventures started and make them successful.

StartSomeGood.com

People who know what is crowdfunding and its capability, love to make use of this project crowd funding website which is used by borrowers in order to raise the money that is important for using as capital. This site can be used to raise capital that is needed for financing diverse types of projects.

MyEFunder.com

Where crowdfunding for businesses is concerned, this is an ideal one for startups. It offers new entrepreneurs with a platform that can help them to attract potential investors as well as issue stocks in their own firms. The rules of this platform need a minimum of one accredited investor to invest in the firm, who has to also specify the initial value of the stock.

Keyword: crowdfunding, what is crowdfunding, crowd funding, crowdfunding sites, crowdfunding platforms, online fundraising

Why is Peer To Peer Lending One of the Best Ways to Raise Money?

admin Leave a comment

Peer To Peer Lending – Why it is one of the Best Ways to Raise Money?

Peer to peer lending, also referred to as P2P lending or person to person lending, is fast being seen as an ideal alternative to government loans and funding from traditional banks. This type of lending allows you to borrow money from P2P lenders. At one time, this concept was meant for financing micro loans for entrepreneurs to set up businesses in developing countries. With changing times, however, this type of loan is being commonly opted for by students trying to fund their higher education, housewives and small businessmen. Read on and find out how it proves to be one of the best ways to raise money.

Lack of high interest rates

Considering the fact that banks come with greater overhead expenses than P2P lenders, they charge a higher rate of interest. In case of P2P lending, banks are kept away entire from the entire process. This helps you to save a high amount of money in terms of interest, which makes it one of the best fund raising ideas.

Quick approval process

As compared to traditional sources of lending, such as credit unions or banks, which can take even a month for approving or rejecting your request for a loan, most of the P2P lenders make use of an application known as “automated decisioning” software which can almost immediately reject or accept the application for a loan. Once the application is met with approval, most of the P2P lenders take as little time as 5 days to process your request and release funds. This makes it one of the best fund raising ideas.

Fewer legal obligations

Many people find it difficult to satisfy the elaborate legal obligations which are set by banks, and the transactions also happen to be quite tiresome with these institutions. Peer to peer lending proves to be one of the best ways to raise money due to the fewer legal obligations that it comes with. The approval process is fast and the release of funds is quick enough, when applications are approved.

Easy qualifying

While approving the loan, neither the cash flow for your business nor your assets is considered. You can use the proceeds of the loan for any type of purpose associated to your venture. The P2P lending market is undergoing a huge growth. Some of the US firms engaged in this type of lending involve Virgin Money USA, Green Note Loans, Fynanz Loans, Lending Club and Prosper.com.

Keyword: peer to peer lending, ways to raise money, fund raising ideas

How to Open Up a Fundraising Website Easily

admin Leave a comment

How to Open Up a Fundraising Website Easily?

Crowdfunding is a method of crowdsourcing, and is used to gather funds in the form of donations for particular projects. If you are thinking of thinking of establishing a new project or business, but lack the capital to invest in the same, you can use a fundraising website and get likeminded people to donate funds for your venture. You may also consider setting up your own site, and the following tips will assist you in establishing one for your requirements.

Think about your objectives

First of all, you have to consider your crowdfunding goals. You will have to write, design and program your fundraising website around the objectives that you have set. You will need to keep various factors in mind, such as the target audience, the objective of online fundraising, how to raise the money, the amount of money that you need and also how you will reward the supporters.

Consider how you wish to do fundraising

Determine the way you plan to do online fundraising. Funds can be raised by accepting donations from online backers or through the sale of merchandise. You should set up a payment system in any case in order to ensure easy and quick transactions. Many online payment firms design widgets, and you can integrate any of them into your own fundraising website.

New or Prepackaged Site

You will also have to consider whether or not you should build a crowdsourcing site from scratch or use a prepackaged site. If you are adept at HTML coding, you can build a new website for crowd funding. However, if web development is not something you are conversant with, it will be better to opt for a prepackaged solution.

Select a proper website layout

You need to choose a decent layout for your website which can help you meet your crowd source funding goals effectively. It is important to choose a layout which is simple as well as functional. The donation widget needs to be able to facilitate smooth and fast contributions and welcome the visitors through proper video or audio communication features.

Choose proper elements

You need to choose proper elements, such as a proper title for the home page, welcome message, descriptions, instructions for backers and more. It should look professional enough for your crowd source funding purposes.

Promote your site

Once you build the site, promote it all the way with the help of social media sites, email, events, personal meetings, phone calls etc and try to convince investors as much as possible.

Keywords: crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, fundraising website, crowd funding, crowd source funding

How to Ensure Success of Your Crowdfunding Videos

admin Leave a comment

How to Ensure Success of Your Crowdfunding Videos?

If you are considering starting a crowdfunding campaign, it is important to create a nice video. It is widely known that campaigns with videos make a better impact among potential investors than those which do not come with videos. As per Indiegogo, campaigns consisting of videos have a 122% greater success rate than those that do not use any videos. With a good video, you can enhance the success rate of your campaign by a large measure. The following tips will ensure the success of your crowdsourcing videos.

Create a good storyline

You need to create a proper storyline which is sensible and has a definite beginning, middle and end. It is important to do efficient preproduction and plan every scene. It is a good idea to check quite a few crowdfunding videos before you begin to shoot your own video. Check those videos which are on the similar lines as your own crowdsourcing project campaign video.

Make it simple

It is a sensible idea to make a simple video for crowdfunding sites, without too much of technical complexities. This will keep your expenses down, and also make your work understandable for potential investors. Explain the business plan you have, the problem that you are facing in gathering funds and how you intend to reward your backers.

Demonstrate your prototype

If you are creating a product campaign, it is a better idea to showcase a working prototype of your item. Demonstrate it from various angles, to give your backers a proper idea of the item that you wish to launch in the market.

Get feedbacks from friends and close ones

Show the first cut of your video to a group of friends or even people who do not have much knowledge about your venture. Find out whether they understand the video clearly, and make out all that you have to say. Based on the feedbacks, you have to add some scenes or even delete a few before launching it on the crowdfunding sites.

Use an interesting thumbnail

The thumbnail for your crowdsourcing video should be an attractive one, so that visitors feel inclined to click on it and see the entire video. Use an interesting image that makes visitors feel the interest to take some minutes from their time and see the video. You need to follow the photography rules while choosing the image. The thumbnail needs to be from a right angle, and fully clear. Check a few video thumbnail images on sites like Indiegogo to get an idea.

Keywords: crowdfunding, Indiegogo, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding sites

Crowdfunding Websites – 5 Tips to Compare Them

admin Leave a comment

Crowdfunding Websites – 5 Tips to Compare Them

You can find many crowdfunding websites on the internet, with each of them coming with a unique set of features. Some of these target particular niches, like filmmaking, music or journalism. Others serve any type of projects. Various crowdfunding platforms present various types of projects, and you can use the following 5 tips to compare them.

Check out various sites

First of all, you should browse through various online fundraising sites. Find out how they allow setting up of crowdfunding profiles. Check which elements are allowed – blog, present contributors, rewards for contributors, progress for funding, goal for funding, videos, images, descriptions, project titles etc. With these parameters, you can also evaluate other sites of this type.

Compare them depending on your requirements

Next, you should compare the crowdfunding websites on the basis of your project requirements. For instance, if your venture can be understood only in a visual manner, it is best to go for a fundraising website which can help you post videos and images. If you can describe your project only in words, you have to choose a website that allows you the same. If your venture is in a specific niche, you need to go for a crowdfunding site which allows you to target that particular niche.

Go through the terms and conditions

You should also properly go through all the terms and conditions of the online fundraising sites that you intend to use for online fundraising for your project. You can find two primary forms funding structures – however-much-you-raise or all-or-nothing. The second model lets you get finances only when your funding goal meets a particular deadline. If the deadline is not met, the funds are returned to the backers. Although this can seem a little odd to you if you are new to the concept, this model inspires a lot of confidence in potential investors and is quite successful. But if you do not like it, you can go for the first model.

Check out the fees

You should also check the type of fees that are charged by the crowdfunding website that you choose. It is better to go for one that charges lower fees, especially if you have a tight budget.

Test varied platforms

You should also do some amount of experiment. A lot of crowdfunding websites let you test them before actually making a pitch. You should try out 3 – 4 varied crowdfunding platforms in order to find the one that suits you the best.

Keywords: crowdfunding, crowdfunding websites, online fundraising sites, crowdfunding platforms, fundraising website

Top 3 Ways Crowdfunding Helps Entrepreneurs

admin Leave a comment

3 Main Ways Crowdfunding Helps Entrepreneurs

Crowdfunding is an alternative method of financing that many entrepreneurs of small businesses are opting for. It has helped many small business owners to get funds for their ventures. It is a type of crowdsourcing which is assisting entrepreneurs in bypassing traditional ways of funding and getting investment capital more easily from people known to them and even outright strangers. Know about 3 main ways in which this type of funding proves to be assistive to new entrepreneurs.

It helps use crowd resources

The major benefit of crowdfunding is that it can help you to build wealth from your venture without using your own resources. No one can run a business all alone. In the initial stages, you are likely to lack the skills and experience that is needed in order to set up a business and make it grow. With the help of crowdsourcing, you can tap into the resources of others who believe in your venture. You can get funds in the form of tiny equity investments from lots of backers. You can even get established entrepreneurs to help you with professional advice and probably also turn into your customers.

You can get proper market feedback

There is also the scope for you to get proper feedback from potential backers and customers on crowdfunding sites as well as get the amount capital that is needed for starting your venture. You can also get feedbacks and suggestions from backers about any adjustments that you need to do prior to spending bucks on manufacturing, operations and promotions. You can receive proper feedback from the market by doing a test launch, and avoid unnecessary wastage of resources. There is the scope to get assistive suggestions and feedbacks on improving your product or service from crowdfunding platforms and make it more suitable for your customers. You can indulge in bulk production once you get completely satisfactory responses.

You can get valuable contacts

There is also the chance for you to gain valuable contacts through socializing on the crowdfunding platforms. You can get a first-hand experience of how to market your service or products. With the help of good business contacts, you can find great teams to support you, more investors and better marketing skills. With crowdfunding sites, you can also get an idea of how many people are interested in your business. Even before the launch of your product, you can generate awareness about your offerings without spending on glitzy ad campaigns.

Keywords: crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding sites, crowdfunding platforms

Kickstarter, Indiegogo or MyEFunder

admin Leave a comment

Kickstarter or Indiegogo – Which One Should You Go With for Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding has become extremely popular with new entrepreneurs, especially in these tough economic times when it has become tougher to gather funds for even small investments. Luckily, there are crowdfunding websites available today that have been set up to provide entrepreneurs and potential investors with the ideal launchpad to release their products or establish their ventures. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are two of the best crowdfunding sites out there which promote crowd-funding that is donation-based. There is a long-standing debate on which one is the better site, and the following points can be helpful for you to know which one you should go for.

Acceptance of Projects

Kickstarter only finances projects that are creative in nature, such as videos, music, films, journalism, comics, stage shows etc. On the other hand, Indiegogo does not have any preferences with the projects. It accepts every type of project without any type of restriction. It offers a lot of flexibility in terms of accepting and releasing various project ideas.

Project Fees

Kick Starter tends to charge a fee of 5% for projects which receive funds successfully. But entrepreneurs do not get anything in case their funding fails to meet the specified limit by even a few bucks. Indie Go Go charges a fee of 4% for projects which receive funds successfully and a higher fee of 9% for those that fail to meet the limit.

All or nothing model

Kick Starter maintains it security by following an ‘all or nothing’ business model. This means you cannot get any funds if you fail to meet the deadline. But Indie Go Go proves to be of the best crowdfunding sites as it does not follow such a model. Although this measure bypasses the urgency to gather funds, it proves to be useful in some cases.

Success rate

Of the two crowdfunding websites, Kick Starter enjoys a higher success rate of around 43%. But it has less total number of campaigns, slightly more than 46,000. Indiegogo has a reported success rate of about 10% but it has more than 92,000 campaigns due to its flexible policies in project funding.

User Traffic

Kickstarter has better traffic and more number of users than Indie Go Go. The moderate user traffic of the latter is believed to be a result of its financing strategies.

Considered from varied angles, Kickstarter seems to be more dependable, secure and popular. However, Indiegogo is also beneficial due to its better strategies, features, special algorithms and easier accessibility across the globe.

Keywords: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Crowdfunding, crowdfunding websites, best crowdfunding sites