ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

10 years, 7 months ago - Anna-Maria Nabirye

In my experience in the UK I got most of the traffic to my crowdfunding page. So because of this whichever you choose you will have to work harder than you can possibly imagine to get your pledges. However at least with indiegogo you don't have the pressure of not reaching your goal and missing out on partial funding. In hindsight I would steer towards indiegogo. But ultimately I think it's the work that you put in, your contacts, your campaign, selling your project and your rewards right- that will give you a successful crowd sourced project.

10 years, 7 months ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

I found these sites with some information that may help you decide:

http://crowdfundingdojo.com/articles/kickstarter-vs-indiegogo-choosing-your-crowdfunding-platform

http://idealware.org/blog/nothing-nothing-kickstarter-vs-indiegogo

And don't forget that you can also opt for equity based fund raising now.

Hope that helps somewhat.

Best

Lee

10 years, 6 months ago - Karel Bata

Kickstarter managed to garner half a billion dollars in pledges last year http://time.com/3653540/kickstarter-year-in-review-2014/

That 10% slice they take for doing very little is quite unjustifiable in my opinion, and I don't understand why we're not seeing more crowdfunding services popping up.

Perhaps SP might consider getting into the game? Or the BFI, who could use profits to help our industry..?

10 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Also - really consider the cost of raising money. Let's say the budget for your short is £5000, and you offer incentives to that value, and get fully funded.

The platforms take 10% of your raised amount, that's £4500 left
You presell 100 DVD's at £10 each - but the cost of burning them and posting them is £3.50 each, so that's £4,150 left
You sold 65 t-shirts for £25 apiece - at that price they need to be decent quality, so after producing the custom artwork, decent shirts in the correct sizes, professionally printed and mailed maybe costing a tenner (and that's a big underestimate) each...£3500 left. Some of those sales are international by the way - hope you remembered to charge extra for international shipping plus insurance and stress of the customs declarations, etc.

So before anything else your income is 1/3rd down yet you've committed to a £5k budget. This happens ALL THE TIME - and backers get narky when you can't deliver, or deliver late, and rightly so. If you're going to crowdsource make sure you run the numbers fully and carefully before you start a campaign.

10 years, 6 months ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Google is good for things like that ;)

10 years, 6 months ago - Alexandra Queen

Hello Shooters & Happy New Year! :)

I'd like to thank all of you for your useful advice and tips, but also I'd like to ask Lee 'Wozy' Warren and Vasco de Sousa if there's any link for the equity fund raising?

10 years, 7 months ago - Kays Alatrakchi

I'm with Marlom, and because of that I rarely donate to IndieGoGo but often donate to Kickstarter campaigns. In my view, if one needs $20k to make their film, what in the world will they do if all they raise is $1200? Party it up? Kickstarter also feels more polished as a web site, it's a bit like the Apple vs. Microsoft thing....Kickstarter would be Apple!

Having said that, I have seen plenty of projects funded through IndieGoGo as well.

10 years, 6 months ago - victoria muldoon

You can have a look at Ideastap accelerator. They do not charge commission and they have a top up fund where they choose two projects to pledge £500 each month. Please see link below.
http://www.ideastap.com/crowdfunding/newproject

10 years, 6 months ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Hi Alexandra,

Why not? Films are investment vehicles! I know yours is a short film and short films rarely make any money. But it's an alternative to perks. And investors get to use investments to offset their tax...

Don't forget that all perks have to be made/bought/paid for in some way and so consume part of your budget to produce and package and mail. If you had an investment, you don't have that. I know of a guy who did one where he offered a screen credit and a digital copy of the script as well as a percentage of ownership/revenue... the perks were soft enough that they didn't cost anything from the budget and he still got people to give him money.

I guess it's how you approach the campaign and how creative you want to be. Personally, I haven't used the investment approach yet, but will be doing on my next project and seeing how it goes for a web series.

Good luck.

10 years, 6 months ago - Alexandra Queen

Hi Shooters,

I got some great correspondence from you all, thank you so much!

Alexandra!!!

10 years, 7 months ago - John Harden

Hi Alexandra, when I was planning my first film crowdfunding campaign, I was debating that very question. I did a lot of research and ended up writing a blog post about it - you can find it here:

https://giantspecks.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/crowdfunding-comparison-shopping-kickstarter-vs-indiegogo/

Good luck!

John

10 years, 7 months ago - Marlom Tander

Personally, I like the "all or nothing" approach. A lot of potential backers are happy to give you money so long as it's enough to get the job done, but don't want to risk wasting their money. They will hang back from giving when it might just all vanish. Which ever platform you use, be clear what your minimum useful sum is, what you will do with it, and make it clear that if you don't reach that total, everyone gets their money back.

10 years, 6 months ago - Franz von Habsburg FBKS MSc

We used Indiegogo for Kajaki which is now a BAFTA nominee!

10 years, 7 months ago - Vasco de Sousa

This is what I would consider:

Indiegogo allows people to pay by Paypal or credit card. All or nothing is possible, but not necessary. Kickstarter requires the Amazon payment system. (John Harden's web link covers this pretty well, but he's writing from a US perspective.)

Also, both charge hefty fees, in addition to finance charges, as Paddy mentioned. As we registered for VAT, we ended up paying VAT on the perks (another huge chunk gone.)

There are smaller fees for some UK companies, like Crowdfunder. Crowdfunder (and Zequs) has the option of pledging through bank-transfer company Go Cardless, so less money is eaten up by the finance companies. UK companies like Crowdfunder and Zequs also sometimes offer grants that top off the funding you get.

The advantage of Kickstarter is that they don't accept every project. (Pleasefund.us was the same, I haven't used it since it changed to Zequs.) That level of quality control might prompt some backers to take you more seriously. That said, other sites have had some high-quality projects up too, and according to John's link Indiegogo's film and video projects are more likely to be funded anyway. (Perhaps Kickstarter is better for techies or role playing games.)

And, as Anna-Maria mentioned, you may not get any pledge traffic from the big guys anyway, you might be bringing them all in yourself. So, might as well try out a smaller site that has grants, less fees, and where you can actually talk to the CEO if you have any questions. You can always try the big guys later if it doesn't work out. Both Crowdfunder and Zequs look great to me. (Or, Crowdcube for investment finance, or equity based fund raising as Wozy calls it.)

10 years, 6 months ago - Alexandra Queen

Hi Lee,
what I realised after googling was that Equity fund raising is basically the same as investment finance based on shares and stock beans. This is something that doesn't apply for my project since I cannot consider it as an investment opportunity.

Kind Regards,

Alexandra!!!