Before You Jump into a Crowdfunding Campaign

I launched a project to fund my research on a historical novel with a crowdfunding site and it failed. Specifically, what lured me into trying crowdfunding on the site I chose was a podcast interview with one of the founders where she stated that artists are finding backers for their creative projects on their platform, and that 60% of the backers come from within the crowdfunding community itself. Hence, with the thought that I might find a community of like-minded artists, trying to fund projects, who would back the research for my next novel, I gave it a try. Nothing is failure if it is a learning experience and hopefully you can take away some tidbits of advice before you spend a lot of time and effort on your own crowdfunding campaign.
I’ll start with the positive aspects of my experience.

1. It made me think through my ideas for the novel. I am writing a novel set during the Great Depression about the men of the Civilian Conservation Corps who planted over 3 billion trees in U.S. State and National Parks. My campaign was about finding the funding I needed to conduct the research on the west and east coast of the U.S. I needed money for travel. I had a vague idea of the plot, but the process of developing a campaign made me really hone in on what aspects of history the book would cover. Not only did I have to come up with a pitch for the campaign, I had to lay out how I was going to approach my research.
2. I learned how to make a video. One of the things the site platform suggested was to make a video to promote your project. I started by reviewing other videos, focusing on projects similar to my own: people traveling somewhere to document and tell a story. I planned to blog about my research journey as I have with my other novels and spent considerable time on my video to explain the topic. I loved the creative process. Below is a link to my video on youtube.
   
3. It was a chance to reach out to my fans. I have a mailing list of about 400 fans and they were the first group I reached out to for funding. Some supported me and I reached 1/3 of my goal this way. Many commented back with congratulations and good luck, but did not fund me (more on why later). However, reaching out to them gave me a chance to say: hey I’m working on a new project, stay tuned.
4. I learned about other artists and their projects. If you have the chance, do some searching on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, and you will see that there is a diversity of artistic projects, although from my own perspective it appears, depending on the site, the most heavily funded are gamers and fantasy projects. Documentaries are a big draw as well. I did end up backing a few campaigns. They did not reciprocate (more on that later).
5. The experience allowed me to expand my social media reach. I was actually surprised at how many people on Facebook and Twitter shared my video on their feeds. This brought attention to my project.
6. I learned about Google Ads and Pinterest Campaigns. I ended up using Google ads and Pinterest to promote my campaign, something I had no experience with before. As a result, I received hundreds of hits a day on my blog and campaign site.
7. Finally, I shared my project as a guest speaker with a business class on my college campus and we shared ideas for marketing as well as discussed the ethics of this type of crowdfunding.

 
Now the Negatives:

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1. I did not receive much support from the platform community of artists. The story I heard on the podcast that 60% of the backers will come from within did not hold true for my campaign. I did not receive one funder from inside the platform that did not already know me (my daughters). Out of the 20 people that backed me, they were all people I either knew personally or were one of my fans. Even those projects I backed did not back me in turn.
2. The platforms promote what they want to promote. For about a week, whenever I logged into the site, there was a campaign for a documentary featured in a banner that took up my whole screen, the project was well over 100% of its monetary goal of 90k but the platform kept on pushing it. Why? I suspect it was bringing them in more money. By the end of the week the project was at 200k. While small projects like mine, trying to raise only 3k, were not heavily promoted.
3.  Projects on some of the crowdfunding sites I reviewed appear dubious to me in terms of the public value. I showed a few projects from various crowdfunding sites to the business class I spoke to, including one of two guys looking to travel the country based on a map they made out of the outline of the palm of their hands. There is also a popular card game company who’s owners crowdfund for dumb stunts like digging holes in the ground (they made 100k). Yes, that’s right, digging a hole in the ground. Another campaign I found was to buy new jeans for Joey, with a picture of a guy in ripped jeans, it had raised close to 1k. When speaking with the business students at my college, all about the same age as the people crowdfunding, we discussed the ethics of raising money for dumb stunts such as this. We also discussed why millennials would back them, especially when there are other more worthy projects out there such as raising money for homeless or food pantries.
4. My target audience of readers (who are middle aged and older) are wary of crowdfunding sites. I had quite a few of my fans tell me they did not trust the site, found it confusing to set up an account, and did not want to give their credit card information. They wanted to send me a check instead. The problem was that the platform I used allowed only an all or nothing campaign and I needed my fans to pledge on the site for it to count toward my goal of 3k.
5. Spammers: I was plagued by them. Third party vendors troll the site I used and sent direct messages to me asking if I’d like to buy their services to promote my campaign. The platform asked campaigners to immediately report these people but if I spent the time doing so, it would have been half my day.
6. If you’ve never done a crowdfunding campaign before, it is hard to gage if you will reach your fundraising goal. Mine was an all or nothing campaign, so if I do not reach my goal I had to let my backers know and their pledges were not get taken out of their bank accounts. I estimated what it would cost me to travel and my campaign goal was an accurate assessment of that cost. I raised half of what I needed, and although, I probably could have conducted my research using some of my own money, the opportunity was gone once my campaign ended.
7. It is income and you will be taxed, and there are also fees so ask yourself: is it worth it? The fact is, if you want to crowdfund for publication costs, or research, or printing or whatever it is, then go big or stay home. The sites take 3-5% off of whatever you bring in. I figured out that with my 3k goal, I would lose about $300-$400 in fees and income taxes. Although I plan to write off the travel expenses, if I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn’t bother for such a small amount of money. However, big projects, such as ones that require illustrators, color print jobs, or graphic art, may be worth it.

 
In the end, I decided to scale back my research project. Instead of heading out west, my setting will be in the Smoky Mountains National Park where the Civilian Conservation Corps set up some of the first camps. I ended up traveling there over the past couple of years while the wildflowers were blooming and forget about any failures. I’m writing a novel.
 
If you’ve had an experience with a crowdfunding site for your publication project, I’d love to hear about it! Contact me.