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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