The Crowdfunding Timeline

Written By: Brandon Gaskins
Part 1- The Inception

  Congratulations you just posted your crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter now that the hard part is over all you have to do is promote your campaign on Facebook and Twitter. If crowdfunding was that simple it would have a much higher success rate, approximately 65% of campaigns on Kickstarter fail, the numbers are worst on other platforms. The first thing you must know about crowdfunding is this, if you want to run a successful campaign you must have several pieces of property to reach potential backers. This can mean a website, social media platforms, networking, events, You Tube channel, and family/friends. The misconception of crowdfunding is due to a lack of exposure to the public backed funding model. Chances are if you have heard of crowdfunding it was by word of mouth or a Facebook post and not from an infomercial or letter in the mail. There are steps you can follow that have proven to work for the majority of successful campaigns, I cannot guarantee your success but if you follow these steps you will have a much better chance of running a successful crowdfunding campaign.

  So let's start from the very beginning, the moment you decided you wanted to run a crowdfunding campaign. People run campaigns for all sorts of reasons, a business start-up, introducing a product, events, music or sometimes more personal reasons such as bills, college tuition or a baby shower. This subject matter will focus on those running a campaign for business related reasons. It is important that your have a clear and thought out campaign. It is called a campaign for a reason, you are promoting yourself to a market that may not have heard of you or whatever you are offering to the public, so you want to make sure you can clearly define your purpose and have answers to all the questions that can be asked. This is why I highly recommend writing a business plan, A business plan allows you to have a scripted vision of your plans. Always keep in mind your goal is to not just run a campaign but run a successful campaign. So throw all of your previous timelines out the door, If you planned on starting your campaign in 30 days you can be assured it will take much longer than that.

  Once you have a clearly defined business plan, you want to move onto the next step and that is doing your research. Whichever special interest category you choose from to run your campaign, it is important to become as knowledgeable as possible about that particular subject. Your audience wants to know that you are a professional and not someone who has limited knowledge of their special interest.  You should have studied the subject enough so that when you speak about it becomes second nature, your audience needs to feel your passion and know that you are committed to your campaign.