Just now we talked about crowdfunding sites as useful things for satire creators, fans, patrons, investors.
Before talking, as promised, about the different criteria you might use when choosing a crowdfunding site, we’d like to remind you of a few things you can actually do with crowdfunding money.
SERVER HOSTING
You may have costs for your blogging platform, e.g. WordPress or Blogger. Make sure you do your research on these platforms, and their associated costs (if any), before you start. Often there is a range of deals to choose from. Keep an eye out on new entrants like Wix.
If you’re starting a site, try to start your crowdfunding early; along with advertising, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, or whatever is appropriate.
TECH SUPPORT
They always say that technology is fine; when it works! Sadly, it often doesn’t. You may want specialist tech support for problems. You might also want someone to help with non-crisis stuff too; like regular SEO maintenance. You need to decide what kind of support is necessary, if any; what is merely helpful; and what you can afford. Obviously, the more successful your crowdfunding is, the better for you.
WEB DESIGN
You can make a perfectly good site with a bit of practice; but if you want to make it really slick, you may wish to hire a web designer.
MERCHANDISING
You can try selling your satire books on your site. Or make some customised T-Shirts, mugs, etc. However, to do this, it sometimes helps to have an e-commerce element to your site. This is not always so cheap.
PAYING CONTRIBUTORS
If your site is small, or even medium in scale, paying contributors won’t always be easy. In some cases, it won’t even be possible. But if you’re not paying now, you do need to strategise for growing the site, so you can pay in the long run.
Why? Well, when you are finally paying your contributors, you will hopefully be making a lot more out of the site than you were before; and so the payments won’t be losses.
Or even if they are, you’re still boosting your content and contributors; and thus your reputation, SEO, and other important indicators which are often very hard to reduce to numbers.
ADVERTISING
There are different ways of advertising, as you already know. One common way is to use social media ads; e.g. Twitter or Facebook.
On Facebook, you can run different kinds of ‘set it and forget it’ advertisements either for the site itself, or for the Facebook page.
You can also consider boosting individual posts.
Remember that unless you learn the benefits and advantages of different kinds of ads, in contexts, you may end up using your money inefficiently. The money won’t necessarily be ‘wasted’ as such, in the sense of having had zero impact. But it might have had very little impact; so ultimately, you want to be efficient. This topic deserves an article in itself.
This is not intended as an exhaustive list of things you can spend your crowdfunding money on.
ONE FINAL PIECE OF ADVICE
Be transparent! Let people know what they’re buying into. You’ve nothing to lose from that, and nor have they. People are sometimes happier handing over their cash, if they have a clearer idea of what you’re going to do with it.
(If the website doesn’t actually exist, and you’re hiring a private investigator to spy on your ex, or planning a cheap holiday to Faliraki, ignore everything I’ve just said up to now. I’m taking it on good faith that none of you are fraudsters or con-men, but actually genuine satirists; otherwise, why would you have read all this way down to the bottom?)
Set up a good site that demands a good crowdfund.
Also set up a good crowdfund that is worthy of such a site.
Image attribution:
By Manuel Dohmen (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 2.0 de], via Wikimedia Commons
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