How to Fund a Successful IndieGogo/Kickstarter Campaign in 5 Easy Steps
How will you get noticed and not rely only on your poor friends' money? How do you keep the momentum going? How do you avoid becoming the digital equivalent of a panhandler?
I’m independently funding a short film, called Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, for my final thesis film at Ryerson University. Our budget is well beyond my bank balance and every student is expected to come up with his or her funds independently. I’ve seen so many crowd-funding campaigns float by this year that the temptation was too much. I had to give it a shot.
After only 12 days (out of 45 days), our campaign reached its goal of raising $9,000. Although it’s still not the most successful IndieGoGo campaign ever we’ve surpassed our expectations by reaching $12,000 – and we still have 10 days left to our campaign!
Click here for my campaign.
There’s a lot of competition out there so if you want to garner some real attention you need to stand out.
Before you run out to start your own campaign you need to be more strategic than simply putting out a call pleading for people to donate to your film (which I FORBID you to do – see section 4). So I’ve simplified my process into 5 easy steps.
And by "easy steps" I mean... "steps".
**DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional marketing consultant. I’m just a poor university student desperate to make a film.
INDIEGOGO vs. KICKSTARTER
Before we get started, pick your platform. Are you an IndieGogo gal or a Kickstarter dude? Familiarize yourself with their agreements to see which site meets the needs of your project.
To sum it up, IndieGogo takes 4% of your earnings if you reach your goal and 9% if you don’t. Kickstarter is all or nothing. If you don’t reach your goal no money is exchanged, but if you do reach your goal you get the full amount minus 5%.
After much deliberation we chose IndieGogo.
Now you’re ready to get started:
1. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
I believe the secret to our fundraising success lies here.
Who is your audience?
If you’re a serious filmmaker this is something you should already be thinking about at every step of the way, but when you’re fundraising for donations you need to think a bit differently. You’re not just pitching your film; you’re pitching yourself, your aspirations and your team. Who is the audience for your whole project?
This is often quite a difficult question. Without a census committee, how do you figure out who exactly wants to see your project come together, not to mention watch your finished film?
What are your angles?
One trick to finding your audience is to focus on the anglesor hooks that make your project unique, entertaining and noteworthy. They will help reveal who you should be targeting with your fundraising campaign.
For my project, I knew that I already have a modest following due to my slightly embarrassing YouTube channel as well as a number of supporters from my home-province of Newfoundland, Canada. The film itself is directed towards a broad, but specifically female audience, focusing on Esther, a young girl navigating puberty with the help of only her misguided Grandfather, played by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (Away From Her), and his pet pug!
So here are my possible marketing angles:
1. YouTube followers
2. Newfoundlanders
3. Women (13-65)
4. Pet-Owners/Animal Lovers
5. Fans of Gordon Pinsent
What are your angles? Who are your supporters and how are you going to appeal to them?
My strategy was to capitalize on every angle I could, starting with the most humourous one:
2. PRIME YOUR AUDIENCE
Ideally, you want your audience to hear about your exciting new project before you start asking them for money. One of the keys to a successful fundraising campaign is that the project must feel like a concrete thing that is already happening, and the fundraising campaign becomes an opportunity for the audience to join the circus!
Creating some form of teaser in advance of your campaign will start the buzz and solidify the project as real.
To prime my audience I focused on just one angle to pique their interest. What is the most popular genre of viral videos ever to grace the earth?
Animal videos, duh.
So I started on angle 5: I held a gigantic casting call with the assistance of Toronto pet blogs and JasonKB Pet Photography [jasonkb.com], sorted through 113 pug applicants so that I could audition 17 adorable and hilarious pugs and then made a Life Doesn’t Frighten Me Pug Audition Video:
If nothing else, this certainly got the Toronto Pet-Owners community excited as Life Doesn’t Frighten Me started popping up in pet news everywhere.
This is just one example that worked for my project. What hook about your project will arouse people’s attention even before the campaign starts? But, remember not to give too much information away in advance, save something for:
3. THE BIG LAUNCH!
This is where it all comes together. I saved the announcement of Gordon Pinsent’s involvement in our project until we were officially ready to launch our campaign on December 1st (the holiday month). It’s important to save some big, exciting angle of your project for the launch in order to reenergize your audience after interest in the teaser has faded.
Leading up to our launch, I cast a heartbreakingly earnest 11-year-old newcomer, Jade Aspros, as Esther. Aspros demonstrated just the right amount of humour and sincerity for this role that I think most women will be able to relate to. Then I orchestrated a photo-shoot with Aspros and Gordon Pinset, as well Igor the Pug with JasonKB Photography (our first in-kind contributor). While the photo-shoot was going on I filmed a vlog for my YouTube Channel with the entire cast and made a compelling case for why people might want to get involved:
The video also served double duty as our video pitch on the IndieGoGo site and pretty much covered all of our angles. My YouTube followers saw it first (angle 1), press releases ensured that Newfoundland media heard about it, not to mention the fact that Gordon Pinsent also happens to be from Newfoundland, making a compelling story (angles 2 and 4) and the prominent inclusion of Igor and Aspros in our posters helped solidify the rest (angles 3 and 5).
I should add that it’s important to be timely and relevant about your campaign. Consider all factors that may affect your audience’s likeliness to donate; Christmas, holidays, birthdays, what’s in fashion…etc. IndieGoGo notices an average increase of 13% in contributions during the month of December.
Make a compelling case. Why should people donate to your project? What are people donating to on a larger scale? What does this project mean to you and what are you going to do with it?
People don’t just buy into what you do; they buy why you do it.
Perks:
Make your perks realistic and make your donation minimum level as low as possible. No amount should be too little. Encourage people to donate just a dollar! Research shows that when people are offered the chance to donate 1 dollar they will be more likely to donate $10 or $20. That money can add up really fast and those donations create momentum for your campaign.
And if people can’t donate at all encourage them to repost the link instead. Exclude no one.
Get creative with your perks. I’ve seen people offering a Wake Up Call or a Personalized Song. Think of unique rewards that people are unable to find anywhere else (and that won’t break your bank).
Work the budget for your perks into your campaign. This is something that may really stress you out when you start fulfilling your perk agreements. Be proactive and anticipate how much it’s going to cost you to distribute all of your rewards.
4. MAINTENANCE
You’re off to a great start! But after the flurry of donations in the first week, things can die off easily. You need to keep it up.
You may be asking, “Stephen, how can I be expected to annoy my friends and family by asking for money when none of them have any to begin with!?!?!?!?”.
Easy. You don’t.
Not once, in over 5 million facebook and twitter updates did I EVER ask anyone to donate.
My most important tip is to never appear like you’re desperate. You’re not begging people to give you money, you’re offering the once in a lifetime opportunity to be apart of a film starring Igor the Pug or whatever you’re packing. You’re offering people involvement in your masterpiece and all they have to do is drop a couple of bucks.
I suggest posting public thank-yous and updates about the most current donators every day or so, always including the link back to the campaign, so people can check out the site and the latest progress and decide for themselves if they want to donate. Inevitably each thank-you post will yield another donation, and so on.
Make people aware of what you’re doing, but have some class and don’t shove it down their throats… too much.
This is the approximate breakdown of Life Doesn’t Frighten Me supporters so far:
15% - Family
30% - Friends
55% - People we’ve never met
Getting featured on the main page of IndieGogo is really what helped us break out into the online global community. Once you’ve raised a sizable portion of your campaign, I would suggest making another update video and continually posting images and stills in the update section of IndieGogo. This keeps people interested and is how IndieGoGo decides who gets featured. Just make sure to space them out and don’t post them all at once.
In the final days of your campaign make one more impassioned push to media, friends and family. You could even write an IndieWire Lost Boys blog post about it… *wink wink*
5. DISTRIBUTION
Congratulations!
You’ve made your goal and are ready create your project.
Don’t stop there.
Keep engaged with your supporters and treat everyone who has donated as if they are now apart of your team.
Because they are your team.
You’ve used your savvy marketing strategies to fund your film, but you need to get ready to distribute it with that same fervor.
I’ve seen so many fantastic short and feature films go down the gutter and into the crowded digital graveyard known as YouTube and Vimeo, even after a hugely successful fundraising campaign. Getting a bunch of people to fund your film is pointless if you can’t get a bunch of people to watch your film!
Submit to every festival under the sun, self distribute or just do everything in your power to get the film out into the world!
Marketing is such an incredibly crucial part of the filmmaking process at every stage. Look at independent filmmakers like Miranda July, Kevin Smith or Canadian Ingrid Veninger.
Whether you like their work or not, their films are more well attended than any other low-budget independent filmmaker. Why? Because they attend every premiere/screening, they engage with their viewers and, most importantly, they think about marketing.
If you’ve got an incredible project and follow through with the distribution of your film with the same passion you put into making it you could pretty much count on my 20 bucks. No promises though.
Congratulations again. Now, onto the hard part …don’t fuck up and go make a great film.
Best effort!
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55 Comments
Martin | May 21, 2013 6:28 AM
Looking to help fund an EP. Extremely low target, just needs a small bit of support.
http://igg.me/at/sonderstate/x/3347701
Michael | May 7, 2013 5:46 PM
very informative,
Looking for some support, if you can please visit this link
http://igg.me/at/meekowdesigns/x/3198932
Liz | May 6, 2013 7:36 AM
This was a really informative, thanks. Definitely will be using some of the advice.
http://igg.me/at/fallen-doves/x/2772907
Roman | April 10, 2013 9:28 AM
Thanks a lot for this article. Started my campaign for Free C++ Textbook: http://igg.me/at/cpp-primer
frcsocial | April 9, 2013 2:24 PM
The frcsocial foundation share the campaign Clean Water . . .
http://goo.gl/pn3q1
Donate
Athanasios | April 5, 2013 8:06 AM
Help me find a job!!
http://igg.me/at/jobseeker/x/2910504
Bradford N. Smith | March 25, 2013 7:18 PM
Article definitely helped! Utilized a few tips, but definitely not anywhere close to our goal yet.
http://igg.me/at/froste/x/2355520
For those interested, it's an action film about the possibly accurate origins of Frosty the Snowman.
Mark Bull | March 16, 2013 10:54 AM
Really insightful post and has definitely taught me better ways to market my campaign for my film Islands.
http://igg.me/at/islands/x/1638238
The project is part of the Film Raro global challenge and cultural exchange to make a short film and foster film making opportunities with the residents of the Cook Islands as well as making a great little movie. The film will be shot and edited in 7 days and be premiered on the Cook Islands to 2000 people including the prime minister of the Cook Islands.
Thanks,
Mark
Drew | March 12, 2013 2:26 AM
Hey Indiewire! Me and my friend Beau are working on a project to reclaim a historic building in our downtown area, we have a great relationship with the building owner and he is totally into rejuvenating our downtown arts area! Check out our Vimeo video on our page! Chao
http://igg.me/at/paradox107/x/522562
CJ | February 28, 2013 5:27 PM
I also just started an Indiegogo campaign for a passion project of mine. For anyone who's ever had a father...The Reclamation. http://igg.me/p/293957/x/1885522
Malachi Tekur Whitten | February 26, 2013 11:25 PM
I am 17 years old, and live in Portland Maine. This is my first feature film. Please take a look and see if it interests you. Thanks for your time.
Micheal | February 17, 2013 8:53 PM
http://igg.me/p/337685/x/2222939
Help to protect elephants in their wild environment.
Bella | January 15, 2013 10:41 AM
Take a look at our project "Stoonad, Italian for Stupid" and let us know what you think ;)
http://Indiegogo.com/Stoonad
Chris | November 20, 2012 10:24 AM
hey guys. i really like your post and it enlightened me a lot, but honestly, depending also on your targeted goal, 30% is alot of money coming from friends and family. in our case also we have the problem of a language barrier, as most of the people we are in contact with don't speak fluent english. still, here is our project link: http://igg.me/p/278799?a=1772511 - if you guys have any idea on how to improve, apart from your tips i'd apperciate it.
AURIZETE RIBEIRO | September 21, 2012 11:33 PM
peço para as pessoas me ajudarem realizar meu sonho ,de criança umilde. para eu dar continuidade na faculdade. dsde jà agradeço. aurizete ribeiro sonhadora.
Terri Hollins | September 17, 2012 9:15 AM
http://www.indiegogo.com/ushu?a=936784
edward | September 17, 2012 12:43 AM
http://www.indiegogo.com/tatted?a=1183250
Joe Dink | August 16, 2012 7:24 AM
Furniture
LARRY | August 15, 2012 6:12 PM
http://igg.me/p/193205 plzplz
adam | August 14, 2012 3:22 AM
fund this
http://www.indiegogo.com/JAKARTAFIRES?a=787855
kevin | August 11, 2012 12:28 AM
Great to read your article. I created campaign 3 days ago to help my sister for her cancer treatment and she need in great help. But upto now, even no single penny was donated. Is there something wrong in my campaign or nobody even has not read it yet?
http://www.indiegogo.com/suebeats
http://igg.me/p/186094
Thank you.
ScorpLion | August 4, 2012 12:23 AM
First of all i want to celebrate you for your success. You listed lost of key factor here but most of them already known by everyone I am not trying to be rude or anything, i appreciate still you are taking your time and helping people out to show them the way. But as we artists the biggest problem is we dont have enough social network power, because if we try to build a social network we wouldnt be artists we would be network marketer. So we are spending our times to create artwork pieces instead of filling our facebook or twitter pages with lots of real or fake people. So i just launched my first project at indiegogo.com I dont want to be look like loser but it is what it is, i m lost in 10th page of art section. Not because my work is worthless, just because i didnt have enough time to build a fan base before i have launched. Everyone loves thier art like as their real baby, my art is unique(for me) but i m the only one who knows my art since i have been lost in the pages of indiegogo which nobody ever scroll the pages all the way down. Here is the link of my project if any of you guys ever want to see it.
http://www.indiegogo.com/love4sale?a=953424
ohmphp | July 31, 2012 9:05 PM
Just launched my campaign, ohmphp, to create jobs in America one small business at a time! http://www.indiegogo.com/ohmphp?a=937865
I found allot of useful information in your page, loved the videos, thank you. You have inspired me to create a Wordpress blog and share my experiences for good or ill with others. Thank you for yet another job. ;-)
Tara | July 28, 2012 11:01 PM
Well, since it appears others' are posting their own Indiegogo campaign links here I hope it's okay for me to post mine as well, I'm having a b*tch of a time getting it "out there" where anyone will even notice it so am just trying to do whatever I can to get eyeballs on it. However, if you feel it inappropriate for me to be posting it here (after all, it's your blog, not mine) please accept my apologies and remove my link at anytime, I'll understand completely. This is my link here: http://igg.me/p/157937?a=811881
As for your "How To Fund A Successful....." blog write-up itself, thank you for sharing the information that you did, I found it to be very detailed, informative and, for many, likely very helpful as well; you really did share some great pointers.
@Marvin; Great question! :-)
Marvin | July 28, 2012 7:21 AM
Is it possible and legal to run project on Kickstarter and IndieGo in the same time?
Jas | July 27, 2012 12:41 PM
Valuable suggestions. I have launched my first campaign today to help poor artisans in India. I am trying my best to reach maximum people using social marketing. You can check my perks and other details http://www.indiegogo.com/Help-Artisans I look forward to your suggestions.
Gloria | July 16, 2012 8:20 PM
I only have 29 days left to raise 950.00 needed to move due to health reasons but am having difficult time getting funding. My campaign is honest with photos and video but nothing seems to work. Please check it out and let me know what I am doing wrong. http://igg.me/p/151849
Containerproject | July 11, 2012 3:20 AM
Great article, just launched my indiegogo campaign http://goo.gl/pxQsB . You can check it out or follow me on twitter http://tinyurl.com/brz8x8p. Got allot of awesome rewards!
L Johnverrell | July 9, 2012 1:09 PM
I think you should always offer $1.00 and $5.00 perks for a successful campaign. Like the article writer said that would make people donate more. If I see a campaign on Indiegogo that starts at $25 I'm less inclined to donate. Also, do not create a campaign without having at least 1 or 2 donations already. It looks bad to have absolutely no donations on a campaign.
Michael Patrick Connolly | July 5, 2012 6:02 PM
Great article. I feel like we did most of what you suggested. Our popularity has died off dramatically after the initial push. We still have 29 days...help? http://www.indiegogo.com/tito
Gloria | July 3, 2012 7:08 AM
This is excellent information, thank you. Please cross your fingers for me because I hope my campaign picks up soon: http://igg.me/5/151849. I am not too computer literate and any suggestions is greatly appreciated. Huggs
Marc | June 28, 2012 4:47 PM
Guess what I'm about to do? Yes...post my Indiegogo link. This one is even better than those that say it's the best....and those that say THAT? It's better than those too.
http://igg.me/p/139233?a=662957
MC | June 28, 2012 12:35 PM
This is a great venue to empower people with great ideas. My kids wanted to do a summer project and came up with this after one of their friends couldn't afford to play in a youth baseball league. Check out their cause and spread the word. www.indiegogo.com/kidscommunity
Alex | June 26, 2012 9:37 PM
Please check out my campaign to volunteer again!
http://www.indiegogo.com/amigosbacktotheirhome?a=781662
Quentin Perez | June 23, 2012 3:47 PM
Please help get my campaign started! http://www.indiegogo.com/art-a-licious?a=767871
Mike Johensen | June 20, 2012 11:21 PM
How can you be assured where your funds are going? Couldn't someone just theoretically take your money you donate and say it's for their project then just keep the money themselves? I just don't like not being provided proof where my money has gone. Maybe I'm wrong?
LESURE LOVE | June 20, 2012 2:40 AM
I just started my campaign I was wondering how long do it take for people to start donating money. check it out here
http://igg.me/p/109430?a=434283
J.L. | June 15, 2012 8:52 PM
What about campaigns for new computers FOR film making (i.e. mines@igg.me/p/119270?a=514080 or it's failed predecessor http://igg.me/p/99387?a=514080)
My laptop fried in progress of my latest YouTube short, so I reached out to my audience, but I just can never make it work. Ah, guess having 5k subs helps though-you guys got it easy. :-/
Brian Paul Wiegand | June 1, 2012 9:16 PM
It sounds like raising the money to make the film, and then raising the money to distribute it, can be more exhausting and demanding than making the film itself. Generally the convergence of such disparate skills as the practical skill of fundraising and the artistic skill of film making in just one individual is rare, and even when such convergence occurs the conflicting demands on that individual's time often results in a failure of one sort or other. This is the reason why so many success stories are the stories of great partnerships by persons with very divergent talents......
James Anderson | May 15, 2012 10:55 AM
I enjoyed your article and will definately utilize your advice on my app campaign located at indiegogo.com/textflick. Congratulations on your project's success
Ms. H | May 9, 2012 10:55 PM
Hi Stephen,
Congratulations on your success. I'm part of a Kickstarter project to fund a 24 hour, 7 days a week video game talk show, called All Games Radio Network. The campaign is at:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/allgames/all-games-radio-network?ref=live
If the link does not work, you can go to Kickstarter and input All Games in the search to get the project. Even though we chose the Kickstarter route, I think we will be able to use your advice about not asking people directly for money. I like your idea of having people to become part of a project-- one of which is just taking off.
If you are reading this and want to be part of a project to help a fledgling, young video game network stay afloat, you can become part of our solution, by donating just a $1.00.
Thank you for your time.
Janet Elizabeth | May 5, 2012 9:38 PM
Hi Stephen...I'm looking to make my first feature and I have zero money to do it *LOL*...so....I've been looking into crowd funding but I have a question for you. How did you get Gordon Pinset to agree to do the film when you had no money to offer him? Did you just have a conditional contract that said IF the project goes through, you WILL pay him X amount of dollars? I'm just curious how that works.
David Austin | February 23, 2012 8:30 AM
Your article inspired me into action! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! http://www.indiegogo.com/DUMFRIES-SUPERCOMPUTER?a=441422
Dave | January 26, 2012 4:49 AM
Wow, this story is pretty awesome. I'm currently running my campaign for a short film I'm directing and we have had moderate success, I'm thankful for everyone's support.
I really like the idea of making a promotional video for a specific audience, who doesn't love cute animal videos?
I made a promotional video for my project where we shot a page from the script so people could get a feel for the look and quality we will have for the final film, especially meeting some of the key crew working on the project so people could get a feel for my and my teams personality and passion. When promoting my project I also encouraged others to donate a dollar and we have received a ton of multiple donators that donate 10 or 20 dollars, like you said.
Check out my campaign and let me know what you guys think: www.indiegogo.com/htuw
Todd | January 15, 2012 5:28 PM
I'm sorry, but Stephen seems like an annoying douche. That's my #1 rule of Kickstarter/Gogo/Whateverthefuckelse campaigns: Don't seem like an annoying douche.
Jesse | January 15, 2012 3:53 AM
As someone who has been apart of several of these fundraisers(all failed) I can say one simple thing...like real life, it's all about who you know. As it turned out, none of us had enough friends, or a youtube channel, tumblr, facebook, or whatever where we were known enough to get people. I'd surely recommended that, if you can, to somehow get (semi)famous enough to get money. Look at the Angry Video Game Nerd, he made $100,000 in less than a week and is almost to $300,000 and on IndieGoGo to boot.
Matt | January 11, 2012 6:53 AM
I have to say, the idea of never actually asking anyone to donate is inspired. I did an IndieGoGo campaign for my short film - and we made our target - but I always felt so bad asking people... mainly because I knew they'd say yes! You found the solution.
Shirley | January 10, 2012 9:42 PM
Stephen - what can I say. You are a marketing master and this is great advice. How very cool to share. .... and a great marketing strategy to boot!.
Congrats.... and I'm really looking forward to seeing the film.
Tim | January 10, 2012 7:19 PM
I'd be curious to know which percentage of those 55% donors 'you haven't met' are either:
a) YouTube subscribers
b) People from Newfoundland
Congratulations to you and good luck on your film, but this article is rather pointless and unhelpful to anyone who does not already have an established online following (ie: over 1 million YT views/6,000+ subscribers).
"Getting a bunch of people to fund your film is pointless if you canât get a bunch of people to watch your film!
Submit to every festival under the sun, self distribute or just do everything in your power to get the film out into the world!"
I would love to hear more clarification about the above quote as it left me a little confused. Do you believe in the archaic model of festival distribution which essentially would prohibit your film from being available online (to your fans/funders/'team') for very likely upwards of a year after its completion (despite the perceived prestige/glory), or do you believe in self-distribution online with the same vim and vigour as in the funding stage?
I hope that doesn't sound negative, I am genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts, however I am skeptical of your advice and feel it is specific to a select few. Regardless, kudos to you for cultivating a large online following and funding your film. I look forward to it.