5 Most Popular Crowd Funding Websites
What’s the most popular fundraising strategy of today? …
We’ve had a look at a number of common capital raising strategies to help you fund your venture and get a start. Check out this post on 5 Ways to Get Funding for Your App Project.
The most popular strategy by far is Crowd Funding.
With the right mix of unique & product proposition, vision and plain old luck, you can get the much needed funding to build your kick-ass idea and get into hands of your customers!
…you can get the much needed funding to build your kick-ass idea and get it into the hands of your customers!
Crowd funding has grown wildly popular in the past 5 years with the launch of purpose built crowd funding websites which has helped hundreds if not thousands of great ideas come off the ground.
Related articles:
What are the most popular crowd funding websites?
The Internet is a virtual treasure trove of information. BUT, finding the right place to start can prove challenging and could involve a tonne of research.
Here’s the good news…
We’ve done the research for you!
We’ve tracked down and researched the 5 most popular crowd funding websites to help you choose a Crowd Funding Website that best suits your needs.
…to help you choose a Crowd Funding Website that best suits your needs.
We’ve listed them all below and compared them on:
- Features
- Price
So bust open your note-book, sit up straight and let’s get to work:
1. Indiegogo
Started in 2007, the founders of Indiegogo would’ve hardly imagined the unprecedented success their venture would achieve. Indiegogo operates on the belief that hard work and good product should have adequate backing for it to lead to successful fruition.
I couldn’t agree more!
When starting the company the three founders were bound by only three things – passion for their work, good work etiquette and shortage of funds! I like to think that the funds were crowd sourced but I couldn’t find any info ont that!
“Our site allows anybody to raise money about any idea.” – Slava Rubin, a Co-founder
Here’s my favourite part – to get started, there’s no need to jump through rings of fire or juggle loaded hand-grenades. It’s super easy-
To join up you follow these 4 simple steps:
- Create an account
- Link it to your PayPal account
- Create a list of incentives that will progress as per the degree of investment
- Create a social media campaign – check out this article on how to build a social media strategy for your crowd funding campaign.
Features
- With acceptance in more than 196 countries, it has a widest coverage amongst its competitors
- Be it a small project or artwork, it accommodates almost any indie crowd funding venture and almost all types of legal business ideas ;)
- Opening a campaign is free and carries no registration charges
- No tech knowledge required to create campaigns
- Increasing visibility of the campaign is easy with one touch social media integration and bulk emails
- Provides powerful analysis tools that helps you measure audience engagement
- A unique merit-based promo feature that sees hard working campaigns rewarded with apt visibility boosts
- With its original ‘gogo-factor’ it can help upcoming campaigns get featured on multiple points of content and social media endorsements
- Right from the story set up to adding multimedia elements, the campaign can be deeply customised as per your needs. Feel free to get creative!
Pricing –
Indiegogo charges 9% fee on total funds accumulated. If the campaign reaches its goal, then it returns 5%, thus leaving the overall fee at 4% of the fund value.
2. PoZible
Good old Aussie-ingenuity!
Based in Australia, PoZible is another reputable and popular crowd funding website used to raise funds for innovative ideas.
It started off in the performing arts and short films. But over the last few years PoZible has branched out to cover a variety of domains and fields. Now you can raise money for just about anything!
PoZible’s unique spin
The user can choose between 3 modes:
- Standard mode – At the very basic level, it adopts an ‘All-or-Nothing’ style. In case the target amount is not met, there will be no need to process the pledges.
- Subscription mode – Through this, the project creators can subscribe one time and receive support for a fixed period of time.
- Private campaigns – helpful for those who do not want to disclose project details publicly till its appropriate release.
Pozible is also credited with putting up the biggest individual crowd funding campaign of AUD $38,893.
In 2013, they launched their Pozible Ambassador Network to builds a network of more than 180 crowd funders. As of January 2014, Pozible has assisted in more than 5500 crowd-funding projects and has raised more than $16 million in total funds.
With its focus on performing arts, it has tied up with Waterfront Records to allow musicians to fulfill their distribution needs assisted with its crowd funding platform. Pretty snazzy…
Features
- Pozible offers crowdfunding support across 22 currencies and has tied the knot with PayPal for international transactions. It also deals in BitCoin pledges. Anyone for bitcoin?
- It has a high success rate of 55%. Most of its successful projects come from the domain of films, music, performance and art.
- It has almost 200 crowdfunders known as ‘Pozible Ambassadors Network’ that helps project creators in each stage of their crowd funding campaign.
Pricing –
For successful projects, Pozible charges 5% of the fund amount raised. It also levies 4% for invitations from past successful project creators.
3. Kickstarter
An independent company of 78 people based in Brooklyn, USA, Kickstarter has emerged as the true blue star on the crowdfunding horizon.
Within a short span of 5 years, it has managed to reach the milestone of crossing $1 billion in pledges (as on March 10, 2014). As with other crowd funding sites, it offers the users to sign up for a campaign, raise funds and transact with the site within the deadline put forward by the creators.
45% of Kickstarter projects have met their fund raising goals. The service is currently available in the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Interesting Kickstarter stats for 2013:
- Nearly 3 million people pledged a total of almost $470 million towards the various Kickstarter projects
- Backers spanned all seven continents from across 214 countries/territories
- Pebble e-paper watch received pledges worth $10.1million
How much did you need to raise for your app again?
Features
- The domains range from films, games, music to photography, publishing and technology
- Unlike many other crowd funding sites, Kickstarter doesn’t claim ownership of any part over the projects it hosts on its site.
- For US, it has tied the know with with Amazon for processing payments and for other geographies, it uses a third party payment gateways.
- With the Facebook Connect, backers can connect with their Facebook account and need not maintain a separate login.
- One caveat for a backer is that there is zero guarantee of successful completion of a project, or that the project creator will use the money solely for the project.
Pricing
On every successful fundraising campaign Kickstarter charges 5% of the funds collected. For payment processing the processor will charge between 3% and 5%.
4. Go Get Funding
Go Get Funding is a personal fundraising website that raises money for any cause.
Featured on websites such as Entrepreneur, Lifehacker, CNN Money and Fox News, this website is completely free to sign up and only charges 4% on your total funding raising.
Features
- Free to sign-up. 4% Fee on raised capital.
- Live profile update of funds raised in interactive dashboard.
- For developers the financial pressure is alleviated as they receive funds ahead of time. They can focus on the creative and functional aspects of app development that leads to a better chance of app success.
- Other than the profit sharing, there are no additional fees.
- Public or Private.
Pricing
The unique pricing model is one of the highlights of the site.
5. Angel List
Angel List helps Startups connect with potential investors in the investment ecosystem.
Rather than facilitating the crowd-funding function, it’s major function is to connect investors with suitable fund seekers.
Angel List puts the ball in the investors court to decide which projects will bear fruition and lead to success. Angel List focuses mainly on tech startups which makes it another fantastic platform for App Developers.
Features
- All the monetary aspects are taken care of by SecondMarket.com, the broker-dealer that helps Angel List vet the investors in legal compliance.
- The platform spreads across a number of countries to accommodate cross-pollination between investors and fund-raisers from different countries.
- Currently, investors that have been pre-approved by Angel List can make investments on the platform.
- Comprehensive research and social medial integration tools provides for a 360 crowd funding experience.
- The minimum pledged funds is US $15,000 and individual investors can invest as little as $1,000.
Pricing
Investors pay a 10% Carry to Angel List. Fund raisers pay nothing.
What to read next
Are you keen to learn more about how to kick off and drive a successful Crowd Funding Campaign?
Check out the articles below:
11 Surprising Tips for Crowd Funding Your App Project
Fast track the success of your Crowd Funding campaign by ensuring you tick off these 11 surprisingly simple yet effective tips.
How To Build Social Media Strategy for Crowd Funding Campaigns
Drive your ideal investors into your pipeline through this ‘How-to’ guide for building a social media strategy to promote your crowd funding campaign.
What else would you like to know about Crowd Funding?
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