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sf platform
In her
book Cash From the Crowd, Sally Outlaw, founder and CEO of crowdfunding website
peerbackers reveals the secrets of funding your business with help from
colleagues, peers, family, friends and even perfect strangers through a
crowdfunding campaign. In this edited excerpt, the author offers tips on
deciding exactly how much money you should try to raise.
Many
"successful" crowdfunding projects ultimately fail because owners
realize that the funding they sought wasn't enough to cover their expenses.
These entrepreneurs may have reached, and even surpassed their goal, but they
didn't anticipate the high costs of creating or shipping their rewards. As a
result, they lost money or simply couldn't complete their reward fulfillment.
When setting your goal, keep in mind that the risk of not being able to deliver
to backers is more important than the risk of not hitting your goal.
You'll
need more money than you think to ensure that all the ancillary costs of
executing your project are covered. When budgeting for the product you're
trying to create, keep it as simple as possible without losing the usefulness
of your idea. You can then add extra features and functionalities via
"stretch goals" in your campaign.
One
issue on the radar at the time of this writing is the online sales tax bill,
which would allow states to tax online purchases. If this bill, which has already
passed the Senate, passes the House and is signed into law, those who are
crowdfunding and offering pre-sales of products may have to charge and collect
sales tax as a function of their crowdfunding campaigns. Keep an eye on this.
Okay,
so there's some basic math here. You'll need to determine:
•
Actual, fixed cost of executing your project
(whether producing a product, building a website, or renting a store front).
•
Costs of creating your rewards.
•
Costs of shipping your rewards. Don't forget
shipping supplies such as padded envelopes, boxes, bubble wrap and tape. Be
sure to include an additional shipping fee in your pledge levels for
international backers.
•
Advertising costs, such as pay-per-click or
press release distribution.
•
Crowdfunding platform and payment processing
fees, which can be 10 percent or more of your funding. Note that some websites
like Indiegogo and RocketHub charge twice as much for campaigns that don't
reach their goals -- 9 and 8 percent, respectively -- as opposed to 4 percent
if you do. Because the majority of campaigns don't succeed, you may want to err
on the high side when pre-calculating your costs.
•
Consider building in the costs of hiring a
campaign consultant, a PR company or creatives such as designers and a video
producer to help make the strongest presentation possible.
Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228541
