Do you have an exciting idea for a campaign, but lack the finances to make it successful? Then you’ve probably heard about online crowdfunding. In this week’s article, I am going to share with you how to get funding for your project with Indiegogo to help make your dreams come true.
What Is Indiegogo?
Indiegogo is a crowdfunding site that allows people from all over the world to contribute to a project effort. It was launched in 2008 and has since funded thousands of campaigns in more than 200 countries and has helped many aspiring individuals to kick start innovative businesses and raise funds for charities.
How to Get Funding for Your Project with Indiegogo?
The process is pretty straightforward; launch a campaign and request for funds. But there’s more to that. Before you create a campaign, brainstorm the following questions and see if you are well-prepared.
(1) What Is the Project Goal?
How much money are you looking to raise to achieve the project goal and still be able to cover the operational cost? How long will your campaign be running?
(2) Who Is Your Targeted Audience?
Which group of people are you focusing to get your funds? This will be extremely helpful for your marketing strategy later on.
(3) Do You Have a Project Team?
Are you handling this project all by yourself? The more you get people on board, the faster you can achieve the project goal by delegating tasks.
(4) How Would You Promote Your Project?
Listing your campaign on Indiegogo alone isn’t enough. You need to create your resources to show people what your project is all about. Writing good quality content, creating engaging videos and visuals are some of the ways to attract more online audience. Ideally, you want to have a website to display all this information.
Creating a WordPress website is very easy these days. If you haven’t got one, simply head over to SiteRubix to launch a free website.
(5) What Incentive Can You Provide?
Giving away perks (or rewards) will encourage a more positive contribution to your campaign. Indiegogo offers plenty of suggestions on their site on how to design and price the perks in exchange for donations.
Once you have addressed all the concerns in your drafting stage, you can now move on to creating your project campaign on Indiegogo. This process will walk you through 7 steps.
Step #1 – Basic Information
A brief overview of your campaign and the duration (maximum 60 days).
Step #2 – Project Story
Upload a video and write a summary of what your campaign is all about.
Step #3 – Perks (optional)
Let people know what they can get when contributing to your campaign. It should include the expected amount and product descriptions (see image below)
Step 4 – Team Members
Let Indiegogo know the contact details of the person handling the campaign.
Step 5 – Collect Funding
Choose the type of payments to get your funds – either through credit card or direct payment. Indiegogo fee charges will depend on this information (more details on this later).
Step 6 – Extra (optional)
To boost your campaign, you can create a draft link to peers review before launching, insert Google Analytics for website tracking, and update all the URLs of your website as well as social IDs. This will enable the audience to learn more about your campaign.
Step 7 – In-Demand (optional)
Should you decide on this option, Indiegogo will continue to raise funds for your projects through on-going exposure on the crowdsourcing platform.
Once you have filled out all the details, click to launch. Now your campaign is live and ready to accept funds.
How Much Does It Cost to Start a Campaign?
It’s free to list campaigns on Indiegogo, but you don’t get to keep 100% of the funds received. Depending on the funding types, you will be subjected to some fee charges as shown in the table below.
For non-profit, there are no platform fees but other 3rd party fees will apply.
Let’s Hear What Other People Say…
Indiegogo’s user interface and resources are helpful for campaigns to get started.
However, once it’s up, you have very little control over the visibility of your campaign.
Hence, it’s really important to create your network first before launching a campaign (refer to earlier discussion) to build your reputation within the community in Indiegogo.
So, Is Indiegogo Worthy of Your Time?
Like other crowdsourcing sites, Indiegogo is a great tool to get funds for your projects – just make sure you meet all the basic requirements first. The success of your campaign will depend on traffic visiting your page and you can’t rely solely on Indiegogo for that purpose.
You need to be more proactive if you want to create online awareness for your project. Here are some of the things that you can do;
- Create a WordPress website to feature your campaign (as mentioned earlier).
- Write keyword-targeted blogs using Jaaxy keyword tool, to increase your website ranking on the search engines.
- Take the advantage of YouTube videos to direct viewers to your campaign website.
- Visual marketing has a lot of potentials to make good use of infographics, slide presentations, and social media to boost your online presence and engage with readers.
- Engage actively on other social networks to build followers who are interested in what you are doing (in fact, 30% of the contribution is estimated to come from your networks, not from Indiegogo).
When you can drive loads of traffic to your website, you are likely to get more audience to contribute to your project funds on Indiegogo. Of course, you can’t do all these in 60 days. You’ll need more time than that and that’s why you need to plan.
The Ultimate Purpose of Your Project…
Is more than just the money (right?). Projects are all about making creative ideas come true. Here are some examples of campaigns that you can find on Indiegogo;
From technology to charity, all projects start with an idea. To make it a reality, it has to have a worthy purpose that extends to the community. If you can connect the dots between funding and helping the community, you will have better chances of making your project a reality.
Do you have any thoughts or questions about how to get funding for your project with Indiegogo? Please leave them in the comment area below and I’ll get back to you.
Hey Cathy, I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed this review. For people thinking of new ideas or opportunities, this is great.This makes the whole process more achievable and the way you have it explained makes it feel more confident. I will be sure to share with others who this might benefit. Thanks, Adam
Hi Cathy, thank you for this great article. This is the first time I have heard about crowd finding. It certainly looks interesting and a great way to get funding for a project.
Correct me if I am wrong but it sounds like a community type of project or a cause would do really well here and perhaps personal business projects not so great?
Hi there Lynne,
Indiegogo is in fact a great platform to launch a new business project. If you explore the categories, you can see the type of products and campaign created by entrepreneurial individuals.
For example, as a better way to enjoy coffee, a team of engineers has designed a temperature adjustable mug called Ember. In just 3 days, they raised more than $100 thousand dollars, exceeding way more than their funding goals yet they have 27 days left before the campaign ends.
To raise funds for personal or non-profit causes, you should start with ‘Generosity’ (also within Indiegogo) that offers 0% platform fee.
Hope this helps clarify things for you.
Hi Cathy, this is great information I wish I knew about Indiegogo before getting started with my online business.
I wonder if someone who was interested in becoming a premium member at Wealthy Affiliate could use something like this to help pay their membership fees? I know for myself it was hard to come up with yearly membership, as it’s a huge savings in the long haul to go yearly.
You have provided tons of information on how to get started with Indiegogo the right way by creating your network first before building your campaign. I agree it’s a must to do your keyword research before starting any campaign, I personally use Jaaxy as well for all my keyword research, I absolutely recommend it to anyone who has a website…
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a great review on Indiegogo as this will definitely help those who are needing to get some extra funds for their projects.
Hi Jennifer,
Indiegogo is a great place to raise funds for creative projects or even for a good cause. However, I don’t think it’s appropriate to get funding for a personal membership application.
I know that not everyone can afford the Premium training in Wealthy Affiliate. That’s why there’s a Starter Program that allows you to create a free WordPress website using SiteRubix. If you really work hard in your niche, the site can actually achieve some good rankings and conversion.
I was aware of this ‘capital investment’ when I thought of starting my online business. So I worked around my budget – cut down on weekend activities, unnecessary storage of food and shopping – and managed to pay for my annual membership.
It can be difficult for some, but it’s not impossible. Every hundred dollar is worth your time and future – so plan wisely and I am sure you will be able to come up with a solution.
Thank you for the write up on crowd funding and Indiegogo. I have never thought about using crowd funding, but it sounds like a great way to get a project started. I have worked in a number of fields over my career. I know a few people who could use this. I will forward them the info. Thanks again.
Marc
Hi there Marc,
Crowdfunding is not a new idea and many projects have achieved great success with different fundraising platforms. If the project is innovative and cause-worthy, there’s a good chance that it will attract a lot of contributors.
Thanks for stopping by Marc and I hope you found value from this article.
I knew there were fundraising sites, and I am glad I found this one. I do have a couple of questions. How does Indiegogo compare to other sites like this? How long do you have to run the campaign? It looks like a great place to do some fundraising! I will share this with some people to see if we can get something going!
Hi Liz,
If you compare Indiegogo with Kickstarter (one of the most leading crowdfunding site out there), Indiegogo tends to have less success in achieving their funding goals, but at the same time, it’s also more lenient towards hosting a variety of campaigns (some of which are rejected by Kickstarter).
The ideal duration to run a campaign is reported to be 35 days and you can find out more about the comparison in this interesting infographic on the crowdfunding statistics.
Hope this helps.
Hi Cathy,
An excellent full of helpful factual content blog. I cannot say enough about it. It is precise, to the point and no denoument. My French teacher would have loved u. I am living in Ireland, and so many members of our community has asked me to start a campaign (if I ever find the time) to help change our health insurance policy re private health care. Would it apply outside the States?
Hi Mary,
Changing a policy sounds more like coming up with a petition which might involved various parties such as health care providers, the community and lawyers. As I am not familiar with this area of legislation or the health care situation in Ireland, I am afraid I can’t offer much advice about the matter.
There’s a segment in Indiegogo called Indiegogo Life which helps to raise fund for a certain cause, which I think can be applied in your situation (but do check with Indiegogo first). It sounds like you already have a supportive community backing up this campaign. So I would recommend that you create a WordPress website first, spread the word around and get people to sign the petition (if you do create one) before launching the campaign in Indiegogo.
Everyone deserves to get access to good health care and I think that is a cause worth fighting for. Keep us posted on your progress.
I really really enjoy this webpage. I, like many others, am always thinking of new ideas or “inventions” if you will. But never get around to acting on them. This makes the whole process more inviting and the way you have it explained makes it feel achievable. Thanks for the information and I will be bookmarking the website.
Hi there Jason,
Many people go to crowdfunding sites wanting to make their inventions a success. But in actual fact, it takes a lot of more effort and time before you can achieve your funding goals. Planning and preparation is the key so you really want to make sure you have everything in order before launching your creative campaign.
Hi Cathy,
This is the fire I have ever hear about Indiegogo or even the concept of crowdfunding. It sounds like a great option to use especially if you don’t have a lot of funds to start with. It sounds like it would be very useful for small not for profit organizations.
I think it is so important to plan your project and use your resources so you can get you message out to your target audience. Is there any information about how to start a project or do you just jump into the deep end of the pool and figure it out as you go?
Welcome to my blog Val and thank you for your question.
I wouldn’t recommend you dive into a campaign blindly without planning your funding goals. Indiegogo actually provides some helpful information on creating a campaign and has broken down the process into 3 steps.
– What to do before launching a campaign.
– How to manage your campaign.
– What to do after your campaign ends.
You can find more of this information here. Hope this helps.
Hi Cathy,
Thank you for the info on this neat website. This is all new to me and I could think of several charitable campaigns that could benefit from this crowd funding platform.
I noticed that if the goal wasn’t reached all the money was refunded and the campaign creator would still be liable for some 3rd party fees. Do you know what percentage of campaigns reach thier goals? I’m sure if they followed the outline you gave that would not happen though.
Hi there,
According to this statistic, only 9.8% of campaigns in Indiegogo reach their funding goals, but bear in mind that more than 90% of the campaigns opt for flex funding, which means they can still cash out to carry on with their projects even though they don’t reach their targeted goal.
Hi Cathy,
Wonderful and very informative article about online fundraising. It has perked my interest and am now wanting to hit up their site and find out what kind of projects are being displayed. I’m often lacking funds whenever I am in that creative or beginning stage of getting something done. Maybe this could help? Thanks for the post!
Hi there Brian,
If you have the time to browse through all the categories, you’ll find that Indiegogo is more flexible when it comes to hosting a variety of campaigns as compared to other sites. Most projects are at their start-up stage and this platform provides a good online exposure (15 million people visit this site each month) for them to advance to the next stage.
So you can definitely think about using it for your next creative campaign.
Hi Cathy- Excellent post. I am still learning about Indiegogo and this was very helpful in directing me about what to do first, and what to consider before running the fundraiser. I am currently running a crowdfund with Indigogo Life. Are you familiar? I initially ran it on Facebook without choosing public and now want to know if I need to resend it to the original people I sent it to?
Hi there Tom,
I am not familiar with using Indiegogo Life so I would recommend that you contact the ‘Happiness Team’ to find out which is the best route to get more exposure for your campaign. Here’s the link to guide you.
Hope this helps.
Hello Cathy. This is a great post with another great ‘how it works’ review . Well written and I loved how you suggest to create their own website to promote the project. The video was helpful also as it covered the basics well. You show that you understand the process and I learned something so thank you for that. 🙂
Thank you for your feedback, Peter.
Many people go into crowdfunding without thinking about building their online presence first. Come to think of it, if you don’t show that you are actively engaging with the online community, how can you win the trust of people to donate funds to your projects? Something as simple as creating a campaign website can make a huge difference to the success of the fundraising.