How To Set Up A Crowdfunding Platform

Key Points:

Identifying your entrada objectives is of import because it will help you set your crowdfunding goals
If you want to apply crowdfunding to enhance funds for your business, then you'll demand to focus on setting a high but achievable funding goal
Tracking your progress while campaigning will give you lot some insight into how to kick things up a notch before your project ends

Today, entrepreneurs can heighten upper-case letter from the public and test products with audiences directly via crowdfunding. Thing is, less than half of all campaigns cease up reaching their crowdfunding goals. For example, Indiegogo campaigns accept a 9% success rate, while Kickstarter's have a 36% success rate. Many campaigns fail because the coin raised doesn't cover the business concern's expenses.

It's essential to gear up realistic funding goals before yous begin campaigning. The good news is that setting goals are easy. Peculiarly when you know that shipping and fulfillment are i of the most overlooked (and undermining) factors when information technology comes to failed campaigns. What's more, y'all tin use Easyship to salve up to 70% on all shipping with discount courier rates.

Today, we bear witness you lot how to program for fulfillment, aircraft, and all your crowdfunding costs. This manner, you can launch with a full sense of what costs need covering, and how loftier to set your targets.

01 Setting Crowdfunding Campaign Objectives

02 How to Set Realistic Goals for Your Campaign

03 How to Measure out Progress For Your Crowdfunding Goal

04 Find Crowdfunding Success Past Setting Realistic Goals

Setting Crowdfunding Campaign Objectives

Identifying your campaign objectives is of import because it volition aid you set your crowdfunding goals. Today, crowdfunding attracts companies that seek to raise funds and test their products with potential customers. So, of course, knowing whether you desire to apply crowdfunding every bit a strategy to raise funds or equally part of your overall production development strategy volition assistance you gear up realistic funding goals.

What is a funding goal?

Your funding goal is essentially what y'all want to achieve with your crowdfunding campaign. Since crowdfunding can exist both a funding and product-testing strategy, before you begin, you'll need to decide which of these is more important for your concern.

If you want to use crowdfunding to raise funds for your business organization, and then you'll demand to focus on setting a high but achievable funding goal. The idea is that if you don't raise this amount, y'all won't be able to develop your product and properly create your business organization.

However, if you intend to use crowdfunding as a production-testing and market strategy, you can beget to set lower and even more achievable funding goals. That's because, in this position, you'd probably already take the funds you need to create your products (or might perhaps have already done so) and you desire to use crowdfunding to see if there's really a marketplace for what yous've created. In this situation, you might want to choose a funding goal that you can reach in the shortest fourth dimension possible.

Here are a few important questions you should ask yourself to help you identify your crowdfunding goals before yous even start planning your entrada:

What are the costs of creating your products? These might include manufacturing costs, rent, website fees, and salaries, for instance.
What deadline do you want to set for your campaign? Most experts recommend 30-sixty days.
Will yous exist able to create rewards to incentivize your backers, and what are the costs of creating and sending these to your backers?
What are the costs of hiring the people you need for your campaign? You may need to hire creative designers and video producers, a entrada consultant, and a PR company, for case, to ensure your campaign'southward success.
How much do you expect to earn if you successfully create your product? Having an thought of what profits you might expect will help you figure out how much you need to raise to make this happen.

Setting reasonable funding goals is essential because if you reach your crowdfunding goals quickly, y'all'll enjoy gratis traffic from Kickstarter's popularity rankings, get useful press coverage, and increment buyers' confidence.

Bear in listen that the average Kickstarter success goal is $5,000 (which is more than the Kickstarter minimum goal), while the average Indiegogo campaign raises almost $41, 634, which is the highest average corporeality of whatsoever crowdfunding platform.

How to Set Realistic Goals for Your Campaign

Of course, you lot don't want to set your crowdfunding goals so low that you lot end up losing money after your entrada. You also don't want to set your goals so high that even if your entrada attracts a large number of backers, you lot won't run into your goals. Before you begin trying to calculate crowdfunding goals, there are a few costs to look at. Here'southward a rundown of the virtually of import things to consider when setting crowdfunding goals.

Manufacturing Costs

Manufacturing costs include the toll of creating your prototypes and, if applicable, the cost of manufacturing your backers' rewards. To launch your campaign, yous'll probably already need to take a image; you lot tin build the price of creating this into your crowdfunding goals to help you recoup the costs.

Noah Dentzel, the founder of Nomad Goods - and a successful Indiegogo campaigner - recommends that you summate the toll of manufacturing your backer rewards and so multiply this number by 5 to estimate the full cost of manufacturing and build in a good for you margin to embrace other expenses.

If you're launching a fixed-funding campaign, you might not exist manufacturing your rewards until the campaign ends, and so you demand to make sure you lot have raised plenty capital to exercise this. Don't forget to communicate with your suppliers and producers to get a skilful idea of product costs and timelines.

Campaign Costs

Campaign costs include platform fees and marketing costs to comprehend things like advert, videography, and photography. To create a good crowdfunding campaign, y'all'll want to factor in the cost of hiring a photographer to take proficient production photos; a video producer to create a compelling crowdfunding video that will drive excitement about your campaign, and a PR company to assistance yous create buzz. Yous volition also need to include ad costs to cover things like press release distribution or a pay-per-click advertizing campaign.

Your entrada volition also incur fees for using a crowdfunding platform and payment gate. Indiegogo mostly takes 5% of the funds you raise in your campaign, and levies a credit card processing fee of iii% + $0.30 per donation.

If yous attain your funding goals, Kickstarter will take v% of your funds equally its platform fee, and another 5% as a payment processing fee. However, you won't have to pay these fees if you lot don't attain your crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter.

Make sure to cistron all of these costs into your crowdfunding goals so that you lot raise enough funds to cover the platform's cuts, otherwise, yous may be defenseless unawares and end up with non enough coin to manufacture your product or fulfill your entrada.

Company Overheads

These are the stock-still costs that yous volition incur while executing your projection. For example, they might include employee salaries, function rent, and the price of creating a website. Factoring these fixed expenses into your realistic crowdfunding goals will ensure that you can easily cover these costs.

Fulfillment and Shipping Costs

Underestimating shipping costs is one of the main reasons why many crowdfunding campaigns send late (or non at all). Forgetting to program for fulfillment tin can lead to a rude awakening when you're ready to begin shipping rewards to your backers; if you haven't raised enough funds to cover this, you may end upward paying out of pocket for this.

Experienced campaigners recommend that you lot budget up to 20% of your total crowdfunding funds to fulfillment. When you're planning your entrada, exercise some research into the size and weight of the packages you'll be aircraft, and and so get estimates of shipping costs from different couriers and an idea of international import taxes and duties.

Want a free quote from the cheapest couriers for your campaign? Try our gratuitous shipping charge per unit calculator. You lot'll become an accurate rate estimate from all pinnacle couriers in seconds, so you accept a articulate thought of your shipping budget.

How to Measure out Progress For Your Crowdfunding Goal

Tracking your progress while campaigning will give you some insight into how to boot things up a notch before your project ends. If you happen to exist behind on your goals, you'll be able to brand certain adjustments to your fundraising plans and get your campaign dorsum on runway. Hither are some metrics you lot can apply to assess your progress:

Conversion rates: This metric allows you to rail how many of the visitors to your campaign page have the specific deportment y'all want them to, such as making a donation or sharing the page.
Traffic source: This is a useful metric considering it helps you sympathize your backers and page visitors. For case, if you find y'all're getting more traffic from Facebook instead of organic search, y'all can so consider doing more than paid ads on Facebook.
Unique visitors: This metric aggregates the activity generated by the same user on your campaign folio and so that you lot have a real understanding of how many people are really visiting your site. For example, if a user visits your campaign folio, makes a donation, and shares it with friends, this will all be counted as i user. The metric is useful for calculating a bones conversion pct.
Average time on page: This metric helps you empathise where on your campaign page potential backers are spending well-nigh of their time so that you lot can figure out exactly what is drawing their attention.
Exit rate: Knowing where potential backers are exiting your entrada page is useful because you lot can identify any problematic spots on your page. You lot tin then improve these to maximize user appointment.

Delivering rewards to your backers on time tin can be challenging. Indiegogo knows this, which is why information technology has partnered with Easyship every bit its sectional aircraft and fulfillment provider.

The partnership allows their entrepreneurs to hands find toll-effective shipping solutions to attain backers effectually the world. Through our crowdfunding and fulfillment expertise, we have helped some of the near successful campaigns on Indiegogo, including MATE 10, Nomad Lane, and Waverly Labs.

Find Crowdfunding Success Past Setting Realistic Goals

Setting realistic crowdfunding goals is crucial for edifice a successful campaign. You need to effigy out all your upfront costs before creating your campaign so that you tin prepare goals that raise plenty funds to comprehend all your project's expenses.

Don't forget that Easyship tin can help you gear up realistic goals by giving y'all access to our free online calculators to estimate shipping rates, taxes, and more. Sign upward for a free account now to see how easy it is!