Are you interested in creating your own Crowdfunding website? With the technology available today, it is easier than ever to quickly create a Crowdfunding website. Forget about trying to build your own platform from scratch, and get started in just hours. We have created a step by step process to help you get your Crowdfunding website up and running fast.
1. Find a Crowdfunding niche
Every new Crowdfunding website/platform is dedicated to a niche. This means that the website will host Crowdfunding campaigns for one particular cause, or genre of products. This is due to the big platforms that are available to Crowdfunding creators. There is no use in trying to compete with the largest Crowdfunding platforms on the internet because you will likely lose. The popular Crowdfunding websites you see today took years to develop, and have a strong stream of site visits, campaign creators, and donors. To fast-track the success of your own platform, one can choose a particular niche that is not yet established in the Crowdfunding industry.
Choosing a niche helps to separate your site from the others, and can also provide value to your campaign creators and backers. The campaign creators in the particular niche that you choose, will benefit from using a small-time platform to get more recognition from other users that are comfortable backing other campaigns on the site. It is a great way to harvest good backers.
2. Use Crowdfunding technology
There are many articles that may lead you to think that you should build out your own crowdfunding platform from scratch. This approach is not recommended. It’s costly to build such technology, trust me, we at Thrinacia have helped launch hundreds of crowdfunding platforms for many different niches. When you are starting out, you want to validate your idea as easy and cost-effective as possible. The most important aspect of your launch is to get as many campaign creators and backers as possible to validate that your niche or idea for crowdfunding is valid. If you can create a community to support your platform, you will have the means and reason to build something more customized for your users in the future. So to start, it’s recommended not to build something from scratch, but to use the existing technology available, and customize it, if needed, to save both time and money. Existing technology will have all the basic crowdfunding features out of the box.
Search for the right technology that you want to use for your Crowdfunding website. Not all technology is paid, but when it comes to running a successful Crowdfunding platform, you want to be sure that there are no bugs so users have a great experience on your website. You get what you pay for, if you use free Crowdfunding software, do not be surprised when something goes wrong with your website. Choosing a SaaS (Software as a Service) product can provide you with real-time support. This way you can get your site up and running fast, with as few issues as possible. And if there is a bug on the site, you are not left to your own devices to fix the issue.
Make sure you have a set of requirements. Your requirements should have a list of the features needed and the user journey established. Create a list or excel sheet with all of the necessary features needed for your particular platform. Once the list is complete, send a request to the Crowdfunding products that are of interest, to easily compare the differences. This is usually the best way to assess which technology fits your needs the most. In addition, choose a product that allows access to the front end source code. Access to the front end source code can save lots of time, and money in the long run, and will elaborate further on this point later in the article.
3. Connect the payment gateway
Every crowdfunding platform needs to process the payments, this is why the payment gateway plays a critical role in your decision making process for crowdfunding technology and how you want to process payments. There are different ways that you can process transactions. Be sure to understand exactly how you want the transactions to be processed.
It is usually best to open up a new bank account for the Crowdfunding platform if you are serious about taking a transaction fee on the donations to the website. If you were not already aware, most Crowdfunding websites are taking a transaction fee on each donation to the campaigns on the site. This is a great way to generate an income on the side, by utilizing Crowdfunding. Depending on the usage of the platform, a bank account can be set up and connected to the payment gateway to receive a transaction fee. A good, and safe payment gateway to use for Crowdfunding is Stripe. There are low transaction fees and can be accessible to most countries and regions.
4. Add the content
Once you are finished choosing the niche, platform, and connecting your payment solution to your bank account, next, is the most time consuming step, adding the content to your platform. You should have access to the front end source code, to manipulate the User Interface (UI) to your standards. You will be restricted by the default UI and features from the product if you do not have access to the front end source code. A great advantage of having access to the front end code is that you can hire a developer if you are having issues with manipulating the default UI.
It is best practice to create all of the content, and have all of the images/videos ready before adding the content to the site. This can shave a lot of time by simply copying and pasting the content on to the site.
5. Launch the platform
Once the platform is all set up, the next step is to launch the platform. Before launching the platform, however, it is recommended to have Crowdfunding campaigns ready to host their campaign on your platform before launching. The first handful of campaigns on your new platform are likely going to be from friends and family. If those campaigns are not available, you need to start searching for campaigns by joining online communities in your niche, and in the Crowdfunding industry.
It is also recommended to create a pre launch campaign much like one for a Crowdfunding campaign. This will generate the right following before you launch your platform. Before launching the site, many platforms decide to restrict the platform to those who want to create a campaign by username and password authentication. The launch of your campaign should be a big event, with lots of valuable site traffic.
6. Market the platform
The website is finally created and launched on the internet. The last step is to market the platform. The whole idea is to market the Crowdfunding platform successfully so that many campaign creators are approaching you to create a campaign on your platform. This way, you do not have to do any work to make money. This can be a great solution for those that want to generate a monthly revenue by simply approving or disapproving Crowdfunding campaigns.
For further detail, and a quick run down of what is covered in this article, please refer to the video below.