You want to first ask yourself what kind of crowdfunding website you would be looking to run? Equity or rewards? Maybe something completely different? Would you be looking to integrate crowdfunding within your existing website? In the early days of crowdfunding, a website would have had to have been built from the ground up. This would have been a very expensive process. However in recent years there is a number of different themes and software available that allow you to easily create your own crowdfunding website within minutes. Almost anyone, with even the smallest of budgets can now run their crowdfunding website.
Let us go over the most important questions and what you can expect.
#1 Are you looking to build a simple website or something more complex? Simple donation and reward based website can be quickly launched using existing products like Thrinacia. As well there are a plethora of themes and plugins for example on WordPress, which can be used. If it’s something more complex like an equity based website, a more custom solution may be required. With the right customizations and features that you may need to achieve. Because the model may need to be something more unique.
#2 Do you have an existing website, into which you intend to integrate crowdfunding? This concept is popular as well. As now you can easily integrate existing plugins and widgets on your site to run crowdfunding campaigns. You can also combine ecommerce with crowdfunding to experiment with new products, cut down on costs and pre-sell.
#3 Can you make a firm decision on what you plan to do with crowdfunding? If you are building a new crowdfunding platform for example, focus on a specific niche. Make yourself stand out and market it in the right places, to people that can use it. Know how to scale it in the future as well. But if you are planning to just start crowdfunding for your own personal campaigns, then you may need to go for a completely different solution.
We also want to look at some common misconceptions about starting a crowdfunding website.
M. I need a very large budget to run my own crowdfunding website.
A. False, simple rewards-based crowdfunding websites can created and operated on very minimal budgets.
M. I need to have extensive training and it will be very confusing to run my own crowdfunding website.
A. False, as mentioned before, existing software makes the process easy. You are guided along the way and there is support available. No special training is required. However you bare the full responsibility of marketing the site.
M. Regulations and licenses will make it hard, this will cost me a lot of money in fees to obtain.
A. This will be dependent on what you’re trying to achieve. If you are running rewards-based campaigns, you will most likely have no issues in any part of the world. However if you enter into the equity segment, you may need talk to an professional about the legality of your website. Laws and regulations vary from each country, so this part has to be researched well, if you are entering into models like equity.