In the popular world of crowdfunding, there are mainstream platforms designed to accommodate the general public for hosting crowdfunding campaigns. These mainstream platforms have decided to make adjustments to the way that they are screening each campaign to help prevent any bad actors or fraudulent campaigns from running on their platform.
Recently, Indiegogo has updated its business model. Before the update, they would allow anyone to run a campaign on their platform to raise money with standard screening measures in place. This was allowing almost anyone to run a crowdfunding campaign on their platform with ease. Now, they have introduced a new screening method to manually review each campaign before approval. Indiegogo believes that this is necessary to provide safety for the backers on their platform.
Although this is a great initiative, it can exclude honest campaigns from participating or hosting their campaign on the Indiegogo platform. It is not only Indiegogo that has a review process, Kickstarter also has its own review process as well. Such reviews can take on average 30 hours to get verified on Kickstarter and it’s not guaranteed that you will be allowed to run a campaign on the platform. Here are some reasons you could be denied.
- Your campaign may not fall into one of the categories for Kickstarter.
- If you fall outside of the regions that Kickstarter supports.
- They may simply not want your project on their platform.
With all of the great unique ideas and ways to raise funds, this may limit you as a campaign creator.
What can you do to avoid these issues?
If you are someone with a unique idea or from a part of the world that is not usually supported by crowdfunding platforms, you may have a hard time finding a reliable platform for you. It’s not guaranteed that you are going to be able to run your campaign on the platform of your choice.
Why not run a self-hosted crowdfunding campaign? If you are not already aware, there’s technology that will allow anyone to build a crowdfunding campaign and host it on their own website using widget code.
This means you can run a single campaign on your website of choice and not only avoid being declined but also avoid the fees that the platforms will charge you for every transaction on the platform. These fees can range from 5% – 8%. Keep in mind you will still need to pay a fee for this technology as well, starting at $9.99 per month at the time of writing. View the pricing page here. So you can see there are some great advantages for hosting the campaign on your own. Although, you will be forced to attract all of the backers yourself. Whereas if you decide to use a crowdfunding platform, you will need to generate the majority of your backers. The platform can generate more backers for you, only if your campaign is successful enough for it to advertise you. They look for specific metrics so that the campaign already looks viral before advertising it on the website or newsletters. So creating a marketing campaign is going to be essential regardless of which type of avenue that you choose.
It’s a tricky balance between saving money and earning more when it comes to crowdfunding platforms. You will need to see if it will pay off for your specific campaign. If you’re the type of person who has never run any marketing campaign, you can seek the help of an expert. There’s a list that Kickstarter and Indiegogo provide:
- Kickstarter experts: https://www.kickstarter.com/experts
- Indiegogo experts: https://entrepreneur.indiegogo.com/directory/services/marketing
So you can weigh your options to see what’s best. As far as avoiding these new screening restrictions, there’s not much more that you can do either than finding a new crowdfunding platform or running the self-hosted campaign.