Kickstarter: How Crowd Funding Is Changing Business

Have you considered crowd funding?

Are you wondering how it can help your business grow?

To learn about how Kickstarter has transformed the process of funding projects, I interview Richard Bliss for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Richard Bliss, host of the podcast Funding the Dream on Kickstarter. He's also a coach and consultant for crowd funding.

Richard shares the do's and don'ts when it comes to creating a Kickstarter project.

You'll learn the process in detail of how Kickstarter works for both the campaigner and the supporter.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Crowd Funding
How would you describe Kickstarter?

Richard believes that Kickstarter is a new phenomenon that most people are familiar with. He says the idea is similar to what happens in a church when they pass around a collection plate. The crowd helps fund an idea, a passion or something that they all would like to get more of. It's very public radio– and television–esque in its approach.

Listen to the show to find out how Kickstarter has been around nearly 4 years and seems to have hit mainstream now.

Why entrepreneurs and marketers need to pay attention to Kickstarter

Richard explains how Kickstarter is totally changing the rules of how we think about money. Traditionally it's the money that blocks us from fulfilling our dreams. However, what crowd funding and Kickstarter have done is made the money worry go away and that leaves us with "Now what do we do?"

If you have an idea for a game or a project, for example, you can put it out there and Kickstarter allows you to go find like-minded people. These people want to see you succeed because they like what you are doing. We buy into people's passions.

You'll hear an example of someone who wanted to do a tour through New Zealand taking video and photographs and how with help from Kickstarter, she achieved her goal.

Kickstarter is not into causes, political campaigns, charities, funding businesses or equity. They are into one thing: If you have an idea for a project, which includes a beginning, an end and a deliverable, they will help you fund it.

Richard describes what the deliverable can be and why it has to be clearly defined.

You'll discover why the founders of Kickstarter built the platform and the reason it started with film and music.

Listen to the show to find out how Richard picked the name for his podcast, Funding the Dream.

Types of businesses that benefit from Kickstarter

Richard explains how film is the largest category when it comes to sheer numbers. Sundance Film Festival has had 14 of their projects backed by Kickstarter. This year for the first time, an Academy Award was won by a Kickstarter project.

Amanda Palmer made news when she raised more than $1 million to fund her new CD.

Richard explains how Kickstarter has 13 different categories and 50 subcategories. One of the biggest categories that gets covered in the news is technology.

Transformation is what is happening with Kickstarter and crowd funding. Every Kickstarter category that catches fire turns everything upside down.

Richard gives an example of a project he has backed recently and how in the past you'd have to convince a bank to give you a business loan for your idea. But Kickstarter totally transforms the money.

You'll hear the difference between reward-based and equity-based crowd funding.

Richard tells the story of how his reputation led Kic...