Kickstarter
Photo courtesy of Kickstarter.com
Have you ever wanted to start something? A film, a record, a new product, and anything you could imagine putting out into the world. Your only limit is imagination, and your wallet. Thanks to a new website, however, the funding issue is being solved.
It works like this; the creator seeking funds post an idea on Kickstarter. It can be a basic idea, or a product that exists, that simply needs some money to get off the ground. The creator posts their work on Kickstarter with a predetermined goal. The goal is what the creator of the product hopes to reach in his or her fundraising endeavor.
In order to inspire confidence in the product, the backers are usually offered some kind of reward, or prize, and sometimes even a gift for the value equal to the money they pledged. These range from a kind word about you over a beer, to a dinner with the creator of the project. Most pledge rewards involve the product the donors pledge to support, and anything else the creator can use to incentivize this gift.
If you have a good idea, one that people really like, they will pledge money to help get your project off the ground, and if you reach your goal, then you get the money to make your dreams come true. If the project doesn’t reach its goal, however, no money exchanges hands. The project is simply not funded.
Kickstarter has only been around for a couple of years, but in the last couple of weeks it has risen in popularity due to a few projects that have broken the $1 million mark. These projects have broken many records, and have shown the power of crowd funding an idea, and that it isn’t necessary to get big corporations involved to get something off the ground.
One of the biggest projects is from a game studio, Double Fine Games. They wanted to make a point-and-click adventure game, a type of game that major publishers just don’t fund anymore due to a belief that they are unwanted, and out of date. They managed to raise $1 million in under 24 hours, showing that there is a demand for adventure games, enough to raise almost $2 million in a matter of days.
Kickstarter is beginning to become the go-to site for funding indie projects, and it would appear that they are beginning to hit their stride.