Preparing to launch crowdfunding campaign is scary! You’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty, new terminology, and of course, there’s always the fear of failure.
Thankfully, over the years, several different educational resources and online tools have sprung up to help you on this journey. When CrowdCrux was first started, this wasn’t the case.
This list will help you find everything you need to know about crowdfunding before you launch, along with some tools to help promote your campaign and reach out to influencers. First, I’ll cover a few sources to learn from and then a few tools that you can use to boost your campaign.
1. Kickstarter’s Creator Basics Video Series
Kickstarter has Creator Basics Video Series on YouTube, featuring interviews with creators from different categories, including Dance & Theatre, Comics, Film, Music, Games, Design and more. These short videos cover basics topics like setting your funding goal, planning rewards and building an audience. Kickstarter also has the creator handbook.
2. Indiegogo’s Crowdfunding Field Guide
Indiegogo’s crowdfunding field guide is free to download from their website, and is available in six languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and German. This concise guide contains helpful information and resources to take you through the planning and execution of your campaign and even has a useful checklist to make sure you don’t forget any important elements.
3. CrowdCrux’s Crowdfunding Community
We work really hard to provide the best content on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and crowdfunding. There are a few FREE different resources that you can use to plan and market your campaign, which I’ll go into below.
First, there’s our blog, which Sal has been writing since 2012. We’ve covered nearly every topic of creating, marketing, and managing your crowdfunding campaign with over 560 free articles.
You can feel free to use the search bar on the righthand corner of this website to discover content on various topics, go through the blog archive, or subscribe to our newsletter, which highlights our best content.
Next, there are our two online forums where you can discuss crowdfunding, connect with other creators and entrepreneurs, and ask questions!
Each forum has over 6,000 members and I’m always excited to meet new creative types there. The forums also have a lot of archives that you can look through for answers to various topics.
For those of you who are auditory learners, Sal also interviews successful crowdfunders on the Crowdfunding Demystified podcast, which is available on this blog and on iTunes or Stitcher.
We’ve received over 60 positive reviews and are currently on episode #88 of the podcast. Sal has talked with entrepreneurs who have raised well over $1 million on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. He also has an “Ask Sal” segment where listeners can submit their audio questions to be answered on the podcast.
Finally, the newest edition to our education center is the CrowdCrux YouTube channel. This channel is meant to bring actionable advice to our community with short engaging videos.
Thus far, we’ve been getting some amazing feedback on the YouTube channel like:
We’ve SUPER committed to helping you on this journey!
Bonus: Our Free Kickstarter Course
4. Fundable’s Crowdfunding Guide
Fundable’s crowdfunding guide gives a complete overview of what crowdfunding is, its history, information about the different types of crowdfunding, if its right for you, and more. This guide goes into a little bit more detail than the Indiegogo field guide, which is good if you want deeper information about crowdfunding and not just the simple step-by-step guide.
5. Shopify’s Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding
Shopify’s Crowdfunding Guide consists of 23 comprehensive chapters that teach you all you need to know to launch a successful campaign. These quick to read chapters cover topics like, “What Can I Crowdfund?”, “How to Get Press Coverage”, “13 DIY Tools For Your Campaign” and more.
6. Seven Figure Funding
This course was put together by Bryce who raised $1.3 million on Kickstarter for the Ravean heated jacket. We had him on Episode 58 and Episode 86 of the podcast.
It walks you through the steps he used to raise over $1 million with crowdfunding and breaks down exactly what he did to prepare, get traffic, and increase pledges to his campaign.
The day after we shared his course with our audience, he already reported one great testimonial.
“Thanks for your feedback. I greatly appreciate it. And, by the way, your modules on SFF are truly exceptional! It’s one of the best programs of any kind I’ve ever seen–extremely comprehensive and well communicated. I’ll be recommending it to everyone I know.
Thanks so much for your counsel, Bryce.
Best regards,
JP”
I hope that these websites will prove to be useful when you’re discovering the best tricks and tips to launch a great campaign. I’m going to go over some of the tools that you can use next to boost your campaign.
But, before I do, I did want to mention that there are other crowdfunding-related podcasts, ecommerce podcasts, and other helpful websites out there. Google is probably going to be your best resource.
7. Prefundia
Prefundia is a platform that lets you create a ‘coming soon’ page for your crowdfunding campaign, where you can begin to attract an audience and get feedback before you launch. You can also use your Prefundia page to collect email addresses to keep potential backers updated and notify them when you launch.
8. Advertising Options
More and more crowdfunding campaigners are using advertising as a way to get a jumpstart in pledges, maintain momentum throughout the mid-campaign slump, and boost their campaign in the rankings of Indiegogo or Kickstarter.
The link above will take you to a guide we put together which discusses some of these advertising options and the results that others have received.
9. Press release websites
Although press releases should always be combined with direct outreach, we do believe that they have value and have put together a list of different resources and websites that you can consider using for your campaign.
Remember that no matter how good your distribution or outreach may be, your actual PR story is what determines whether or not journalists will write about you. Bloggers, journalists, and reporters are in the business of providing content for an audience. You must think about your campaign fits into that message.
Notable mentions
Intrastate Crowdfunding Resource Center: If you are looking beyond rewards crowdfunding and are thinking about launching an equity campaign, the Intrastate Crowdfunding Resource Center can be a good place to start familiarizing yourself with the crowdfunding rules in your state. For more information on this topic, you can also check out this post.
CrowdfundAttny.com: When going into debt or equity crowdfunding, it is often recommended that you get legal advice before proceeding. If you are thinking of crowdfunding an investment online you should make sure that you follow all of the rules. Mark Roderick runs the blog, CrowdfundAttny.com, where you can find helpful interviews and articles on crowdfunding laws, information on preparing a Regulation A+ campaign and more.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the educational resources and tools you can use when planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign. If you’d like to check out even MORE tools, check out this article with 15+ tools and this one.
