Question
We're building a social language app. We're a developer and a designer so we've been able to bootstrap to beta. We want to stay bootstrapped and take the whole process somewhat slowly - soft launch in a small country, launch in Canada, launch in the US. The only immediate, recurring cost we see is our backend - we're using Parse.
So we want to raise $10k-$20k. Still getting product validation but if that goes decently well, I'm imagining $20k will be relatively easy to raise.
We thought about Indiegogo a while ago (Kickstarter doesn't allow apps), and our circumstances are changing for the better as we progress, so it's not our main option at the moment.
But here our the advantages as I see it:
- The money is free, and $10-20k can cost a lot at this stage
- It's our initial marketing campaign
Disadvantages:
- It's a lot of work to run a campaign. But since it is a first initial marketing campaign, we want to do that work anyway
- Apps don't do well on Indiegogo in general. However, there was a social soccer app that raised I think $25k when I saw it, and the campaign wasn't over. But that was definitely the outlier.
- Legal issues with taking/using this money?
Answer
I think the trick to crowdfunding is to make it interactive and have a good offering. If you have a magazine, sell advertising space, if you have a brochure or a flyer sell a space in there for businesses to advertise in, do an event and get paid for it, hold a dinner and get paid for it, host a speaking gig that is themed, a webinar, hold an econference ask people to sponsor you,do a podcast, sell some books, create a club and offer membership to it, hold a series of roundtable networking events.
Also actively utilise the power of social media, promote and ask others to share your articles post and content, tag people, engage people through messages. Ask to have sit downs through zooms, and do research and producing viral content. Remind yourself that there are people out there who would want to submit funds to my campaign, they just need to see my campaign. Go for ultimate visibility. Videos on YouTube, linkedin and all the other platforms. Videos are more engaging and more emotive be a storyteller.
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