Crowdfunding for Girl Clown (Part 1 - Basics of Creating a Campaign)

So, I had finished my script for GIRL CLOWN. But what to do next? I had figured out my budget for the film to be around $10,000. And that meant that I needed to raise money – quite a bit of money. So I thought I would try this Kickstarter thing.

Kickstarter is “all-or-nothing” funding for creative projects. If you do not reach or exceed your fundraising goal – you get NOTHING. But, the funding success rate for Kickstarter projects is 44%, meaning, 44% of projects DO make their goal and get funded – which is pretty cool, in my opinion.

So, I decided that I was going to do everything in my power to find out how to make a Kickstarter campaign successful. I decided to do some research and study WHY certain campaigns made their goals and others didn’t. And so I studied. I looked at lots of campaigns. I watched the videos, read the pitches and I compared the rewards. And in the end, I noticed 2 things.

What I noticed was this:

1. The people who had projects that were successful had really put a lot of time and thought into their campaigns, and especially into their VIDEOS. The videos were pretty much the most important thing, in my opinion, but overall, they had researched and prepared and done their homework.

2. The TRUST level generated by the campaigns was very high. I felt that the successful campaigns had a strong vision for their projects and that they would see them through.

Here are a few of my favorite articles on how to put together a good Kickstarter video and campaign:

*Creator’s Guide to Video

*Kickstarter Tips from a Fan of Crowdfunding

*Olga Nunes – Kickstarter

*10 Tips for a Better Kickstarter Campaign

*Wonder Russell’s Crowdfunder’s Bible

And so, I started to work on my own video and campaign.

And here is my finished product: my GIRL CLOWN Kickstarter video.

As you can see, the funding was successful – $8,716 total (more than $1,200 over the goal).