Crowdfunding, Easy Right?

Wow! This crowdfunding thing is a great idea! I can just put my project up on a crowdfunding site such as Indiegogo, sit back and the money comes rolling in, right? WRONG!

Crowdfunding requires work loyal Sensative blog readers. It’s work before, during and even after the campaign!

Before the campaign, you may have read about the research we did to determine what to do and not to do in planning and set up. Choosing a platform requires work to make sure you choose one that fulfills all of your requirements as there are some key differences that can affect your campaign if you’re not careful. Then, of course there’s the development of all of the materials, the text, pictures and perks, not to mention a 3 minute video that required a lot more work than we thought it would.

During the campaign you need to promote it, maintain it, update it and communicate to and thank the people who have been a part of it in one way or another. We’ve seen visitation on some days increase by 10 times when we’ve been active on social media regarding an article we were featured in compared to those days where we’ve been quiet. It was vital to update and answer questions in a timely manner, even on holidays and weekends to keep supporters up to date and draw in new contributors and increase publicity. We also reached out to hundreds of industry bloggers. Again, some activities work better than others, but the effort is worthwhile in the end as long as we learn something.

After the campaign there will be internal and external actions that need to be taken. Perks need to be fulfilled, packaged and shipped. We’ll look at the statistics to get a good understanding of what worked, what didn’t and try to understand why. This is important since the crowdfunding community could be seen as a microcosm of the greater market. And, the better understanding we have of that, the better chance we have to get Strips in to the hands of everyone who wants to make their windows and doors a part of their smarthome!

Wow! That is a lot of work! You may be asking, why do it? Is it worth it? When you look at the results, over 265% funded as of this writing, 7 articles published on Strips and Sensative in various countries, several tech sites wanting to test Strips, more than 16,500 visitors to our page and dozens of new followers on Facebook and Twitter, we’re very happy with our results and feel very confident that the work was well worth it. 

One of the key ways we learned about crowdfunding was to ask people who’ve been through a campaign of their own. And, now that we have too, we’re happy to share our experience. Email your question to us at info@sensative.com and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.