Tuesday 28 July 2015

#Crowdfunding Last Things before Launch

So I have had a look at all the tips and I have even investigated the platform and tried to find contacts of other guys who used the platform for similar type of idea funding. Who knows, maybe they will want to give an advice?



Out of 3 projects I found there and contacted there was only one guy who replied :( Why would that be? people do not want to share experience? I found it sadly strange and keep the hope they are on holidays and can't access their e-mails.
The good advice that only guy gave me was that I need to be persistent in posting and never beg and try to push a bit people and make them think they are doing good things by supporting my project. feeling a bit weird but still want to do it.
And yes, my project has moved to the stage called "Ready to preview?" which means if I push the button I can't make any changes. Feeling great for the work done so far! Let's push the button ;)

Saturday 25 July 2015

#Crowdfunding Before Journey Starts



Great to go almost. I have just received some useful tips from Fundit on how to promote my CF campaign. I want to share them apart from other I plan to use.

(I do not modify them so it's a quoting basically)
Very good tips are given on the following ways to promote your campaign:

  • go for personal mailing lists to make sure you cover your first circle of funding
  • go for company mailing asking colleagues to support
  • consider different ways of promoting on different stages of the campaign (start, middle, prior to end and post campaign)
  • avoid begging!
  • go for value promotion
  • communicate story, team, project etc.
  • your audience is super important (engage with it!)
  • use targeted media
  • go for marketing promo mix (online. offline and combination of both).


Friday 24 July 2015

#Crowdfunding Part 4

After pulling all together I have submitted the following information about the project to the CF platform:

I have submitted the following looooong description:
**********
Clever Books are the books with personalised stories for kids. We cover day to day life routines  helping parents to teach kids through stories to brush teeth, keep room in order, help parents and much more. This idea is coming from me and my husband as we use stories for our kid and decided to share our experience with other parents through creating great quality books.
Being an Irish start-up company we are looking for local support and the funds we are aiming to raise will be use for the following following purposes:
1) to  create the rest 5 books of the blue book series with new stories (we need to pay designer work, publishing and arts/illustrations)
2) to create marketing awareness campaign so more people in Ireland become aware of our products

We are gladly presenting what we have already achieved so far with our own funds: this is the Blue Book of personalised stories and we believe we can achieve even more with your support!

The Blue Book Set includes
1 book of 32 pages of 204 X 145 mm size
5 unique tales about YOUR KID
great illustrations
7 photos of YOUR KID printed in the book!
softcover
extra-white paper with a thickness of 0.3 mm (300 g/m2)
semi-matte paper with a very soft surface
pages that turn easily and never crease or tear
high quality printing
eco-friendly

5 customised tales, where your kid is the main character covering the following educative topics:
The Story of the Sad Teeth (importance of brushing teeth)
The Joy of Giving a Gift (sharing with others and making presents)
Tale of a Helpful Kid (importance of helping parents)
Why we go to creche/school (going to creche/school depending on the child's age)
Tale about The Land of Chocolate (if kids need to be careful with eating sweets).
********
And I have submitted the awards as well the following way (I wanted to keep it simple and really value for money if you go for project funding)

I have submitted the project and it has been returned :( In general it looked good good but for
1. picture needs to be changed. I will work on it and resubmit.
2. as a recommendation I was asked to add more information about team members. good point!

Work keeps on!

Thursday 23 July 2015

#Crowdfunding. Part 3

And here we come with the project description on the selected CF. So I have got the video already. You can see it here
I have had a chat with the CF and the advised me the following:

  1. Create a story behind the project and where the idea came from.
  2. Provide full description and provide visual (video and pictures) of the product.
  3. Write down the description of full product specification.
  4. Set up reward scheme. This one is very interesting. They say it's better not to go for smallest reward like 5 EUR or so even if it's just "Thanks" from company. The reason behind is that people tend to go and support with the smallest amount in order to support and feel good. So don't use that.
  5. Also, set up the shortest funding period possible due to the reason that people tend to postpone things and they need to feel urgency to take part in the project and the shorter period the better it is.
  6. Pictures should be clear and demonstrate the product without any destructing extras.
  7. Number of rewards you provide (especially they are limited) should be calculated in advance to make sure they amount of funding they represent will match the funding amount you are aiming to get.

Wednesday 22 July 2015

#Crowdfunding. Part 2


And here it comes! I have selected an Irish crowdfunding platform
By the way! Selecting the platform is on of the important moments 

  • as you need to consider not only your first two circles as funding potential but also who are the regular visitors to this platform as they may be your potential investors as well. So search if your project scope really falling into their portfolio. The CF platform will also share your project in their social media and you need to have your target there as well.
  • go for local especially as I want to target local people and therefore it makes sense to select local CF platform. By the way if you consider selecting not local one, check out legal part as at the end you may not be able to withdraw the money or they will not accept your project
  • read some feedback about platform
  • have a look ta the projects of your type that were funded there and how successful they were and analyze.
This all is of course general and each case is individually evaluated. I have only outlined what I have personally considered while making my selection.

I have came across this website once and found it very useful. These guys are doing a good job in CF platforms analysis and give a lot of useful data.

Tuesday 21 July 2015

#Crowdfunding. Part 1


Many people were asking me about #crowdfunding and how to do it and if its difficult and so on. So I decided to create a campaign and let's watch what happens :)
This is the first time I do it in #Ireland. Other #campaigns I have done were abroad and I was either designing them or leading but I never did one on my own. Let's walk it through together.
One of my businesses is connected to #publishing (www.cleverbooks.eu). I write stories and publish books for kids with educative stories that help parents in solving tiny day to day issues through #personalized stories. That's roughly the idea.
Basically we have done sales however strangely enough outside Ireland mainly. So we use this campaign to create awareness in Ireland that we exist.

Let's set up the main objectives now:
1. Get funds for marketing the business in Ireland.
2. Create awareness through CF campaign about the business.

Don't seem to be SMART enough.. let's try this way:
1. Get 3000 EUR in 60 days through CF campaign on Fundit for marketing expenses to promote CleverBooks in Ireland.
2. Use 1000 EUR for creating 5 new books with new stories in the next 11 months.
3. Create awareness for the business locally in the republic of Ireland reaching out up to 500K people (fingers crossed!!).

Goals seem to be smart and fingers crossed we are good to go. Watch out for the new part on how I set up the campaign and what came next!

P.S. And here you can see the book: