Crowd-Sourced Funding for Media Properties

Crowd-Sourced Funding for Media Properties

Sure, fans can be your viral marketers and your digital evangelists, but did you know they could also be your investors and your digital angels?

Innovative developers and producers are turning to their future customers to finance the properties these audiences want to see made.

App developers are turning to the wholesale marketplace, where savvy individuals will put up cash to share in revenues of future mobile apps.

With more than $280M invested in 35 different crowd-funding platforms during 2011 – an average investment of $8M per funding round – it is clear that the industry has reached a level of maturity that merits attention from the media production sector.

Don’t leave money on the table!

In the FanTrust spirit of top recommendations to clients, we would also like to add, “Don’t leave money in the digital ether.” Here are some places you can go online to crowd-source funding for your projects.

FanTrust’s latest business whitepaper gives you a high-level look at media’s new backers and fandom’s new frontier, including:

  • Crowd-funding destinations and resources
  • Investment and revenue models
  • Success stories

Read or download Crowd-Sourced Funding For Media Properties

UPDATE: The stick figure fantasy comic strip, “The Order of the Stick“, set a Kickstarter goal of $57,750 on January 22, 2012. The purpose of the campaign was to allow creator Rich Burlew to continue creating and publishing his work.

$47,000 was raised within the first 24 hours. That’s 87% of the Kickstarter goal.

As of February 21, a total of 14,952 backers pledged a record-setting $1,254,120.

Here are a few highlights from the campaign:

  • Second most funds pledged to a completed Kickstarter drive ever.
  • The third Kickstarter project in history to reach one million dollars in pledges.
  • The most funded creative work in Kickstarter history in any medium, ever.
  • The most funded project by a single person (rather than a company), ever.
  • 2127% funded from my initial goal of $57,750.
  • 35 goals reached
  • 28 updates made (including this one)
  • 63 increasingly-byzantine reward packages
  • 14,952 backers
  • Over 25,000 books sold
  • Over 16,000 comments made

Click here to see the full details on the project.

UPDATE #2: Kickstarter successfully raises over $119 million, taking home $6 million in it’s third year.

As Kickstarter’s third year comes to a close, The Next Web wanted to know: How much did the company help raise? Since we know the company takes 5% of funds raised, this also gives us insight into its revenues.

The results are awe-inspiring. In the year since Kickstarter reported its numbers, the company helped raise a total of $119.6M for successfully-funded projects. That’s almost three times as much as the amount raised during the company’s first two years. Taking into account Kickstarter’s 5% commission, we can estimate that the company took home just shy of $6M in commission revenue in its third year.

N.B. This was compiled by The Next Web and is not official data from Kickstarter.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article on The Next Web.

UPDATE #3: As soon as September 9, 2013, Canadians can launch crowd-funding campaigns on Kickstarter. 

Vital Stat: 44% of all Kickstarter project reach their funding goal

“Indiegogo’s percentage is thought to be within ten points of Kickstarter’s 44 percent by various bloggers. In an email Indiegogo co-founder Danae Ringelmann offered this response: “Indiegogo doesn’t quantify this percentage because even if a campaign doesn’t reach its goal, it can still be considered a success.””

Click here to read more on this in the June 19, 2013 article in TechVibes.

UPDATE #4: Star Citizen Hits $15 Million Crowdfunding Milestone

“Roberts Space Industries announced that its upcoming space simulation Star Citizen (being helmed by Chris Roberts – creator of Wing Commander and Privateer) has raised over $15 million through crowd-funding. The crowdfunding cash comes from a combination of money raised through a highly successful Kickstarter campaign and crowd-funding efforts on the Roberts Space Industries company and Star Citizen web sites.”

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article in GamePolitics.com