Kickstarter vs Your own crowdfunding platform

What is crowdfunding? And how crowdfunding software works?

Crowdfunding is the term used for public funding. It’s not at all a new term for the new world, the only difference is the medium of fund raising.In earlier times people used to raise funds manually and would rely on the commitment from word of mouth whereas in modern times we have softwares having the entire system for crowdfunding developed and everything is managed electronically using internet.

Crowdfunding is basically a practice of collecting a small amount of money from a large group of people, and then use that for business, investigation, creativity, welfare and what not. The type of terms the lander has agreed upon decides if they will get return on their investment or not.

The most critical part of any business to be started or even any social cause to be done is fund raising. Crowdfunding softwares from fundraisingscript.com understands this requirement and based on that only they provide varied crowdfunding softwares focusing on various industries such as Equity, Realestate, Donation, Reward, Renewable Energy, P2P Lending based crowdfunding softwares. If you are looking for a Kickstarter Alternative, we provided the solution with more freedom and benefits.

The basic functionalities of any crowdfunding software are campaign creation, fundraising and reward or interest distribution if applicable. So, the process goes like this – first the person who wants to raise funds for whatever business or social cause they have to create a campaign by providing answers to the set of questions. Once the campaign is live on the platform you are ready to get funded and crowdfunding softwares already has the investment process developed in it that will support investors for what and how to invest. Next, the crowdfunding platforms watch over the campaign all the time and notify you once the goal amount is raised or you have reached the end date and will transfer the amount raised to you if you match the criterias. Lastly if your campaign has committed any returns to your investors the platform supports the repayment and distribution process as well.

What can crowdfunding do for powering startups and businesses?

Startups with potential ideas can serve society with benefits, but history has been a witness of the struggle of new ideas to gather social acceptance. Existing businesses also require to power up sometimes to stay in market limelight. There are dozens of creative people and teams working in different domains but every business demands some sort of funding and most of them face challenges for getting funded.

The situation is no different rightnow compared to ‘The dot com boom’ in late 90’s. Mostly all the companies have their own websites and with help of technology and organic search algorithms of different search engines, they do get some or more visitors on their websites. But when it comes to getting funded you need more than just a visitor. Either you have to reach the investors or do something so they can reach you.

The crowdfunding platform for your business or startup is the best solution to overcome the above problems. You can start an entirely new platform or make it part of your existing website and direct investors to your crowdfunding campaign and offer them to invest for you. Create a fundraising campaign for your business with the goal amount to reach with it’s specifications for investment, Investor benefits and return terms and last but very important tell your story to your investor with short descriptions about your beginning, current business status and future plans.

Crowdfunding softwares offered by fundraisingscript.com already has an investment process inbuilt. Also you can integrate any payment method and any payment gateway to receive investments.

Benefits over kickstarter

Kickstarter is the world’s leading platform that supports ideas and inventions in many industries and in many countries. One of many drawbacks using kickstarter is you do not own your campaign entirely, which means you do not get to manage your investors. Whereas when you own your crowdfunding platform you have full control over your campaigns as well as you can decide how to market your campaign and also take care of the investor engagement. Fundraisingscript provides white labeled crowdfunding softwares is considered among the best Kickstarter alternatives in the market.

Below are the points to be considered as the benefits of using your own crowdfunding platform.

• How can one use an equity and debt based crowdfunding platform to attract people to fund for them?

  Companies looking to gather funds from the public sector working in any industry can use equity based crowdfunding to raise money. The heart of any crowdfunding campaign is it’s idea for raising funds, the more convincing you sound the more investors you get. Try to make a deal that offers maximum and long term returns or benefits to the investor. Now, the returns and benefits depend on if you offer equity or debt based deals to your investors. If you are running the campaign on your own crowdfunding platform you can share your campaigns on social media in a way that can attract potential investors.

  Equity based crowdfunding softwares provides two deal type options for campaign creation – Equity and Debt. So, equity will offer ownership in return of the investment whereas debt offers a certain percentage return on the investment amount for a period of time.

• Your own platform does not charge you any fees!

  All Kickstarter alternatives and kickstarter as well charge the fees and taxes for the campaigns you create on their platform. Some platforms take commission on the funds the campaign has raised while payout requests are served. Having your own platform can save you from this extra expanse and any other extra charges as you make your own decisions.

• Create as many fundraising campaigns for any number of projects you want to work on free of cost.

  If you are a creative person and one project is not enough for you, This is what you need! You can work on a number of ideas and create campaigns on your own crowdfunding platform, do marketing for them on social media or any other way and there’s no limit to your access free of cost. Whereas relying on other platforms will cost you money every time you want to create a new campaign.

  You will be free to use the platform to portray your ideas and creativity in your own unique way and this will help you attract an audience having your kind of mindset.

• You own your idea or product using your own crowdfunding platform unlike kickstarter.

  It is very well known that kickstarter claims ownership of your business idea if you have used their platform for fundraising and this comes under terms of working with them. Though there are many other crowdfunding platforms available in the market, they do not have such policies still while marketing or social media sharing they will make sure to show their presents. And marketing and promotion is the unavoidable part of any new idea.

  Owning a crowdfunding platform will give you 100% ownership of your idea as well as you are free to market it under your own label. The 100% ownership of an idea also becomes helpful when you actually launch your product or service in the market, it definitely makes a difference if you already have a name in the market.

• In case you are eligible for patent registration, you can easily claim for a patent as you won’t face any dispute when using your own crowdfunding platform.

  When you are raising funds to use your invention as a business idea and if you are eligible to patent the idea ,you do not want any disputes in your ownership claims. There is a chance of dispute while using other crowdfunding platforms and for kickstarter as earlier mentioned about their ownership claims. You can save your idea from all these unwanted circumstances just by owning a crowdfunding platform.

• You can add more features to your platform the way you want and your investors suggest.

  One of the benefits of owning your own fundraising platform is you get the freedom to make customizations on the platform. You can analyze what is lacking on your platform and what your investors are looking for, based on the analysis you can make a decision to develop new functionalities on the platform.

  Providing more facilities to your investors and keeping them engaged and informed on the platform will take them back for making more investments.

• Customize project creations flow as per campaign creation requirement.

  Campaign creation flow majorly takes the information of fundraising, campaign creator and campaign idea, rest these can be marking and deal type details. Owning a fundraising platform will give you all freedom to set a new campaign creation flow.

  You can design a different set of questions, Different approaches to displaying the details and can add cool graphics into the platform based on a set of requirements your industry has. You will be able to invite other campaigns as well to get funded on your platform The Kickstarter alternatives do offer customization work based on a set of requirements.

• Manage your own payment gateway without paying high fees.

  When you raise funds on other crowdfunding platforms as earlier discussed they charge you fees and also they will charge you for the transfer charges whatever payment gateway they use to release your payout. You can save your money here if you own a fundraiser platform.

In platform benefits

• Manage and engage your investors on your platform.

  “Your existing investors will get you new investors” – the word of mouth marketing still has the impact and you have the key to satisfy your investors, that is constantly engaging them. Know your investors and understand what they seek from investments. This becomes easy when you own your platform. You can run analytics code on the platform and know the surfing patterns of the users visiting your website.

  Based on the observations, prepare a plan to convert the visitors into your investors. You can do that in many ways with engaging content or offers etc.

• Have access to investment history.

  On your platform you can have access to the investment history of all your investors and this data is easily accessible to you as a platform owner. You can use this data to offer specific types of investment offers to a set of investors and try to engage them more in any other investments all in ethical practice.

• Keep in regular touch with your investors with email notifications, project updates and also through chat and personal contact if required.

  Owning a platform gives you access to activities of all the users active on the platform. You can set notifications, reminders, exclusive offers etc to constantly keep in touch with them. Fundraisingscript provides crowdfunding platforms which have updates and notifications modules already included.

  Schedule notifications for your investors on each project they have invested into. Send them newsletters and article suggestions based on their assumed interest area. This will keep your investor more inclined towards your platform.

  Integrating live chat support will help the platform to increase investor engagement and will help owners to get new investors.

• Grow users without worries about other campaign creator’s competitions.

  If you own your platform for fundraising you can market your campaign without worrying about competition with other campaign owners and you can market your campaign the way you want. There will not be any fear of losing your investors to some other better performing or better deal offering campaign.

How to creatively use crowdfunding platforms?

• Real estate

  • Realestate has always been considered as the best investment option since decades. Now crowdfunding has made it easy for a common man to invest in real estate.
  • This type of crowdfunding platform can be used for different real estate projects of any industry.
  • E.g. – A crowdfunding platform can raise a real estate campaign that is open for only 20 members for example for funding. And the group will own the property in partnership and can use the same for renting or for personal use.
  • The real estate crowdfunding product sold by fundraisingscript has a KYC verification feature that will help owners identify the valid campaigners and investors.

• Equities

  • Equity and debt are two major deal types that equity types of crowdfunding platforms offer. New ideas and businesses have brighter chances of getting funded when they offer attractive deals with big benefits.
  • Equity platform from fundraisingscript also comes with KYC support which has options to implement but is quite efficient when it comes to user identity verification.
  • E.g. – use for startups and new trial based idea implementation kind of projects. Offer equity or return on interest to investors.

• Donations

  • Use such platforms for unique social causes and life-touching ideas. If you own an NGO, orphanage, or old age home then you can have your own donation platform and accept online donations.
  • E.g. save environment projects, educational experiments

• Rewards

  • This platform can be used in many different unique ways and can touch different industries if one thinks creatively.
  • If you run free or nominal cost medical camps, educational seminars, or anything like fundraising events where tickets are given as a reward in return for donations.
  • E.g. – An event platform that organizes different events and donates the 50% amount of tickets sold and offers different rewards.