You might have heard recently about our new Kickstarter campaign we are currently running to launch our Semi-Virtual crochet courses.
I realise that a some of you are not necessarily familiar with what Kickstarter is so I’d like to talk about Kickstarter (and crowdfunding in general) to make it a little clearer for you to understand what we are doing and why we are doing it.
If you haven’t already, take a look at the Kickstarter website in general. Perhaps open the link in a new tab or window so you can flick between it and this post as we talk you round the site— www.kickstarter.com
Opened it up? Good now………..When you hit the home page you’ll see a featured project in the middle, categories and types of projects on the right, and more recent projects further down. “Projects” are the things that people are Kickstarting, or trying to raise money for. (Our project is called Learn to Crochet the Easy Way) Kickstarter exists so that startups and even established businesses like us can raise funding from anybody who’s interested in their products and projects. This is called “crowdfunding” – it’s open to anyone who wants to be involved.
So for an example of how it all works click the following link to see an example project we can talk to you about.
The campaign launchers want to raise $70,000, and as of when I wrote this post they’ve raised approximately $20,780
There are two twists with Kickstarter that make it different from normal money-raising and investing channels. Check out the right-hand side of the Queen’s Bookshop page, and you’ll see a rewards area, which starts with “Pledge $10 or more.”
If you pledge to give them $10, you’ll receive in return the rewards listed underneath. If you pledge $25, you’ll get the stuff in that box. And so on, with the dollar amount going up for larger rewards. So instead of just handing over money and hoping the product succeeds, you get something in return. Your card is not charged until the project ends and hits its targets.
The other twist is that if a project doesn’t meet its funding goal, it doesn’t get any money. So in this case, if the Queen’s Bookshop doesn’t get $70,000 in pledges, they don’t get anything. Even if they raise $69,999 the project will not fund.This protects you the pledger and helps ensure that the project is on the up-and-up. You won’t get charged a penny but you also wont receive any goodies.
Kickstarter is owned by Amazon, which gives some reassurance. And there has been some fantastic stories about how struggling businesses Kickstarted their project, got lots more money than they asked for, and got a whole new lease on (business) life. A great example of this is the Kerfluffles marshmallow lady:
She asked for $2,023, and her backers gave her $104,667! That’s a lot of marshmallows!
So for Beautiful Things and our Semi-Virtual Beginners Crochet kit, the idea is that a crowd (you!) will fund our project by pledging money and getting some great rewards in return, and also feel good that you’re helping to kickstart the kits into existence and make our awesome project a reality. We hope you’ll participate in our Kickstarter campaign!
We only have 12 days to go and still need to raise pledges of just over £800 to fund our project. Remember it’s an international project so we will post our kits and goodies WORLDWIDE.
If you do not need to learn to crochet there are still small pledges you can choose. The smallest being only £1. Just like facebook and other forms of social media, Kickstarter loves pledges. The more we receive the higher we climb up their ranks to and they will share our project far and wide. So go on, pledge to support us even if you only spare us £1 we will be super grateful.
Don’t want to pledge? That’s ok too, but please give our project a share amongst your friends and family and remember to show them this post too as not everyone ‘Gets’ Kickstarter.
Thank you in advance for all your pledges, likes, shares and general support, we really are very grateful.
