Crowd funding - any experience?

[Steve Maskery]

Evening all,
Does anyone here have any experience of using crowd funding for projects? It doesn't have to be a woody project, of course, any project.

I ask because I'd like to make more films. Now when I started, money was no object, I could afford to indulge my hobby in any reasonable way I liked. But that was in a previous life, it's not like that any more. I know everyone thinks that I rake it in from the millions of DVDs I sell every day, but the reality is that this project is really vanity publishing, and there has never been anything resembling a profit from the business. I'm not whingeing, just saying how it is.

But I have more films in my head and I'd like to make them. It does, however, mean quite a bit of investment. My camera is an SD camera that uses tapes, which are noisy. Everyone expects an HD quality image these days , and if I upgrade my camera, that also means upgrading my editing software, which in turn means upgrading my 2004 Windows XP computer. You can see the problem.

Now I have made some rather ridiculous financial decisions over the last few years, but (I think) I'm a bit saner at the moment and even I realise that it is not really a good financial investment to throw more money at specialist films, no matter how good they are. But I also know that the (relatively few) people who buy my stuff, by and large, like what they get.

So I'm thinking of trying to get lots of others to fund it all. I had a nice chat with Nick Gibbs this morning (he sounded as if he is getting on OK, under the circumstances, you'll be pleased to know) as he used crowd funding to publish his last issue of Living Woods. Does anyone else have any experience?

On a related note, I gather it is normal to offer "rewards" to potential backers and I also wondered what sort of rewards people would deem appropriate.

Any (sensible!) input gratefully received.

Steve

 

[Jamesc]

Absolutely no experience with crowd funding Steve, but I would be interested in the videos. I follow Woodworking Masterclass on YouTube. He is trying for Patreaon funding have a look at https://www.patreon.com/WoodworkingMasterclas?ty=h. You could offer benefits like additional content and maybe exclusive projects, or maybe discount on your previous videos.

If you manage to get this off the ground I definitely will be interested.

James

 

[marcros]

i have never used it, but have seen it. I think that to get some more useful input, you really need to fully scope out the project as a business in itself. when you have identified what you are going to produce, you can workout the inputs required, a payback and a breakeven point.

In terms of reward, if it was a £20 dvd, then I would have thought that for £15-£17 you could get a discounted pre-order copy, and pay upfront. The longer it is going to be between the payment and delivery, the more the discount. Since, we know you on this site, we may be willing to wait that bit longer than we would for an unknown person.

The problem that I see with doing what you are proposing is that you need almost 100% of your money before you can start. Could you borrow the equipment to make the next one, and just buy the software? You do, however have a proven product, so have an advantage in that respect.

If there is no profit in dvd production, could you instead look at committing a certain number of videos to youtube in return for your funding? Then, you could use the equipment for any other filming on the side. The youtube stuff would act as advertising, and would get you back in the swing of filming.

 

[Zeddedhed]

My 2 cents worth:

Personally i think the DVD has had it's day.

I own a full set of your DVD's and the first thing I did was transfer them to my Mac and then onto my 'phone/iPad so that i can watch them wherever I am.
(Don't worry - they ain't going anywhere they shouldn't)

I prefer to watch woodworking content in the workshop (I have a MacBook in the WS) and I think that much more this is the way people are 'consuming' content.

I reckon a Youtube Channel along with a website would be more appreciated and possibly make you more dosh, especially if you combine it with reviews (a la Peter Parfitt).

More and more people are looking to Youtube for learning purposes, so maybe that's where you should be making your knowledgable presence felt.

By the way, the DVD's are excellent.

 

[Woodmonkey]

^ what he said ^

 

[RogerS]

....
More and more people are looking to Youtube for learning purposes, so maybe that's where you should be making your knowledgable presence felt.

By the way, the DVD's are excellent.

But how do you make any money from Youtube?

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thank you all, especially for the thumbs up.
I absolutely agree about DVDs being antique, but at the time they were current technology, and it is quite a lot of work to get to download from where I am at the mo.
Thanks for the links, I'll take a look.

Roger, I think you have to make a short film about a tap-dancing cat singing to a backing track, then issue it as a ring tone for 99 cents a pop. Half the population of the planet downloads it and you retire to the Bahamas within a month.

Or you can do something worthwhile.

Such is life.

 

[marcros]

....
More and more people are looking to Youtube for learning purposes, so maybe that's where you should be making your knowledgable presence felt.

By the way, the DVD's are excellent.

But how do you make any money from Youtube?

i believe (but don't know as fact) that when you hit over a certain number of downloads, they start to pay you. I think it is 100k downloads.

Presumably, you can also charge to view, but I have only seen this on tv programmes, particularly bbc content.

 

[kostello]

YouTube have loads of help and information for people who run channels....
I've only dipped into it....my 7 year old wants to do makeup videos?!

If you want a real money maker you need a channel called something like " lady in a bikini learns to work with wood"

;-)

Sent from my E2303 using Tapatalk

 

[Steve Maskery]

I'm not wearing a bikini for anyone. I'm all for new experiences, but that is a lingerie too far.

 

[petermillard]

....
More and more people are looking to Youtube for learning purposes, so maybe that's where you should be making your knowledgable presence felt.

By the way, the DVD's are excellent.

But how do you make any money from Youtube?

Well, Steve doesn't seem to be making any money from selling DVDs, so it's all a bit moot really... FWIW YouTubers generally seem to get $200-$300 per 100k views from their share of advertising - you'll need a large back-catalogue of *very* popular videos to make a living from that, tbh. Which I think brings us to the fundamental problem with Steve's situation - he has a large back-catalogue of excellent work that was shot in the video equivalent of 8-track; I'm sorry, but I find it unwatchable, and I suspect I'm not alone. And it's not that 'everyone expects HD these days'; it's the 21st century - people can shoot, edit and post 4k video to YouTube with their phones!

FWIW my only brush with crowdsourcing was backing a (British) Kickstarter campaign that turned out to be an unmitigated disaster - never, ever, ever again.

@ Steve - is your iMac more recent than your WinXP box? I think from '07 onwards they could handle HD video, so a decent webcam (Logitech C920) on a long USB cable may be all you need to shoot in HD - though personally, these days I'd be looking to shoot 4k (at a minimum) just for the future-proofing.

Cheers, Pete

 

[Droogs]

Hi Steve,
If the super jig idea hasn't worked out then, may I suggest that you concentraite on offering downloadable digital content rather than physical DVDs. This way you are not format dependant and cost are greatly reduced, merely storage space on a server with a bandwidth allowance. That way you could do a series of short films offering an overview on youtube (teasers) and then allow people to D/L your main content after either an ongoing subscription fee (to help with running production costs) or a one off payment per film or series etc, you could then get your existing films digitised and offer those as well or even release a new and updated version

The main thing with crowd funding is to have your pitch presented in a polish and proffesional manner. have your spiel sorted before you launch and have prlenty of visual candy for the reader to see. Be that clips or pics of you doing your thing. make the incentive relatable to the donation. By that have 3 or 4 tiers of rewards from a mug Tshirt etc to the unusual. a small item made in the video using the techniques signed and serial number for example. so that the reader can have a token of the thing they have invested in

 

[Droogs]

perhaps for the person who donates the most you could offer a weekend in your lovely new workshop for 1 to 1 tuition

:-k what will I get for the wife

 

[JakeS]

I've backed several crowdfunded projects (nearly all of which have turned out well in the end, but also nearly all of which have been late), been involved with some of the work behind one but never run one myself - although I know a couple of people who have (on Kickstarter, to publish a book and a board game respectively) and could pass along questions if you have any specific queries?

Based on the (probably too many!) projects I've seen and followed (and sometimes backed), If you were to try and use Kickstarter or a similar platform to publish a DVD, my advice would be to:

- Use a well-known and trusted platform. I'd not heard of Crowdfunder before seeing the link on the Living Woods page after you mentioned it above, and I'd be reticent to give it my card number as a result. Kickstarter is popular and well-known, and IndieGoGo is probably the next-most-well-known option (although they have a bit of a bad name for the perception that their "flexible funding" option allows creators to run off with your money and not make anything).

- If you can possibly manage, keep the most-obvious reward (usually a copy of the product you're making) to around the £15 mark - higher than that, and it's out of impulse-purchase territory for a lot of people.

- If you have any pretence to offer your product to Americans, it would really help if you could find someone with a US bank account to officially run the project (read: hand the money off) because a lot of Americans a) are frightened of other currencies and b) have banks which refuse to let them spend their money in foreign countries, believe it or not. On one hand, the US is a big audience; on the other, they're already well-served; on the other other, they seem to have a curious fascination with British people and accents so long as they don't perceive us as being condescending, and if you can play off that, you may be in with a chance anyway!

- Offer multiple reward levels at multiple prices, ranging from a $/£1 "moral support" tier, a $20-5/£12-5 "get the DVD I'm making" tier right the way up to a £whatever "get the DVD, plus a Workshop Essentials T-Shirt, plus some stickers, plus the entire DVD back-catalogue, plus...". Think about those "and that's not all, you'll also get..." shopping-channel adverts for pen sets that come with vacuum cleaners and leather binders and office chairs and car polishing kits and so on - people are often willing to be enticed into spending some more money to get something that's sometimes even quite trivial. The come-and-get-a-weekend's-tuition suggestion would probably be a great top-tier reward! (Especially if you make cake, from what I've heard...)

- Lay out exactly what a backer will get in each reward clearly in a chart on the front page of the campaign, with a nice image mockup of the package alongside.

- Come up with some "stretch goals", so that if you reach your chosen funding level and then get even more on top, you start adding some trinkets to everyone's reward. It seems weird, but some people really do go and corral all their friends into backing your campaign in order to get a branded tote bag to carry their DVDs in or whatever. Obviously this all needs to be carefully budgeted to make sure you can actually afford to produce all the trinkets and still have enough money for the production of the DVD, and the best stretch goals are really things that upgrade the product you're trying to get funded - extra scenes, better audio quality, printed full-scale plans, etc.

- Get a sample video shot - even if it means borrowing a mate's mobile phone to record in a decent resolution, modern mobiles do surprisingly well at video - so you can run one in the intro to the KS campaign. It's not super-spiffy, but Adobe sell a cut-down version of Premier called "Premier Elements" for fairly reasonably money if you don't have any other software which can process HD video well enough to edit a demo video.

- Spend some time and/or ask a friend to help getting the KS page and the sample video nicely dressed up with some fancy and modern graphic design - the musical intros to your existing videos are fine for a DVD audience, but today's YouTube-saturated public will almost certainly prefer something snappier... and the world of YouTube woodworking is surprisingly short on decent graphic design, so a bit of production work could potentially go a long way. (I guess 'cause most YouTube woodworkers are still just one or two people running a thing from home.)

- Try and determine what time of year is best for asking woodworking people for money (I know, for example, that in board games it's generally considered a bad idea to run a campaign in January (because everyone's recovering from Christmas) or September (because there's a big gaming trade-show/convention in October and people will save their money for new releases)). Try and make sure that your campaign will end on a weekend afternoon/evening so that people have the best chance of being around to make last-minute contributions.

- Show your pre-launch campaign page around for feedback, because there'll inevitably be something that you forgot or some way in which your presentation could be improved that you just didn't think of on your own.

- Have a plan for marketing your campaign - you need to tell people about it, having it on a crowdfunding site only gives you the means to take people's money, not the audience!

- Have - and make clear to backers - a plan for actually producing the content and getting it to them. A lot of people are as wary of KS and similar sites as PeterMillard above, and a sound business plan will help assuage some of their fears. I know if I look at a campaign and it doesn't mention that the creator knows what kind of cut KS will take of the money they raise, that's a big red flag for me.

- Prepare to devote more time than you expected to running and marketing the campaign right up to the day it closes - I've not heard of a single person running a crowdfunding campaign who doesn't say it's exhausting.






However, it would also be worth considering the YouTube-media-empire options - where you get paid a cut of the advertising money YouTube makes off of your videos - although you'd probably have to move on to project videos sooner or later! I've enjoyed watching John Heisz renovating his house on YouTube - it's a bit late to monetise your workshop build (unless you want to write up a book with all those photos you took - another potential backer reward), but you surely have around-the-house projects that you could video, explain, upload and try and make a bit of cash from?

Personally I very much doubt that most people can tell the difference between 4k and 1080p on their computer/tablet/phone screens, so I wouldn't bother going any higher than HD if I were making videos for YouTube - particularly if there was a monetary cost difference for me and not just one of time spent editing and rendering video. You're making videos for people now, with the viewing equipment they have today - not magical future-computers with fantasy screens that barely exist yet.

Alternatively to YouTube, have you seen Patreon? It's a site where you can set yourself up as a creator and people promise to pay you a small sum every time you make something. Often Patreon backers are given small rewards (bits of exclusive content, trinkets etc.) to act as an incentive. My partner backs a digital artist who produces video art walkthroughs/tutorials that you get access to if you back her for $10 a month... and this artist rakes in something ridiculous like $30k a month in this manner.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Wow! It must have taken you an hour to write that! Thank you ever so much, it's all really helpful.
I think I have some thinking to do.
S
PS I could probably live on 30K a month...

 

[Kalimna]

I'm afraid I have nothing to offer with regard to crowdfunding, but I would add another vote to downloadable content.
I have purchased a couple of courses from O'Brien Guitars, and feel his method an excellent way to go. Essentially you have a well edited and clearly taught course on building guitars (acoustic, classical, electric , mandolin) and various aspects of woodwork (finishing, sharpening). These courses can be purchased whole at a slight discount, or individual chapters if only specific teaching is required. These courses are available through a password protected portion of his website.
Alongside the courses (downloadable or viewable via the website), you get access to a member-only forum and there is frequent dialogue between members and the host.
I wonder if something similar would work for you? Perhaps hosting courses on building, say, a workbench or a cupboard and bringing in aspects of tool prep, finishing etc? This wouldn't help with the initial funding, but may be more appropriate than DVDs these days.

Good luck, however,
Adam

 

[profchris]

I've done some research into the exploitation of intellectual property in the creative sector, and in the course of that talked to a number of creatives about crowdfunding. These are impressions though, not proper research findings.

1. For mass-market crowdfunding (think well-known musician financing an album) those participating might well be influenced by their likely return (CDs, T-shirts, discounted tickets etc). But for lower-profile projects the motives of participants are thought to be quite different.

2. "Donators" to a good cause is one group. For these, effectively the payment is disposable - any return is a nice bonus, but the important thing is helping the project happen. If you wanted to produce a series of YouTube videos, this group would be your target.

3. The other group wants to be part of the community that is making this project happen - in effect, they become your fans. Again, they don't see their payment as an investment against a (possible) future return, but rather the entrance payment to membership of the community. This group wants continued involvement in the project - examples might be sneak previews of your work, regular updates (via a closed Facebook group maybe?), even the possibility of meeting you and other fans (some kind of demo/workshop from time to time?).

4. In both cases, the appeal is more an emotional one than an economic one, and you need to craft your appeal accordingly. This means shifting your approach from what you want to do (that's your starting point) to what each group wants to happen. If you're targeting the first group you might stress the public benefit of your project, e.g. helping those getting started in woodworking. If you're targeting the second group, the focus should be on the "events' in which they can participate along the way.

5. As an example, a musician targeting the fan group might offer various tiers of participation: (a) you get the CD once it's complete, (b) you get the CD plus an e-newsletter each month (maybe with rough versions of new songs as they are written), plus some merchandise (mugs, t-shirts, whatever), (c) you get all this plus an invite to the studio when the CD is being recorded or a ticket to the launch concert. The idea is to tap into the differing levels of fandom, and also to get your funders personally invested in the project so that they can recruit other potential fan funders.

6. It looks to me as if you have a fan base here, so could put together a plan and discuss it here with those people to discover what they'd want in terms of participation. You need to find the emotional connection which opens wallets. And you need to fit this in to your own personality - if you hate meeting people some forms of participation are out, and similarly logistics (could you fit a dozen in your workshop for a masterclass? could you find a venue for giving a talk or a demo?) will drive what you can offer. And note what Adam has just written about an online forum to involve your funders. An important thing is to factor in the time all this engagement requires - musos are used to meeting their fans after gigs, woodworkers less so.

Good luck!

 

[monkeybiter]

Just some disordered thoughts;
If receiving paying guests/customers etc. what would the implications be to safety/guarding/insurance in the workshop? Would you really want all and sundry knowing where your workshop is?

Regards the costs of the equipment [the original point] you've stated that this is a vanity project [nothing wrong with that BTW] do you mean the previous output or/and the proposed new output? How would the costs compare to the cost of your WS roof for example? If they're both a means to the same end of doing what you want to do then maybe you could think about affording the cost in the same way.

As for ideas, perhaps people could commission a piece of work from you, with which they also receive a personalised 'making of' video that you could also sell in abridged form as a project guide.

I think it would help to output a lot of brief free snippets with individual tips, so you have plenty of new content to keep people interested.

Personal opinion; 4K is overkill.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thank you all for your very considered responses. I'm really grateful for the fact that you have taken the time to share your experiences and knowledge.
There is nothing above with which I disagree. Equivalent of 8-track! Yes, you are quite right, but it was the standard of the day, I think.

This is obviously a lot more complex than I had naively supposed. I do have a Facebook account but I've never used it, and I've never had a Tweet in my life, unless it was an obscure chocolate bar in a back street in Lusaka.

I did look in to downloads a couple of years ago, but I came to the conclusion that it was more expensive than DVDs. That is because the download operator (I think I was looking at iTunes as the platform), took a 30% cut. That is considerably more than my present distribution costs. At the mo, P&P does cover, pretty much, Paypal's fees and the postage costs. On some orders I make a bit, on some I lose a bit, but on average it sort of works. Not being able to charge that and then losing 30% baulks a bit, but I do recognise that DVDs are going the way of Betamax.

Such a lot to consider. This is an all-or-nothing jobbie, isn't it?

 

[profchris]

Bear in mind that with DVDs you have to get them burnt for you, pay for artwork, etc. Unless you're burning them yourself and printing the artwork, in which case you still have costs (including time, which you probably aren't costing).

OTOH, most crowdfunding I know of gives people something they can experience directly, either a tangible such as a DVD or a personal experience such as a performance. If you go the download route, think about tangibles which subscribers get as extras. T-shirts and mugs are traditional, but you might be able to get customised rulers, thumb planes, carpenter's pencils or whatever. Aliexpress.com might be your friend here, buying direct from the Chinese manufacturer. These brass thumb planes - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1pc-...est=201556_8,201527_4_71_72_73_74_75,201560_1 are about £8 each delivered, must be cheaper if you buy 100. Mainly desk ornaments, but cute enough to build involvement. The good thing is that with crowdfunding you don't have to order in your merchandise until you have reached your target, so you're not risking an upfront investment.

Or (and apologies that I don't know your DVDs), I see in your sig line that you make/design jigs. Subscribers at the right level could get these, or plans, or whatever.

Just chucking ideas at you now, so I'll stop.