If you haven’t already checked out 6 Websites to Promote Your Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or Crowdfunding Product After Funding, I recommend that you do after reading this article.
It’s easy to think that everything is over once you’ve hit your fundraising goal. You’ve managed to attract a base of supportive backers. You accomplished what you set out to do!
However, ironically, the more successful you are, the more work you have to do. You must now follow through on your campaign and begin producing and shipping rewards.
In the process of campaigning, you may have gathered some media attention and might be receiving questions like “Where can I get one of ____.” The question begins to form: what’s the best way to capitalize on your Kickstarter success?
Some of the websites and services below can help with these problems and questions. I do not endorse any of the service providers or sites. Should you choose to use them, please leave a comment on this article with your experience so that other creators can benefit!
1. Post-Kickstarter Stores
Several post-kickstarter stores have emerged in the recent years that I have written about in a previous post. Some take commissions, some just like to a location where visitors can purchase your product. Be sure to read the terms of service.
– ForeverGeek: ForeverGeek is a new Kickstarter store that sells products that have been successfully funded on Kickstarter. The main advantage that I see over other post-kickstarter stores is that this store integrates with the ForeverGeek blog, which targets individuals into anime, comics, movies, television, and “geekery.”
– TinyLightBulbs: TinyLightBulbs is another Kickstarter store that has been around longer and includes products from Indiegogo, RocketHub, and Fundable in addition to products from Kickstarter. The website also takes 13% commission of any sales. On the one hand, this is good because it incentivizes the website to promote your crowdfunded products. On the other hand, it is a percentage of your revenue that is going to a third party.
– WordPress + Woocommerce: You can create your own post-Kickstarter store by integrating a wordpress-based website with the woocommerce plugin. The woocommerce plugin (free) allows you to set prices, track shipping, use paypal, and integrates tax and shipping options. You would only suffer the PayPal fee + any credit/debit card processing.
– Shopify: You can also create your own order page by using Shopify. At the time of writing, it costs $14-$179 per month and there is also a free post-Kickstarter website theme.
2. Fulfillment Companies
– Fulfillrite: Fulfillrite has been nice enough to sponsor a few articles on this blog. One on estimating costs for your Kickstarter campaign. They have been doing ecommerce order fulfillment for five years, have transparent pricing, and same day shipping.
– Warehousing and Fulfillment: Warehousing and Fulfillment has sponsored an article on CrowdfundingPR and, unlike Fulfillrite, is more of a lead generation company (to my understanding). They pair you up with a fulfillment provider based on your needs. They have screened all the companies that are a part of their rolodex.
– Shipwire: Shipwire is another eCommerce warehousing and fulfillment company. They cite Evernote and Zynga as customers. What I like about them is they have provided downloadable PDFs for crowdfunders, including Fulfilling Kickstarter: Shipping your rewards, and Kickstart Your Idea Into A Ship”able” Product. It’s a pretty low barrier way to interact with the company and get some information on kickstarter reward fulfillment.
3. Continue Fundraising
– Crowdhoster: Crowdhoster is a new Crowdtilt initiative and it helps creators launch their own crowdfunding page “without touching a line of code.” It’s also great because they don’t charge any fees like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. They also have a new “recurring billing” option. Finally, they have a variety of themes that you can choose from.
– Selfstarter.Us: Selfstarter is another open source ad-hoc crowdfunding website that you can use to continue fundraising for your product. It was put together by Lockitron after they were turned down from Kickstarter. Based on Ruby on Rails, this open source platform can be customized to your needs.
– CauseVox: CauseVoz is more well known for donation-based crowdfunding and fundraisers, but you could also use it to continue crowdfunding for a product after your Kickstarter campaign has ended. They offer more features and functionality than the above two options, but they also take 2.5% (limited time, reg 5%). They also charge $49-$129 per month if you would like to do multiple fundraising pages or edit html/css for your page. Finally, you can choose to implement “donation tiers” if you would like.
– Pre-Order w/ WooCommerce: As mentioned in the above section, a wordpress-based website paired with the WooCommerce plugin is a great ecommerce solution. You can also use the WooCommerce plugin to sell “pre-orders” for products and services.
4. Virtual Assistants and Contractors
Contractors
You can assign contractors projects (project quote) or pay via an hourly rate.
– Elance: For most people, Elance is the most well-known outsourcing website on the web. Using Elance, you can easily signup with LinkedIn, create a project, and begin accepting bids. Elance also links with PayPal for easy payment. Like other freelancing websites, you can create milestones and there is an escrow protection feature so that the funds you pay are only released if the freelancer completes their tasks. Elance deducts a 8.75% service fee to all invoices submitted by freelancers (but there is no cost for employers).
The first time I posted a project on Elance, I got a lot of submissions from people in India and Pakistan. I chose someone from Australia to complete the project at a reasonable cost and did not have any trouble. The second time I posted a project on Elance, I was not satisfied with the work of the freelancer, who I hired from India, and had to dispute the payment. I didn’t lose any money, but lost time, as I then had to find someone else for the job.
– Odesk: So far, I have had good experiences with Odesk. In my opinion, the quality of freelancers is much higher (also the price). You can create custom job-related questions that freelancers must answer, require them to submit cover letters, and set the level of english you would like them to have. I also like that you can specify the area of the world that you would like to accept job applications from (North America, etc). It’s free for employers and freelancers are charged a 10% fee.
– Freelancer: I have also had good experiences with Freelancer, however, you must be very careful to screen applicants to any job postings you create. Like Elance, Freelancer is international and you can expect people from India, Pakistan, Jamaica, etc to apply to your ad. You can specify that they must have basic english skills. Freelancer takes a whopping 3% or $3.00 USD (whichever is greater) for fixed price projects or 3% for hourly projects even if you are an employer. For freelancers, it takes 10% or $5.00 USD for fixed projects (whichever is greater) and 10% for hourly projects. I try to stay away from Freelancer due to the high fees.
– Guru: I haven’t used guru, but it’s another popular website to find freelancers. They charge a 4.5% or 9% fee depending on one’s membership level for freelancers. It is free for employers. If anyone has used them, please leave a review as a comment.
Virtual Assistants
Examples of tasks you can assign a VA include: data entry, email inbox processing, proofreading, formatting of documents, social media posting, purchasing items, making reservations, scheduling, and booking travel itinerary.
– Zirtual: Zirtual helps you delegate your scheduling, research tasks, and travel-related tasks to virtual assistants. Unlike freelance projects, you need to signup from a membership ranging from $99-$749 per month. The $99 plan gives you fifteen 15-minute tasks that you can assign to your VA (Virtual Assistant) per month. The $749 plan give you 32 hours of dedicated support per month and email/phone/sms support.
– TaskRabbit: Unlike online VAs, TaskRabbit will assign you a physical assistant to help you in your life. You can describe what needs to be done (household tasks, skilled tasks, etc) and get bids. You can also use it for virtual tasks. For example, you could ask a TaskRabbit worker to shop for groceries (avg $35) or clean your house (avg $60). You could also ask them to help pack crowdfunding rewards for shipping! TaskRabbit’s Service fee is “20% of the TaskPrice on every completed task.”
– Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: Using Mechanical Turk, you can hire people to complete “human intelligence tasks.” Some of these might include: data entry, classifying images, creating transcripts, or editing content. “Amazon Mechanical Turk collects a 10% commission on top of the amount you have paid someone to complete your human intelligence task.”
5. Make a Website
– Wix: Wix is a free tool that you can use to make a personal website (HTML5 and mobile friendly). You can choose from a variety of templates and it’s a simple drag and drop website builder. You can also use Wix to set up an online store. Paid upgrades include google analytics, premium support, no mobile ads, and more.
– Webs: Similar to Wix, Webs allows you create a free website with free hosting. They also have a variety of templates. Some of their upgrades include more online storage, no ads, more webstore items, and stats/analytics.
– Weebly: Weebly is another drag and drop website creation tool. It can be used to create a website, blog, or store. Upgrades include being able to connect your domain to the service and having fully integrated ecommerce features.
– SquareSpace: Using SquareSpace, you can create your own website ranging from $8/month to $24/month.
– Domain service providers (GoDaddy, 1and1.com, etc): Many domain service providers also have website building tools that they have created to help you get up a launch page or a simple ecommerce store. Prices will vary.
– WordPress: WordPress.com can be used to create an online blog and wordpress.org can be used to install wordpress on a hosting provider to make a fully-functioning website. Usually, wordpress.org requires a little more coding ability. I love wordpress because of the great plugins, which expand functionality. I also like the helpful community and the wide range of free and paid templates created by independent developers.
