6 tips to turn your crowdfunding website in to money machine

Looking to start your own crowdfunding platform website or already have one? Then you must plan following 5 things if you have not planned yet or re-plan if you are not confident about existing plans to turn your crowdfunding platform in to money making machine.

1. Funding Type

Funding type is part of crowdfunding platform business model which defines the way of how campaign owners on your crowdfunding will get funded based on certain criteria.

There are two main crowdfunding models as

All or Nothing(AoN): All or Nothing also known as “Fixed funding”. In this type campaign owner only get funded if his/her campaign goal is achieved successfully within or before campaign deadline.

Keep it All(KiA): Keep it All also known as “Flexible funding” type where campaign owner get all funds accumulated during whole campaign duration regardless campaign owner hit funding goal or not.

2. Payment Gateway Solutions

Payment gateway is most important part of your crowdfunding platform and one can not imagine 

crowdfunding platform without a payment gateway, because that is the mechanism which will deal with all funds being transferred from contributors/investors to your crowdfunding website and campaign owner’s account(payment gateway account).

Payment gateway is the tap which controls the flow of payment on your crowdfunding platform and If you do not have proper control over payment flow on your crowdfunding platform, it would turn in to a disaster. There are plenty of payment gateway solution available but choose best solution meets your requirements. Your country of operation, local government rules and regulations, hosted vs non-hosted payment gateways etc are few other factors you need to keep in mind while choosing right payment gateway for your crowdfunding platform.

3. Payment Process

Deciding payment process aka payment flow aka funding process on your crowdfunding platform, comes right after selecting your payment gateway. So what is payment process and how does it affect your crowdfunding platform?

Mechanism behind treating payment received from contributors/investors on event of contribution/investment special way that it can serve different business models of crowdfunding platform.

Pre-Approved Payment Process: Pre-approved payment process is typical payment processing technique which pre-approve contributions on event of contribution/investment, but it won’t complete the transactions until the campaign reaches it’s goal by the time the deadline is reached. This is one of the payment process often being used under fixed funding type aka “All or Nothing”(AoN) model being using by popular crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, FundRazr, FundedByMe, DonorsChoose and Indiegogo.

Instant Payment Process: As name says itself in instant payment process contributions are processed immediately and deposited into campaign owner’s payment gateway account. This is the payment process being used with most popular and in demand funding type called flexible funding type aka “Keep it All”(KiA) model being using by popular crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo, Gofundme, CentUp, Ketto and JustGiving.

[quote scheme=”red” icon=”fa-quote-right” title=”- Jozefien Daelemans”]Crowdfunding isn’t about collecting money. It’s about making something happen with a crowd of people who believe in something. Normal people, not rich people with a lot of power, just people like you and me.[/quote]

4. Fees

This would be most concerning factor for your customers/campaign owners as this will be expenditure for them as well as for you as crowdfunding platform owner because this is main source of revenue generation for you and part of business model. Be fair, competitive and realistic while setting site fees for your crowdfunding platform. Check out here is the list of crowdfunding sites comparison by traffic rank and site fees.

There are plenty of crowdfunding platforms available running under different single or combination of business model as following.

Percentage Commission: This is most common revenue model being used by most of the crowdfunding platform on the internet. In percentage commission crowdfunding platform will earn defined percentage from each fund each fund/investment received by campaign.

Flat Fee: You may find few crowdfunding platforms charging you flat fee for listing your crowdfunding campaign on their platform. This kind of crowdfunding platforms are mainly consist of equity and real estate crowdfunding platforms because legally in some part of the world one can not charge equity issuer percentage commission on capital they raise on platform.

Where as there are also few crowdfunding platforms charge campaign owner flat fee as well as percentage commission from each fund/investment received by campaign.

No or Volunteer Fee: Few crowdfunding platforms charge no site fee with goal to fund 100% amount to campaign owner. Crowdfunding platforms doing this are mostly donation based crowdfunding platform allow cause to receive whole goal amount with option for contributors to choose volunteer fees to surplus donation amount.

Here are few examples, on how it works.

In case Flat Fee: Contributor make donation of $100 on a campaign/cause. From this $100 payment processing fees by payment gateway and site fee will be deducted and rest will be sent to campaign.

So $100 contribution – (3% payment processing + 5% site fee)= $92 goes to campaign.

In case of No or Volunteer Fee: Contributor make donation of $100 on a campaign/cause. From this $100 payment processing fees by payment gateway and site fee(volunteer) will be added on top of contribution amount and will be sent to campaign.

So $100 contribution + 3% payment processing + 5% volunteer fee = $108, from this $100 goes straight to campaign and rest to payment processing provider as well as crowdfunding platform owner.

If contributor do not volunteer to pay site fee

then $100 contribution + 3% payment processing= $103, from this $100 goes straight to campaign and rest to payment processing provider.

Membership or Subscription: Membership aka subscription based revenue model is best way to charge your clients/campaign owners based on their requirements. This is something different you can do from two types mentioned above, where you can charge recurring(monthly, bimonthly, yearly) fees to your campaign owners with set number of features like number of campaigns allowed per subscription, number of supporters allowed on each campaign and so on.

5. Funding Payout

You can choose either you want allow campaign owner to collect funds if goal amount is raised successfully before campaign deadline or want them to only collect funds on deadline regardless they raise successfully even before campaign ends.

Many crowdfunding platforms allow campaign owner to collect funds as soon as they raise goal amount regardless deadline. This is important and attractive approach for startup ideas looking to have access to funds as soon as possible to either start production, ship produced items or for any other need. Whereas some crowdfunding platforms do not allow this due to security reasons and as part for fraud prevention. So use this feature with care.

6. Over Funding

Over Funding is way to allow campaign owners raise fund more than funding goal. There are tons of crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter and indiegogo raised funds more than 100%. Over Funding is really exciting feature for both campaign owner and contributors, which allow contributors show their love to startup idea or cause. This is recommended feature for all crowdfunding platforms.

Conclusion

All tips above are to make your crowdfunding platform a sustainable online platform to help your community, so focus toward helping people and not only money with points above in consideration will automatically make your crowdfunding a money making machine for you.

Still have question, need more information or want to get quote for your custom crowdfunding? Get in touch now.