Fan Funding Part 2

Fan funding through social media and websites like Kickstarter continue to prove successful for many but some artist find that they cannot drive their campaign to meet the need goal to cash in. Levi James of Music Think Tank wrote an excellent article highlighting the top five reasons campaigns fail. He notes that while 56% of campaigns succeed there is the 46% that do not. As one may expect setting one’s expectation to high is on the list, be realistic and set a campaign fundraising goal that is inline with your fan base. These five suggestions apply to any fundraising and are useful for any artist.

If you have found that you just can’t meet your goals other services like gofundme.com allow for the fundraiser to withdraw as the campaign is in progress and are not required to meet the target before the project is financed. Care must be taken with these types of campaigns to ensure that you a capable of delivering on promised rewards for the tiers that are defined.

Other methods of fan funding include offering ‘pay what you want/can’ on albums placed on Bandcamp.com. I am preparing to do this for my back catalog, by offering them in this format for MP3. If a fan would like to contribute they can and I can also sell high lossless files of the same album for those that prefer quality. I feel the key is to have a variable set of options for fans and potential fans. These can be everything from free digital downloads to limited edition vinyl. The ‘pay what you want/can’ model may just surprise you with a value high then you would have sold the album at from a dedicated fan.