When launching a crowdfunding campaign, there is one key aspect that every entrepreneur must be careful about: demographics of the public using that platform.
Platform popularity and competition among campaigns are certainly important, but you should be very careful to properly categorize your project so that you choose the right platform to land your project.
Put that way, the largest platforms like Indiegogo, Kickstarter or Gofundme show several drawbacks that you should be aware of. Though immensely popular, all those platforms have a more tech-savvy public, people who like gadgets and technological innovations.
So here is the drill: competition is very fierce in those platforms, so you’ll have to fight your way up if you want to be featured in the platform and get a lot of attention and investment. But if your product doesn’t fit the platform’s demographics, you may be unable to properly capitalize on all the effort that you made to get early attention.
In addition, every platform has its own rules, like a previously defined reward structure, the requirement of a video and a minimal amount of early success to be considered to be featured, along with a fee charged on your project’s success. The most popular ones are those with stricter rules.
This is especially true if your project is not a traditional crowdfunding campaign that offers an end product or service to your backers. If you are aiming for charity or for equity, you should definitely choose a specific platform to launch your endeavor.
Another aspect that you should consider is geographic location. Kickstarter has just started operations in Spain. Canadian equity crowdfunding requires companies and platforms to be registered in Canada. So, if you are launching a project outside the US, you should definitely consider local alternatives. You may be surprised by the much better results you’ll be able to achieve.