Kickstarter vs. Indigogo

[Keneu Luca]

Does anyone have experience using either Kickstarter or indidGoGo to raise money?

[John Myers]

I know several people who have had experience with both Kickstarter and Indigogo. Both sites are getting too big for their britches and more and more people are getting their projects lost in the bunch. Kickstarter has over 5000 other people running a project and to find them you have to wade through 400 plus pages.

 

Indigogo has much less but the way they show the sites is buggy. I had friends with projects that showed up beneath EXPIRED projects!

 

If you are going to use Kickstarter or Indigogo you must understand that they play favorites.

 

1) They bump projects to the top that are making money and bury other projects far below.

 

2) Your project won't even show up in the newest projects area until you have had a pledge. Talk about wanting to make money!

 

3) Kickstarter has a reputation for favoritism and it even started as an elitist site that only let "invited" people create projects. Even though they are open to all now they still strictly pick and choose which projects to accept. And they also have a STAFF RECOMMENDS part to the site. I checked on several of my friends projects and it seemed the same pet projects were always hogging the front page or getting interviews of facebook messages about them.

 

4) Kickstarter takes 5 percent. Indigogo takes 9 percent.

 

5) The user interface is messy. It is like staring at a Redbox machine and having to look at 400 pages to choose one.

 

6) There are 12 projects on each page. You better have a good picture if you hope to get noticed.

 

There are success stories, that is for sure. I just noticed a lot more failures.

 

7) Indigogo lets you keep whatever money you raise, Kickstarter won't hand over a dime if you fall one penny short of your

project goal.

 

8) Donors names are public. I myself wish they were anonymous.

 

All said, there have been people who have used them. And there are some great projects that have made money. Several of my friends made money with them. The last had a very hard time because the kickstarter site buries you and it was hard to find even when in the right area.

 

What would I change about them?

 

Expired projects should be removed and the staff recommends list SHOULD NOT be recommending projects that have already made their goals.

 

Both sites try to present some "indie" flair but a close check will show you that Kickstarter is run by Amazon.com and Indigo is run by Craigslist. Don't believe me? The Kickstarter IP is owned by Amazon and a google earth check of the address for Indigogo in San Francisco brings you right to same address for Craigslist. Big Business and for people looking to earn money they should expect to be just one of thousands of other users.

[Jed Cohen]

Have you checked out RocketHub.com?

 

"We are the creative underdogs. RocketHub is a community for Creatives by Creatives. We are a purely indie outfit, not backed by any venture or corporate money. RocketHub is accountable to you, not bankers or the old guard."

 

My suggestion is that you reach out to all three sites and talk with the folks who run them. Figure out who you like and who you trust. Crowdfunding is a relatively new space, and there is a formula for success. Talk with folks who have done is successfully. Collaborate with the people, not the platform.

[Guest Thomas Alexander]

I know several people who have had experience with both Kickstarter and Indigogo. Both sites are getting too big for their britches and more and more people are getting their projects lost in the bunch. Kickstarter has over 5000 other people running a project and to find them you have to wade through 400 plus pages.

 

Indigogo has much less but the way they show the sites is buggy. I had friends with projects that showed up beneath EXPIRED projects!

 

If you are going to use Kickstarter or Indigogo you must understand that they play favorites.

 

1) They bump projects to the top that are making money and bury other projects far below.

 

2) Your project won't even show up in the newest projects area until you have had a pledge. Talk about wanting to make money!

 

3) Kickstarter has a reputation for favoritism and it even started as an elitist site that only let "invited" people create projects. Even though they are open to all now they still strictly pick and choose which projects to accept. And they also have a STAFF RECOMMENDS part to the site. I checked on several of my friends projects and it seemed the same pet projects were always hogging the front page or getting interviews of facebook messages about them.

 

4) Kickstarter takes 5 percent. Indigogo takes 9 percent.

 

5) The user interface is messy. It is like staring at a Redbox machine and having to look at 400 pages to choose one.

 

6) There are 12 projects on each page. You better have a good picture if you hope to get noticed.

 

There are success stories, that is for sure. I just noticed a lot more failures.

 

7) Indigogo lets you keep whatever money you raise, Kickstarter won't hand over a dime if you fall one penny short of your

project goal.

 

8) Donors names are public. I myself wish they were anonymous.

 

All said, there have been people who have used them. And there are some great projects that have made money. Several of my friends made money with them. The last had a very hard time because the kickstarter site buries you and it was hard to find even when in the right area.

 

What would I change about them?

 

Expired projects should be removed and the staff recommends list SHOULD NOT be recommending projects that have already made their goals.

 

 

 

 

 

I have friends who are using MEBLITZ (www.meblitz.com) because of the reasons above. They don't have project deadlines, they give front page status to everyone, and a free radio podcast. We will have to see if it works out for them. Jeesh, Indiegogo is freaking bragging that is has 20,000 projects listed. How on earth is someone supposed to get noticed in that mountain of projects? I mean seriously. No one is going to click past a couple of pages. That means unless you have a big amount of fans already you are screwed using the bigger sites.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Thomas Alexander

[Jason M Silverman]

Thanks for those perspectives.

 

I had a funding attempt fail on Kickstarter last year, and I was thinking of giving it a go again on one of the crowdfunding sites. (on a side note, I thought donors could be anonymous, at least to the public). The thing that made me think about trying a second time was that several "fiscal sponsor" programs have deals with one or the other, which supposedly increase one's profile and reduce the fees payable. Also, if the fiscal sponsor is a registered charity, donors in the US are able to claim tax credits for it. I'm not sure how much of a benefit that is to a filmmaker's efforts or not.

 

Jason