Brambleten

Hi folks,

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I’ve finally managed to get something blog-like down on paper (internet paper at least). In this fantastically interesting series I’ll be looking at various aspects of the world of Crowdfunding and how it affects the wargaming/miniatures industry.

First up – what is Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is a form of alternative financing that draws money from a large number of sources compared to traditional financing, which draws funds from or two sources – a bank loan, for example.

You can crowdfund in two ways – by reward or equity. Reward based crowdfunding is the way that most people are familiar with – you pay £x, you get a t-shirt/mini/generic object. Equity crowdfunding involves the company putting up a % of the business and setting a value to it with people buying in for a share of the profits. Sort of like Dragons Den but with more people involved. I’ll be sticking with talking about reward based crowdfunding, since that is the main way that miniature companies fund their projects.

Now we have some stats. There are two main platforms that companies use to fund miniatures – Indiegogo and Kickstarter, with Kickstarter being by far the biggest and it is still growing. In 2011 $115m was raised on it for successful projects. 2012 saw a 238% growth, raising $275m. 2013’s growth was only 175%, with $480m being raised to fund 19,911 projects. This is over the entire site, not just miniatures but growth is growth.

What will I be looking at in future entries?

Firstly, anything that catches my attention or find interesting on the subject. Secondly, I’d like to go through the stages of a crowdfunding campaign, which will hopefully help people who are looking to run a campaign or to help people who are curious about the subject or a project and want more information. I’ll be looking at the different scales of crowdfunding and how it can help the big guns just as much as the little start-ups. I’ll try and include examples of projects to highlight points.

What is this twaddle? Why should I listen to you?

That right there is a very good point. I recently graduated from University with a degree in Accounting and for my dissertation I wrote about the effects of Niche Marketing and Credibility on Crowdfunding. As such I’ve done a decent amount of research into the area and have been following campaigns for about 15 months. Because of this, I like to think I know a thing or two.

I don’t know everything and I’ve never run a campaign (to be honest, I’d love to be involved in one) but this is an area of finance that is still developing and I’m keen to go on learning.

Also, I happen to write the crowdfunding bits for Portal, so somebody likes what I do ;)

Thanks for reading this far. Feel free to get involved and comment, everyone has a different opinion on what makes a good campaign and I’d like to hear them as I move through the campaign stages.