Asking is Work!

Asking is work. Just ask Amanda Palmer. She is the patron saint of "the Ask!" Our band, whitewolfsonicprincess finished it's crowd-funding experiment, last Sunday. It was kind of an eye-opening experience. Definitely glad I read Amanda's book before we ran with our IndieGoGo Campaign.

She really shows you how to do it. And it pretty much played out as she described it. Turns out some folks really do want to support a project. We don't really have a "crowd," more like a tight, little cult, but people do want to help, do want to donate, do want to give you $.

We went with "flexible funding," which means we would receive the money whether we hit the target or not. It's kind of like being a tight-rope walker with a net! We did fall short of the target, but unlike Kickstarter, it was not all or nothing!

I can't imagine doing an "all or nothing" campaign. I would have been sweating bullets. And really we had no clue. No idea. Not even a glimmer of an idea of how much support we would get. Our target number was totally pulled out of thin air. Not based on anything more than "Wouldn't it Be Nice," which might be a great Beach Boys track, but not really a business plan.

So anyway, we had 1069 people visit our campaign site, and 53 donors donated to our campaign. It's all sort of "mathematical." And we beat the odds - rule of thumb is 3% of the people do everything, we did better than that, nearly 5% of the folks who visited donated! That's phenomenal! Folks from 25 different countries around the world.

How do you do it? You reach out to your friends, your fans, your family. And maybe a few strangers will join in too. Our cult is made up of some really amazing, cool, creative people. 

We will put the money to good use. Bring out our new record, and seed some new projects! It was a totally cool experiment. Lots of work. But gratifying for sure.