Choosing the best crowdfunding sites for filmmakers involves a changing landscape, but there are some qualifications that remain constant. Crowdfunding for filmmakers, after all, is where crowdfunding itself began. With the rise of Kickstarter, the idea of breaking free from the entrenched studio system became an option, and crowdfunding films became a viable path to success…. or at least production. While the lure of Hollywood is still in many ways the gold standard, when the history of filmmaking in the early twenty first century is written, the rise of Kickstarter will be an important chapter.
The best crowdfunding sites for filmmakers cater to the specific needs of the video professional
However, as I’ve written in an earlier post, Kickstarter may also someday be seen as a victim of its own success, at least as far as crowdfunding for filmmakers is concerned. I am not alone in thinking that Kickstarter is not at the top of the list of best crowdfunding sites for filmmakers. Kickstarter as a business is much more tied to its Silicon Valley roots than the portion of its user base in Southern California Is, let alone filmmakers in New York or “flyover country.” Expand or die is the business model, and the site is now a go-to crowdfunding platform for everything from tech, design, self published magazines, musicians and most any category you care to name. As far as crowdfunding for filmmakers goes, Kickstarter folds it into the big picture, and with a large degree of success… For itself. It’s just hard to get noticed there.
The larger issue for many filmmakers is the all-or-nothing model. Personally, I’m fine with this approach for one-off films. After all, you shouldn’t be faced with the prospect of making half a movie if you only raise half the money, and your backers shouldn’t be expected to be happy about it either, but know the stakes going in. Many filmmakers don’t want to take the risk. That’s why indiegogo is the other major player in the crowdfunding game when it comes to crowdfunding for filmmakers.
However, with literally hundreds of crowdfunding sites out there today, filmmakers have to take a critical look at their options. Choosing the best crowdfunding site is choosing whether or not we will be able to make a living from our craft. Crowdfunding is clearly a growth industry, but not for filmmakers. Consider this: the average fee from a crowdfunding site (the percentage of your funded campaign the site collects), is four to eight percent. That’s sometimes regardless of whether or not you reach your crowdfunding goal. The fact of the matter is being in the crowdfunding game is a great idea, if you’re running a crowdfunding site. Your profits don’t come from anything but the efforts of others who are renting your digital space.
So I want to talk about three options in the crowdfunding for filmmakers space. Three specific sites that will involve three very different crowdfunding strategies, and three very different levels of risk. These are sites that, compared to indiegogo and Kickstarter, are very much under the radar for most people, especially the people who you may approach to fund your crowdfunding campaign… One of them isn’t really a crowdfunding site, per se, but I want to relay my experiences, my observations, and explain why I’m following the path I’m following for my current documentary and web series.
Tubestart: the answer to a question few people are asking?
Tubestart, according to its founders was designed to fill in the gaps where YouTube left off. Its founders have aimed to make it one of the best crowdfunding sites for filmmakers and video professionals.The issue, as Tubestart creators see it, is that the current monetization system for YouTubers will never provide sustainable income for the very people who have driven YouTube’s global success. How do you make a living posting your work on YouTube? After all, until 2015, the only way to earn money from your work on YouTube was by allowing ads to be pinned to your work. Even viral videos did not earn a lot of money for most YouTubers, especially not with the 45/55 percent split between the creator and YouTube. Tubestart is created to allow YouTubers to earn money from their YouTube videos by linking them to a crowdfunding campaign on the Tubestart website. Sounds like a great plan, right?
I’d come right to the edge of signing on to the Tubestart platform, because on paper, it seems to check off many of the boxes that would make it one of the best crowdfunding sites for video creators, and while your mileage may vary, and your experiences may differ from mine, I found it hard to pull the trigger. Here are the alarm bells that ring The most loudly for me.
First, Tubestart appears to be a part time job for its creators. At first, I was thrilled when my inquiry about one of their posted services – managed campaigns,where a member of the Tubestart team manages your campaign, helps drum up social media interest and finds available branding and corporate sponsors – – was answered by one of the founders, who volunteered his time for a personal phone conversation. It felt like getting in on the ground floor of Facebook, and I thought this attention alone would rank the platform in the top tier of best crowdfunding sites. Then on the day of the phone call, I found myself on a hurried chat with said founder who was, as it happened, working in a production capacity for a major television network On an unrelated shoot. I don’t recall Mark Zuckerberg moonlighting for Friendster or MySpace while getting Facebook off the ground. Further, it seemed like a conflict of interest that Tubestart’s major success story is an ongoing video compilation of the founders own project, which is highlighted prominently on the website’s gallery of successful campaigns. Oh, and that managed campaign feature that was the reason for my attraction to the platform in the first place? Although it’s still listed, as of this writing, as an available service, it took that phone call to let me know it’s no longer offered. This could have been taken care of in that initial email contact, or better yet, by revising the website information.
This troubles me. The dealbreakers, though, involved what I see as far more serious issues.
Tubestart’s own site has a timeline feed with scathing reviews of its own service. Points for honesty, but I think it’s more a lack of attention to detail. I can tell you my own email questions after that first phone chat have not been answered, despite many attempts. As of this writing, the site still heavily promotes services it no longer offers, like managed campaigns, and I have yet to find any evidence of the corporate sponsorship and branding it touts. It seems like vaporware.
Tubestart promises automated services for reward fulfillment and integration with YouTube, but I have a hard time seeing evidence of that YouTube integration. On that phone conversation, when I asked how I could make sure that only paid backers frrom a crowdfunding campaign would have access to my YouTube videos, I was told “we’re working on that.”
That leads to the fundamental problem with Tubestart. YouTube isn’t really a platform for indie movies. Not yet, at least. YouTube lives or dies on the strength of the shorter video. And since Tubestart isn’t officially affiliated with YouTube,there’s a bigger problem. If you are running a perpetual campaign based on recurring payments or a pledge per content model, Your videos will still be free on YouTube, while your backers are paying for them off site. Tubestart makes a very big deal out of its recurring payments and pledge options. However, why would anyone want to pay for recurring new content when that content is free on the original site?It also concerns me that Tubestart as a website and a platform has been around since 2014, but the lack of current press on the site, not to mention a pretty sparsely trafficked site and long gaps between investor funding, give me pause about running a long term campaign on the site.
Here’s who I think may be able to benefit from a Tubestart based platform – YouTubers who plan to run a new campaign for every YouTube video they make, especially those filmmakers with very small budgets and compressed production schedules. However, I think filmmakers who plan to collect automatic recurring payments or pledge-per-content models are going to get flak on this platform from backers who find the projects they back simultaneously free on YouTube. It’s like paying at the theater on the same day the movie is released on cable. While I love the idea of someone else handling the reward fulfillment and the idea of automatic pledges tied to new content (perfect for web series), and a site dedicated to crowdfunding for filmmakers, I can’t endorse it yet as one of the best crowdfunding sites for filmmakers. Let’s see how they do.
The Tubestart crowdfunding platform led me to our second option, a site which seems to have regular intervals of investor backing, a pretty good deal of buzz, and upward subscriber base and an interesting concept.
Patreon: Crowdfunding for filmmakers and other creative artists
While Patreon is not solely a crowdfunding site for filmmakers, it bills itself as one of the best crowdfunding sites for creative artists of all types. it is more narrowcast than Kickstarter,indiegogo or other sites like gofundme. Since Patreon bills itself as one of the best crowdfunding sites for artists of all stripes, You have to know going in that you are in a crowded space, and not one that caters specifically to the needs of filmmakers, but rather artists who tend to put out regular content. Visual artists like photographers, cartoonists and even bloggers are coming to Patreon in order to get funding, one micropayment at a time. It takes a fresh, and in my opinion very honest, view of what it can and can’t do, and what it should not be expected to do.
Patreon describes itself as a system harkening back literally hundreds of years, to the days when patrons subsidized the works of creative professionals. They combine this tradition with the idea that anyone can be a patron, and they liken their service to a digital tip jar, but rather than giving a few dollars to the barista in the corner coffeehouse, donors are giving it to an artist.
The newest crowdfunding sites are offering platforms that offer some form of repeat backing, and for video creators who are filming more than one project, like an episodic, this feature is a must-have option in the search for the best crowdfunding sites.Patreon works on the pledge model, and usually on the micropayments model as well. As far as crowdfunding for film goes, this can be dicey, but it can work if you have a good idea who and where your donor base is. Every time you create and post new content on your Patreon stream, your backers are charged automatically. This system encourages small pledges. It only takes a quick survey of Patron’s user base to see that most pledges are around one to five dollars per piece of new content. This makes sense. Backers don’t always know how often new content is going to be created and what backers want to do is encourage creative artists, not go broke in the process. There’s also a built in safety valve in the Patreon system. Backers can specify a maximum amount they’re willing to contribute each month. In my opinion, this feature alone puts Patreon in the running for one of the best crowdfunding sites, not just for creators but for backers as well.
Like Tubestart, your work is generally not exclusive to Patreon, especially if you are a filmmaker. Patreon, however, really doesn’t make any bones about the fact that for most of its artists’ streams, the content itself is likely available elsewhere for free. For YouTubers, this is automatically true. Patreon doesn’t shy away from this, and instead emvraces the idea that backers know this going in… And should pledge anyway. They’re kind of taking the NPR or PBS approach. Yes, you can often access the same content for free elsewhere, but if you like what these artists are doing, wouldn’t you like to give them a little something so they can keep doing it? I find this refreshing, and actually an aid to my efforts. I don’t want backers to feel ripped off when they see that they could have gotten my content without paying for it. Patreon encourages them to feel good about what they’re doing.
I think Patreon hasn’t really found its groove yet when it comes to crowdfunding for filmmakers because for those one off feature length films, the idea that a filmmaker is going to find the backers here to finance that effort may be a bit of a stretch. However for video professionals creating regular content like webisodes or serials, I think there are opportunities here. I think Patreon has a chance for being one of the best crowdfunding sites as the industry evolves. Again, let’s see where it goes from here.
There is still the larger issue of where you’re going to store your content, and we’ve talked a lot about YouTube. And it’s also true that youTube is making a major effort to keep video professionals in the YouTube ecosystem, adding paid content, funding screens tacked to videos and its omnipresent ad system. However, I want to talk about crowdfunding for filmmakers in an ecosystem that does not in any way bill itself as a crowdfunding site. et’s talk about Vimeo.
Vimeo On Demand – one of the best crowdfunding sites that isn’t a crowdfunding site
Vimeo has been making a major effort to bill itself as the site where real video professionals come to play. Put your dancing cats on YouTube, they seem to be saying. We’ll be the place where you can see the next great work of art.
This is what Vimeo On demand is all about, and whether it means to or not, Vimeo may be one of the best crowdfunding sites around for filmmakers. Make no mistake, Vimeo does not make an overt effort to act like a crowdfunding platform. It doesn’t encourage a system based on physical rewards for backers, or even campaigning, let alone a specified campaign period. What it is, though, is a place where you can park your product while you go out and get money for it. If you’re going to work with Vimeo (by which I mean Vimeo On Demand), you really have to want to be on it. It costs $199 a year to have access to the features (the VOD platform is part of Vimeo Pro) that allow you to sell your content,But once you’re there, you basically have your own crowdfunding site. You can create a channel for your paid content, which can be rented, purchased or supported with recurring payments on a monthly or seasonal basis. The split is 90/10. You keep ninety percent of what you charge, after fees similar to traditional crowdfunding sites.
This is all a very big deal and a game changer for filmmakers, because it turns the site into a site which is essentially crowdfunding for filmmakers, in that permanent campaign model which sites like Tubestart and Patreon are efforting. Vimeo mostly delivers.
Many aspects of a crowdfunding campaign play into the Vimeo model. Having a Vimeo on Demand channel allows you the freedom to craft your prelaunch, because your backers will have a place to go in order to see your trailer, your bonus content and a description of your project. you can drum up interest as you approach your self made campaign. You can tie the “launch” to a premier of your movie or series.
Be warned… there is no reward system, but Vimeo, in my opinion offers something almost as good: discount promotional codes that allow you to give free views of your work to backers. The main reason Vimeo is not strictly a crowdfunding site is that there isn’t a mechanism for pledges/purchases beyond the standard price of whatever you plan to charge for the video itself. As a crowdfunder, you need to know going in that there isn’t a place for your angel investor/backer to give you that one big check. You’re getting your supporters retail, one viewer at a time.
I have to say this. In all the crowdfunding campaigns I’ve run, I’ve never met a backer who really cared about the great poster or coffee mug. What they want more than anything is to see the finished content. Give them the content for free in exchange for their support (say, a promo code if they can bring in three paid subscribers) and they’re pretty happy.
Vimeo On Demand also has a handy preorder option. This is a great tool to have if you plan to show off a trailer to drum up support, but need people to subscribe before the official release date. When it comes to crowdfunding for filmmakers, this is a valuable option, it creates buzz.
I am researching, a way to join the worlds of Patreon and Vimeo on Demand. Right now, I think it would have to be a DIY effort. Something along the lines of creating new paid content on Vimeo, posting that content link to your Patreon feed and passing along a promo code to your Patreon backers so they can access it without having to pay for it twice. It adds a second layer of intricacy to the process and I don’t know if its doable. However, I think the world of crowdfunding for filmmakers, especially filmmakers who are creating regularly recurring content, is becoming more and more navigable and sustainable.
Most filmmakers who use crowdfunding strategies know that there is no “best crowdfunding site.” Rather, there are different crowdfunding sites that work for different crowdfunding purposes. I do think, though, that there are pitfalls that can be reasonably avoided, and I think there are crowdfunding sites that increase your odds of crowdfunding success.
What’s your favorite crowdfunding site? What do you think the best crowdfunding sites are? I encourage you to comment here
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