Columnist Eric Snider, who is both funny and smart, except when he disagrees with me, in which case he's funny and annoying, is using fundraising website KickStarter.com to raise $5,000 by the first of February to pay himself a hundred dollars a week to write his weekly column.
Of course, if he doesn't make it, he gets nada. But since my kids and I read him regularly and talk about his columns, it was a no-brainer for me to contribute.
I think the operative principle here is that he has already proven himself to be excellent and reliable. This isn't a pig-in-a-poke ("sponsor me to write my first novel"); it's signing on to support a continuing enterprise.
And a hundred a week isn't exactly huge. He's underpaying himself; but at least it's a way, potentially, to monetize his work on the web. I'll be interested to see if it works. He's more than halfway there already.
posted
Interesting concept, thanks for the link. Also, it's nice to see you around on this side of the forums again!
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I really love the idea of kickstarter. Another great site along those lines is Quirky, which is to products what kickstarter is to projects.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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kickstarter has already come and died on the independent artist scene. A bunch of my musician friends used it to fund records and touring with varying degrees of success.
But I think that time has passed.
And I think there are much better way to monetize his website than this. But I wish him luck -- he's a talented and funny guy, no question.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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My problem has always been coming up with a price for what I do. If I were to put a price on doing this sort of thing, I'm afraid the price would be too high and an unrealistic goal in these sorts of thing.
But you never know...
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Generally, things start being truly useful just after the independent artists get tired of them. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: kickstarter has already come and died on the independent artist scene. A bunch of my musician friends used it to fund records and touring with varying degrees of success.
But I think that time has passed.
I don't know about that. Debra Romer, who was recently on America's Got Talent, did a Kickstarter thing for $3K to do an EP. She was inundated with funds from fans, getting over $13K in the first week.
I was actually thinking about doing this to force myself to work on a book project that I have a number of people out in cyberspace complaining that I haven't done.
OSC, I hope you're feeling better. We were worried.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I think the main problem with Kickstarter is, you need a good, novel set of rewards that are good compensation for the funding received.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: kickstarter has already come and died on the independent artist scene. A bunch of my musician friends used it to fund records and touring with varying degrees of success.
But I think that time has passed.
I don't know about that. Debra Romer, who was recently on America's Got Talent, did a Kickstarter thing for $3K to do an EP. She was inundated with funds from fans, getting over $13K in the first week.
I was actually thinking about doing this to force myself to work on a book project that I have a number of people out in cyberspace complaining that I haven't done.
OSC, I hope you're feeling better. We were worried.
Oh, I'm sure she did. I was more talking about artists like me, who aren't on TV, or youtube sensations. Who count their fans in the three or low four figures, and not the 5 or 6 figures.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I know a group using Kickstarter to fund making a CNC machine which will then make more CNC machines to sell to the people contributing funds (at certain levels). Hadn't heard of it before last week.
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