After analyzing reactions to my previous post on social networks (thanks to everyone who took their time to leave feedback!) it gets pretty much clear: the availability of PayPal payment method heavily influences people’s choice to contribute. That’s logical – there are plenty of people who just prefer do not use their bank cards online.
So, I did some research about platforms providing PayPal as payment method and found there are close to no choices here. After all I decided to go with self-hosted solution and right now I am finishing setting up our own crowdfunding platform.
Of course this is exciting and gives plenty of benefits. For example, we do not have to pay extra platform to third-party services (and that means you get more value for your money). Also, we have more freedom in managing different payment providers. And finally, this future opens some perspectives for funding of Synfig and OpenToonz (Morevna Edition).
The price for this is additional responsibility. And, to be honest, for me the the perspective to get any additional responsibilities is least thing that I wish to. But it seems life gives me no choice, so let’s take the best of it.
Having more freedoms brings more choices. And the most important choice today is the type of campaign. Initially I was planning to go with “all-or-nothing” type – if campaign doesn’t reaches its goal, then everyone gets their money back, no rewards, no fun. This have obvious advantages, as it reduces the risks to everyone and creates some sense of urgency.
On the other hand, there are certain specifics of our project:
- The work will be done anyway: we are going to release episode even if campaign will fail (it just take more time).
- According to the specifics of rewards, we will be able to fulfill them independently of the total amount raised.
This made me slowly biased to consider the second type of campaign – “keep-it-all”. At this type of campaign the project keeps any amount of money that was collected (whether it reached goal or not). Of course, in this case the famous sense of urgency is lost, but that brings other advantages:
- Some rewards can be delivered earlier than campaign ends.
- In the good scenario Nikolai can start working earlier than campaign ends.
- We can allow more payment methods, like BitCoin (which seems to be not that easy to do with “all-or-nothing” type).
- Since the funds are transferred one-by-one during the whole period of campaign, we we can avoid possible incidents when PayPal locks the whole sum.
So, what’s the meaning of the goal then? Since the goal is to bring Nikolai Mamashev to work on the new episode as animator, then the percentage towards the goal will determine if he is going to be involved (minimum value), the amount of his participation (anything above the minimum value) or his 100% involvement (goal reached).
So, what do you think about all that? What campaign type you feel more suitable? Does the choice of campaign type influences your choice to contribute? Let me know in the comments.
P.S. Maybe it’s not related to the topic of this post, but here is some latest testing stuff from Nikolai. ^__^
7 Responses
One’s own crowdfunding platform? That’s going to be quite a big feat though! That said, if you do end up creating one, would it be a direct competitor to the likes of Patreon and Kickstarter for other people, or is it just something in-house, for the Morevna animations as well as Synfig / OpenToonz funding?
Yes, this is just an in-house thing, just to fill our own needs – I have no ambitions to compete with anyone. ^__^
Sweet! If necessary, I’d be willing to pitch in some money that I can for better stability and better tablet-based drawing for Synfig (similar to OpenToonz). I dunno why, I often find myself more comfortable using Synfig for animation, but its drawing capabilities suck. xD I wish it would be easier to draw on it as it is in OpenToonz.
As I have put faith in your project(s) nearly from the beginning I fully support your plans for a crowdfunding platform of your own.
As Patreon has risen their prices to lift their share of my conributions I would rather pay directly to your account if possible.
Keep up your successful work !
Hello Wolfram! Thank you very much for your trust and continuous support! Yes, the latest changes at Patreon also made me think about moving recurring donations donations here as well. But first I will try old-good crowdfunding for Nikolai’s work. Thank you for supporting words. ^__^
Such a neat idea having your own platform. I envy the fact that you are able to do this.
As a creator and supporter, the ” Keep it All ” has a bit advantage; in that even if you were not able to reach the expected goal, the little money given can go along way.
– For example if the target was $1000 and you got $400, that four can buy you a medium intuos wacom tablet, which is a good asset to have as a studio/artist.
One thing to consider that i can think of as of now – is that the likes of indegogo and Kickstarter open you up to another base of supporters that you didn’t have who may have no problem of using their credits card. Other than that i truly support having your own crowdfunding platform 🙂
Hello Akuaintance! Thank you for support! About supporters from Indiegogo and Kickstarter – we have analyzed our past crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo and found that there are not that much people brought to campaign by platform. To be more specific: for Pepper & Carrot campaign we had only one supporter who came from the platform. For Kickstarter numbers could be higher, but we cannot use it as it is open only for residents of US and UK. ^__^