i’ve done a crowdfunding campaign previously on kickstarter, you can go and see what it was at the link below, it’s the only one i’ve ever done when i was living in a big city here in england. thank god i’m not there anymore, long story, save that for another time.

here was my campaign - the pi street - was a multi screen system for promotion of a city via 'social' screens powered by screenly.io (i'll be doing something about screenly soon as a post btw)

straight off the bat i want you to know that it was successful and it was bloody hard work because really it was only me and my existing social networks, pounding the pavement everyday asking people if they were interested in the project and telling people about it constantly. i made a stack of videos for each day to explain a new facet of the project and why we were crowdfunding for money and i even went to a casino and they invested the last bit of money we needed to make it a reality.

Big Lesson: Use your energy to sell what you’re selling. Don’t use it to promote something that sells what you’re selling (src : john teasdale)

so why steemit could be hugely powerful for campaigns

it seems like a no brainer and it hit me the other day like a flash outta the blue, the hardest thing to get people to do is to invest money and time, and the second thing is often when am i gonna get the products, services, whatever i’m kickstarting/crowdfunding back from my investment right?

steem is perfectly positioned to be not only the perfect place to host AMA style chats but by on boarding the potential investors in the crowdfunding campaign steemit benefits my an influx of new users and indirectly, if the crowdfunders do it properly those upvotes, commenters also over time can aquire steam and steam dollars to invest in the actual crowdfunding campaign itself not using their own usual fiat currency methods. win win!

let me say that again

you could reshape the way the usual methods of promotion are done for crowdfunding, instead of flailing away pushing facebook ads, social media twitter spam and even in some degrees pounding the pavements to get donations you can turn your existing social graph audience into steemians and then those steemians invested in more than just your crowdfunding campaign (because let’s be honest, when they are on they are here) they will integrate into the platform and see the benefits of social blogging and getting paid but also see their is more at work than they originally thought.

release your updates, ask for feedback on the product, embed youtube videos, reply in comments, remind to upvote, resteem and whale support and you could create a crowdfunding eco system that benefits steem directly, seriously. it’s a no brainer.

someone needs to make ‘STEEMKICK’

the current way that kickstarter works is that it takes a fee from the overall amount of money that was donated once it’s finished. when i did my campaign that was quite a chunk of change. i’m sure we could be more reasonable here and i’m certain you could with the help of the community build out a similar offering to what kickstarter itself has - i know a few crypto based platforms exist for crowdfunding projects but i think combined with the collective whale power of the witnesses there is some creative crossovers there.

vote on projects, create a long tail retention of users

you could also trickle funds into pots of funds to certain levels, people have to blog on the steemit platform and people up vote on your project and we get to see the projects unfold in realtime through posts here on steemit which then creates the momentum for people to up vote and resteem the posts, this in turn for the project leader is funds that they can put into the project to make better or put into other pots and projects to enhance them.

i believe this will create a long tail of investment in the community, in the people and the projects and lead to a never seen before transparency of a crowdfunded campaign which often get’s lost when the project does not update, does not share issues and problems and keeps missing it’s exact date of delivery or shipping — one of the most frustrating parts to the end user of getting involved in the first place, also, with crypto and the blockchain behind it, the sense of time and value is more finely honed.

what do you think? i’d love some feedback, do we need a steemkick crowdfunding app or something similar for the platform?