By: David Khorram 

Depends upon following factors, you can come up with your  CrowdFunding  project and campaign development cost.

This is the cost of marketing your campaign in order to raise the follower and investor crowd you need.

Bear in mind “crowdFunding is more about networking marketing than funding” . If you know how much you need to raise, then the only question is left is how much relevant crowd you need to reach your goal

First you  need to clearly know the difference between CrowdFunding Project and CrowdFunding Campaign.

1. CrowdFunding Project refers to activities and milestones before and after your crowdfunding campaign

2. CrowdFunding Campaign refers to o activities and milestones during your campaign (I.e. between 1 to 2 months)

CrowdFunding project cost can be divided to :

1. Fixed cost

1. Portal registration and transaction  fee ( i.e fix gola campaign)

2. Portal e-commerce  fee

3. Campaign Marketing  without  success fee

1. Advertising

2. Promotions

3. Community building

4. Business and infrastructure development

1. Email and collaboration system

2. CRM system

3. Help desk or service desk  system

4. Database or  inventory systems

2. Variable cost

1. Portal registration and transaction  fee ( i.e variable gola campaign)

2. CrowdFunding team and consulting time

3. Crowdfunding rewards  production costs

1. How much it will cost to produce

2. Be cautious when choosing what incentives to offer

3. Estimate how many incentive packages at each contribution level you will need to fulfill.

4. Fulfillment and Shipping charges

5. Campaign marketing  with success fee

6. Administrative and other overhead expenses

7. Over head; Office and/or studio space/insurance/utility

8. Equipment and materials

9. Taxes

CrowdFunding project (pre launch) activities and milestones

Following is a list of  items that you may want to consider. Depends what stage of project development you are in and what size crowd you have established, you may need some or all of these services :

1. Campaign registration, transaction and success fees;

1. This depends upon the CrowdFunding portal you have selected and type of campaign you wish to launch (Fix or flexible). See the comparison table at the end of this section.

2. CrowdFunding team / CrowdFunding preparation

1. CrowdFunding is team effort. You need to have a  dedicated team either you have all inhouse  or some or you need to  find an experainace team to help you ( i.e. www.CrowdFundingMentors.com ). Again remember the crowd, an individual ( part time or full time) does not have the time bandwidth and all required experiences to have a successful campaign

2. A Team to assist you with your CrowdFunding project and campaign development and build your crowdfunding :

1. Business model

2. Strategy

1. What, when , how, what and why

2. Marketing strategy

3. Launch strategy

4. Community building

5. Campaign component strategy

3. Technical

1. Build your virtual project and campaign identity

2. CrowdFunding campaign inbound marketing

4. Tactical   

1. How, who and when to execute your strategy and  play to win  you your campaign

2. Campaign party

3. Campaign pre and post publicity (4-3-2-1)

4. Send Campaign take off to million+ followers

5. Campaign moderation

6. %30 , %50 and %80 your funding goal milestones

7. Healmarry

8. Crowd Building contest

9. Backers for 2nd round of investment - Original backer program

10. Follower to backer convergence

11. Flowers and backers social media leverage

12. Backer to more backer convergence

13. Stretch goals

14. One(1) before campaign clouser action items     

3. CrowdFunding campaign inbound marketing.  CrowdFunding Marketing cost less than traditional outbound marketing.  The Inbound marketing includes:

1. Create attraction:

1. Blogging- A blog is the single best way to attract followers  to your CrowdFunding Website or CrowdFunding Campaign page.

2. Social Media- You must share valuable and attractive  content and valuable information on the social web, engage with your followers, and put a human face on your brand.  You also need to interact on the networks where your ideal buyers spend their time.

3. Keywords- Your followers and potential backers  begin their evaluation and  pre order process online ( Crowd lives in the cloud), usually by using a search engine to find something they have need or  questions about. So you need to make sure you’re appearing prominently when they search for your relevant key phases

4. Landing Pages- You must SEO ( Search engine optimize) your CrowdFunding website to appeal to and speak with your ideal followers and potential backers. This is your main virtual presents. You need to launch it few months (3 to 6 months) before your CrowdFunding. The Landing will be heavily used during the campaign ( directed to campaign page URL )  and after campaign ( directed to e-commerce page)

5. SEO and PPC

6. Press release and Print media

7. Community building

8. Text, Picture and video content creation

2. Build your community:

1. Calls-to-Action - Calls-to-action are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take action in your Social Media, blogs landing pages, Press release ...etc,,

2. Landing Pages- When a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action, they should then be sent to you main landing page. A landing page is where the offer in the call-to-action is fulfilled, and where the  follower or backers  submits information that you

3. Forms- In order for visitors to become follower or a lead, they must fill out a form and submit their information. ( 1st step conversion process)

4. Contacts- Keep track of the followers you're converting in a centralized database. This is one the most important CrowdFunding assets you are creating.   Organizing and having all your data in one place helps you  analyze your campaign potential and raise the early investors ( %25+ of your goal) before you launch your campaign

3. Visitor to lead, to follower, to your backers:

1. Visitor  Scoring- Not all visitors or readers  are equal. You need to be able to score each and communicate accordingly

2. Opt in Email- Series of email your system will send when  a potential follower clicks on your call to action, fills out a landing page

3. Marketing Automation- This process involves creating email marketing and lead nurturing tailored to your Campaign goal and strategy

4. Reporting- Methods of  marketing  report that helps you  effectively focus on your Crowdfunding campaign influencers

4. Campaign development

1. Video production

1. script development

2. Story board

3. Production

4. Editing

5. Content optimization ( text and backlinks)

6. Annotations

7. Transcription

8. Video SEO and promotion with lead catching

9. Distribution ( to 30+ video servers)

2. Content development and moderation

1. Campaign story (features tells, story sells)

2. Campaign naming

3. Campaign elevator message

4. Campaign short pitch

5. Campaign long pitch

6. Campaign pictures

7. Set campaign goal

8. Design campaign rewards

9. Moderation

1. Portal media moderation

2. Social media moderation ( pre, during and post )

CrowdFunding Campaign launch ( throughout the campaign)  activities and milestones

Many of campaign marketing and advertising program have to to start months before the crowdFunding campaign launch. Following is a list of  items that you may want to consider during the campaign :

1. Campaign Marketing: Intensifying  your CrowdFunding pre campaign marketing and advertising

2. CrowdFunding team :

1. Issue national press releases to broadcast

2. Contact relevant journalists, bloggers and media outlets in your behave

3. Broadcast and pound 24x7 your social media platforms to create a buzz

4. Email market all leaders and followers and ask for more participation and story sharing

5. Contacting existing investor and ask for more

6. Moderat:

1. Campaign social media

2. Your social Media

3. Your marketing team social media

CrowdFunding Campaign pre launch cost estimate

Cost of team building  and CrowdFunding promotion, advertising and crowd Building  could be as low as %3 and as high as %15  of your campaign  goal, this depend on your Funding Goal, number of your existing followers ( email addresses, social media, existing relationship with journalist, blogger and main influencers with large networks )

Costs of Crowdfunding campaign rewards , goods, fulfillment are  a variable cost  a calculator can be found here : http://reubenpressman.com/kickstarter/#  

CrowdFunding portal cost comparison