Crowd Funding 101 – A Course For The Not-So-Technologically Inclined

So, I’ve gotten a few emails from people who dig what we’re doing, but have no idea for one reason or another how to donate to The Zipper Club through IndieGoGo. At first, this concept was pretty baffling to me, because it’s become as easy as second nature to me now, and I use these kind of sites all the time. Then I remembered I’m a dude who sits around, burning out his retinas on a screen all day. Not everyone is like me, so what follows is a very simple crowdfunding tutorial for any donors out there who may have been confused about how to give to our project, or even any other one down the line that might strike their fancy.

As much as I’d love to take your personal checks and cold hard cash, alas, there’s a system in place and for us to take all of the money we need to pay for printing this thing that we’ve pulled in so far from all of our donors, we need to meet our goal on the site. If our level doesn’t read $4,000 or higher by May 14^th, 2013, all the money goes back to the individuals that donated to the project and Brenda and I go back to the ol’ drawing board. (We still fully plan on producing the book with or without the money from this campaign, but getting it paid for with these donations will save us a lot of time, headache and our own personal funds.) Plus, going by our perks list, you get some pretty cool Zipper Club memorabilia that you wouldn’t be able to obtain anywhere else. Plus, after the campaign goes on and we (hopefully) get funded, everyone who donated will get updates with all sorts of behind the scenes goodies for the project on our journey to see it in print. In short, we know asking you for your hard earned is somewhat of a tall order we don’t take that lightly. Helping crowdfund projects like The Zipper Club through IndieGoGo and Kickstarter are a fun and rewarding experience that gives you a chance to take part in the creation of all forms of new and wonderful art. I’ve donated to a number of different crowdfunding campaigns in the past on both websites over the years and love doing it.

The bottom line though, is that we can’t do this without you, so without further ado, here are instructions for how to donate to our cause…

How to donate to an IndieGoGo campaign:

1 - Find the campaign you want to donate to. (For purposes of the same shameless self-promotion I’ve become known for, we’ll say maaaaaybe for my book, The Zipper Club.)

2 - Cruise through the campaign’s information for any information on it and see if it raises any concerns for you. (IE: Where your money is going, when you’ll receive your donor rewards, etc.) If you have questions or concerns not answered on the page, hit the "Contact" button on the IGG page to take your questions directly to the person running the page and they should answer.

3 - Now comes the “fun” part. In order to donate to a campaign, you’ll need two things. A membership to IndieGoGo (http://www.indiegogo.com) and a membership to a website called Paypal (http://www.paypal.com). 

The good news is, starting both accounts are free in and of themselves. The reason for the dual memberships are as follows.  IndieGoGo is a site that sends and receives its money through Paypal, which is basically an online resource for you to pay for goods and services online. You can pay for orders through almost any online shop you can think of, quickly and easily via Paypal. Starting an account there is pretty simple and the best explanation for it can be found at the link below.

http://www.ask.com/question/how-to-start-a-paypal-account

4 - After you’ve got your Paypal account set up, you can also use it to pay for any large number of goods for sale on all sorts of different websites throughout the internet. (eBay, Half.com, Overstock.com, etc.) It’s the world’s most popular way to send money online, so mark my words, it’s something you could definitely get a lot more use out of down the road.

5 - Once you’ve got your Paypal account made and secured, head back to the IndieGoGo page that you want to donate to, click on the according price level/perk that you’d like to have shipped to you, and then it will take you through asking you to log into your Paypal account. Once you’re logged in, it’ll ask you to confirm your donation and the amount. Press “Pay” and everything’s done.

Hope that helps!