Depending on which assessment you choose to agree with, there are between 500 and 700 active crowdfunding sites of one sort or another across the world and by the time you reach the end of this article the number is likely to have changed again! On top of this there is a huge diversity of model and format amongst the platforms, each with subtle and not so subtle distinctiveness in their proposition. It’s a competitive market and more and more platforms are launched aimed at attracting either your engagement, your cash or your projects.
As as result it can be tricky getting decent numbers and statistics from platforms that can be publicly shared, so identifying trends either platform by platform is tough and even harder across the entire sector.
But people are increasingly interested in trying to establish which platform should be their platform of choice and how can they maximize their chance of running a successful campaign based on trends and insight. We would say there is no panacea and each project will have a different choice to make. Last year at a couple of events we shared a few statistics that proved interesting and popular, so we have extended some of those a tad this year and offer them not as what you should use to make your choices but merely as an interesting aside that might prompt some discussion.
Nevertheless some sites present some fascinating one off single statistical insights – for example Indiegogo tell us that in 2012 14% of campaigns had a single contributor refer more people to the project than its wonder – a reminder of how important it is to work to ensure that your contacts contact their contacts. It also seems campaigns are getting shorter dropping from 60 days to 49 days in 2011 – 2012 – with 39 being the average for successful campaigns. They also tell us (and it is common across all platforms) that there is a clear statistical link between having a video and likelihood of success. Now this is no secret but it is intriguing that their insights would suggest that you are 25% more likely to be successful if your video is less that 5 minutes – apparently 3 Minutes 11 Seconds is optimal for success!
The behemoth of the reward sector, Kickstarter, have a stats section to their blog and whilst not entirely consistent in form year to year we pulled a few together here for a little fun.
Indiegogo suggest a that campaigns raised on average 20% more 2011 – 2012 that 2010 – 2011. This is a similar figure to what Kickstarter showed 2010 – 2011 But the growth in Kickstarter average campaign value for the last year is markedly higher, and even if you take into account the distorting effect of the extraordinary growth in Games as a category, as seen in the first graphic below, it is still a tremendous rise in average campaign value.
Up until 2011 the three most valuable categories on Kickstarter had been Film, Design and Music, but they have been leapfrogged by Games. We don’t have the value of the game category for the 2009-10 but it is apparent that whereas there has been steady and consistent growth in the three historically strong categories Games has jumped exponentially in 2012.
What is noticeable from some of the overarching figures for Kickstarter is the consistent success rate of projects hovering around the 43-46%
Of course Kickstarter is now available and operating in the UK ( from October of last year) and we have seen Peoplefund.it, Unbound, WeDidThis and Crowdfunder come together in a series of consolidations and alliances that could be interpreted defensive move to create scale to their communities and so offer a strong alternative to Kickstarter. Of those we took a quick look at Crowdfunder’s published stats and whilst not entirely consistent in the categories used year to year, and not therefore directly comparable, it is interesting to note that Film and Music rank highly there too.
Now we would not suggest that significant conclusions can be drawn from any of these observations, but it can be moderately diverting over a cup of tea to muse on these things and a subject for conversation in a sector which, to now, is still very short on meaningful and comparable data.
But what do you think?
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