Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo
03 Introduction to Indiegogo
04 YouTube and Crowdfunding
04 Uses for Crowfunding
05 YouTubers Who Have Used Indiegogo
06 Case Studies
02 Turning Subscribers into Contributors
07 Resources Introduction to Indiegogo
Indiegogo is an online platform that empowers people to fund what matters to them. Every day people are raising money for creative, entrepreneurial, and cause-related projects. Indiegogo is an open platform that gives campaigns global reach. Because there’s no application process, you could start a campaign today.
YouTube Partner Page
If it seems to you like YouTube and Indiegogo make a good team — we agree! We created a YouTube partner page to help showcase YouTube creator campaigns and provide them with tailored insights to maximize their crowd funding experience.
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 3 YouTube and Crowdfunding
Whether you have 300 or 3,000,000 subscribers, you are on YouTube because you are passionate. Like many creatives, lots of YouTubers have day jobs and must devote their own free time and money to creating incredible content. Because video makers are also often giving their work away for free, it’s not always clear how to take their efforts to the next level.
In recent years, we’ve seen more and more YouTube stars of all shapes and sizes take to crowdfunding as a way of advancing their channel and engaging with their fans. They not only gain access to valuable funds, but have also found a new way of expanding their subscriber base. At Indiegogo, we see crowdfunding as a way of connecting with like-minded audiences to make something big happen — and as a YouTuber, your advantage is that you already have a following of people who share your passions!
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 4 Uses for Crowdfunding
Video Equipment Video Studio Post-production
Tour Book Video Game
Movie Web Series Website
Swag Album Documentary
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 5 YouTubers Who Have Used Indiegogo
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 6 Case Studies
Hannah Hart and “My Drunk Kitchen”
The Channel “My Drunk Kitchen” is exactly what it sounds like. Hannah “Harto” Hart drinks, cooks, jokes, and gets real about life.
The Concept To take “My Drunk Kitchen” on tour.
The Goal $50,000 Raised $223,007 The Impact By hitting stretch goals, Hannah was able to add Australia and the UK to her tour!
Strategies All of Hannah’s strategies centered around engaging with her subscribers in ways she hadn’t before — starting with her perks. For $25, you could get “E-married” to Harto (1,101 claimed this perk), for $250, you could join an exclusive Google+ Hangout with Harto, and for $5,000, Harto would visit you and make a video with you! She also encouraged friendly competition amongst her subscribers by planning the stops of her tour based on the number of contributions from each city. Her biggest crowdfunding innovation: A “12-hour Internet Party” that included special YouTube guests and a live Drunk Cooking session, which was hosted on a live YouTube stream.
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 7 Case Studies
Toby Turner & Tobuscus Adventures
The Channel Toby Turner is the star of two major channels: Tobuscus (with cartoon spin-off Tobuscus Adventures) and TobyGames. He uses his unique sense of humor and video skills to do everything from spoof Hot Pocket commercials to take on zombies.
The Concept Turn the cartoon “Tobuscus Adventures” into a game.
The Goal $240,000 Raised $642,416 The Impact By nearly tripling his goal, he was able to offer stretch goals to his audience, including additional platforms for the game (like Android) and exclusive perks.
Strategies Watching one of Toby’s videos is like interacting with a force of comedic nature, and this is the energy he brought to his campaign — from hilarious update videos for his contributors to perks that could make you the subject of one of his videos. He also made excellent use of stretch goals to keep funding momentum going and expand his project’s scope, thus giving his fans even more opportunities to get involved.
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 8 Case Studies
P4A: Project For Awesome
The Channel Lots and lots of them. For example, YouTubers Toby Turner, George Watsky, Charlie McDonnell, and Annoying Orange.
The Concept Since 2007, the YouTube community has picked a day each year to commit their content to good. YouTubers make videos about their favorite charities, and the money raised goes to the causes featured in the top five videos — as chosen by the community. For P4A 2012, the community turned to Indiegogo to make their fundraising efforts even bigger.
The Goal $100,000 Raised $397,120 The Impact The YouTube community was able to give money to ten charities, including: Wildlife Waystation, Alzheimer’s Society, Harry Potter Alliance, and Save the Children.
Strategies This was truly a community effort. Only running for 4 days, this campaign brought together over 15,000 contributors to nearly quadruple the original goal. They drove traffic to the campaign through a 48- hour livestream, bringing together dozens of YouTube stars, and offering perks — like a “Men of YouTube” Calendar — that fans loved.
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 9 Turning Subscribers into Contributors
Whatever you decide to raise money for, there are many ways to leverage the Indiegogo and YouTube platforms (and functionality) to maximize engagement with your current audience and beyond. We’ve already outlined loads of ways to do this in the Campaigner Field Guide, but we wanted to provide some ideas that were specific to the YouTube community.
Stretch Goals — If you’re like a lot of the YouTubers who use Indiegogo, then you have more than just one great idea you’d like to fund. Stretch goals — goals beyond your initial ask — can help you raise money for more than one of your ideas, and they are a great way to engage your most enthusiastic fans. For example, you’re asking for $50,000 to publish a book, but you tell your contributors that, if you raise $60,000, you’ll also be able to do a concert, if you raise $70,000 you can make an album — and so on. Harto used her stretch goals to expand her “My Drunk Kitchen” tour to the UK and Australia! Contributor Map — Like Indiegogo, YouTube is a global platform, and your audience is likely spread around the world. Crowdfunding is a way to help this community interact, and you can even create a little friendly competition — i.e. “Looks like Estonia has contributed more than New York!” You can also incorporate this into your project itself; for example, the top ten contributing cities will be the stops on your road tour. We’ve even seen campaigners post interactive contributor maps on their campaign pages to help leverage the global reach of their channels.
Referral Contests — By incentivizing sharing, referral contests are another way of creating friendly competition amongst your fans. You can use the tools provided to you in Indiegogo’s Campaign Dashboard to track which individuals are driving the most traffic and contributions to your campaign — and then
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 10 reward those people accordingly. For example, you could offer a top secret perk or exclusive opportunity to the winner.
Live Hangouts — What does your audience want most? YOU! Put that “You” back into YouTube by leveraging Google’s “Hangouts on Air” feature that allows you to stream live on your YouTube channel. This is a good way to interact with contributors, answer their questions, perform, make special announcements, solicit feedback about your project and perks, or just have some fun. For example, Hannah Hart (“My Drunk Kitchen”) hosted a “12 Hour Internet Party” with live cooking and special guests to build awareness, engagement, and momentum for her campaign. It was so successful that she threw a second live event, a Thank-a-thon, after her campaign ended to show her appreciation for everyone who had gotten involved. You could even incorporate live events into your perks!
Video Annotation — As part of their video annotation tool, YouTube allows you to share links to Indiegogo campaigns in your YouTube videos. This gives you a perfect way to promote your campaign right out of the gate, and it’s also an opportunity for cross promotion with other YouTubers! YouTube Community — Which segues perfectly to this point! When it comes to campaigning, you don’t have to go it alone. There are bound to be opportunities for collaboration with your fellow YouTubers to help move your funding efforts forward — whether they join your campaign, offer a perk or two, or just share your campaign with their fans. You could also collaborate on a video together! P4A is a great example of the community working together on a campaign! Video Comments and Replies — Though it’s still beneficial to make use of Indiegogo’s communication tools to talk to your funders, you can also make use of YouTube’s commenting and video reply features to interact with your audience about your crowdfunding efforts and to spread the word about your campaign.
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 11 Interaction // Immersive Experiences — One thing that’s awesome about crowdfunding is that allows people to invite others to get involved with whatever they are working on. In your case, you’re giving your fans greater access to you and your videos. This is important to keep in mind as you plan your perks and campaign promotion. Giving fans the opportunity to star in one of your videos, direct an episode, name a character, Skype with you, or just get a shoutout from your Twitter handle are all examples of easy-to-fulfill yet amazing things to offer your fans in exchange for contributions. VIP Soft Launch — Who are your superfans? Identifying them and giving them access and first dibs on exclusive perks during a “soft launch” of your campaign is a good way to build early momentum and heighten the contributor experience for your campaign. It also helps you build momentum, which is crucial once your broader audience sees your campaign.
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 12 Crowdfunding Resources
YouTube’s Indiegogo Partner Page Indiegogo’s YouTube Channel
für alle Kampagnenstarter
Indiegogo’s Campaigner Online Resources for Crowdfunders Field Guide
blog
Indiegogo Blog & Insights Indiegogo’s Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 13 Link Index YouTubers Who Have Used Indiegogo
HELLO, HARTO! http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hello-harto
Tobuscus Adventures http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-build-the-tobuscus-adventures-the-game-wizard-store
Project For Awesome http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/project-for-awesome
Luke Conard’s 1st professional studio album http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/luke-conard-s-1st-professional-studio-album-all-new-songs
‘I’m Vlogging Here’ YouTube Documentary http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/i-m-vlogging-here-youtube-documentary
BLACK&SEXY.TV http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/black-sexy-tv-collection-plate
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/angry-video-game-nerd-the-movie
Pure Pwnage: Teh Movie http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pure-pwnage-teh-movie
Crowdfunding Resources
YouTube’s Indiegogo Partner Page http://www.indiegogo.com/partners/youtube
Indiegogo’s YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/indiegogovideo
Online Resources for Crowdfunders http://blog.indiegogo.com/2013/03/tool-time-e-sources-for-crowdfunding-campaigners.html
Indiegogo’s Campaigner Field Guide http://gallery.mailchimp.com/9e8b6cadd22dfef20841a79fb/files/FieldGuide.pdf
Indiegogo Blog http://blog.indiegogo.com
Indiegogo Insights http://blog.indiegogo.com/category/insights
Indiegogo Social Media https://www.facebook.com/Indiegogo | https://twitter.com/indiegogo | https://plus.google.com/+indiegogo/posts
Monetizing Your YouTube Channel with Indiegogo | 14 MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Start your campaign today!
www.indiegogo.com