If you been considering to raise funds for your business, community project, charity, or an idea. You may hear of the term called crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is becoming one of the biggest resources that bring opportunity for the public to turn into investors and also for entrepreneurs to have access to investors and to find the funds for their next big project. You can get this access by pitching at the online platforms such as Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Crowd cube, Seedrs, Crowdfunder and many others.

Crowdfunding is not just about raising the funds, it actually offers much more value to your business that helps you in your entrepreneur journey.

                                             Here are some of the benefits I would like to share.

#1 Test the Market
As an early stage business, it’s hard to prove to yourself and also to potential investors and buyers if your product or services do solve a problem and if it adds value. Raising funds through crowdfunding helps you to validate your concept. It helps you build credibility and reach an early stage.

#2 Great Marketing Tool
This kind of goes with testing the market but it also helps pre-campaign what you are about to bring to the world, or an existing business getting that brand awareness. With over 2million backers on platforms like Kickstarter, you sure can get a targeted reach for your project.

#3 Opportunity to pre -sell
Many of the products or businesses that get backed at crowdfunding platforms are sometimes not even at the market, by launching it on these platforms you can open opportunities to pre-sell your business before it’s official launch or release.

#4 it’s less risky
There are some crowdfunding platforms that offer equity but there are some that are reward based. Taking more of a reward based approach can help to avoid the risk to give out equity at an early stage for your business.

#5 It provides feedback
Crowdsourcing can be a great learning tool for early stage entrepreneurs to garner the feedback they require to test and solve issues with their products or services before they bring to the market. By engaging with the crowd you get comments, feedback, and ideas that could be developed further in the near future.

In short crowdfunding can be a great tool for you to consider for funding your business, however even though it has some benefits, it does require work to reach your funding goal, a campaign planning, and a pitch video is some of the starting points for this preparation.

If you are considering to launch your project on crowdfunding platforms you may want to check out the following blogs to help you further.

                                                                                          How to prepare your crowdfunding campaign