Tip #1 - Fundraisers
There are so many different types of events you can hold that may or may not be effective. Some filmmakers rent out a bar, get a DJ and set up a Beer Pong tournament. Others will do a horror movie marathon with local indie shorts. Some also do live events with performers.
Tip #2 - Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is when you put a link out on social media to a donation page. The most popular sites are Kickstarter, GoFundMe and Indiegogo. Kickstarter is an all or nothing campaign, where if you don't meet the goal, you don't get anything from it. GoFundMe lets you keep whatever you get and Indiegogo gives you the choice between the two. However, these sites do charge a fee out of the money you make. It's important in telling people what they are investing in so promo pictures are needed. Posters, on set photos and banners. The public need a glimpse of what you're making and need the money for. Don't forget to share the link everyday.
Tip #3 - Merchandise
Merchandise is very much overlooked. You don't have to break the bank on hats and t-shirts to sell merchandise. There are lots of options that can make you some money. You can get 8x10 posters made, and maybe autograph them. You can even get a custom-made action figure and raffle it off. There's also shops online that let you design merchandise without charging you. You just get a percentage of the profits. The only problem is that the merchandise is priced very high since the online shop is taking a cut.
Tip #4 - Appearances
There are other ways to fundraising without selling and raffling things. Another way is just making appearances. Go on podcasts and radio shows. Make appearances on people's YouTube channels. The more you spread the word the better.
Tip #5 - Flyers
Flyers are an old-fashioned way of promoting fundraising because everything is done online now. However, these still work. You can make flyers for your fundraisers or crowdfunding campaigns and post them at libraries and colleges. You can put them anywhere that has a bulletin board.
Tip #6 - Networking
Many of the other methods can fall into this one. When it comes to fundraisers you want to make sure you talk to the people who come to support you. Be sure to go to networking events. It's also a great way to find people with podcasts and radio shows and press connections. You want to go to other people's fundraisers and events too. You can spread the word and support other filmmakers. Because if you support them, they may support you. Also, it is very important to have business cards made. They are very cheap and easy to design on Vistaprint. Keep in mind too, if you can meet people who are popular or talented at these evens, they can give your film more value if they join your cast and crew.
Tip #7 - Social media
This is the most important method of them all, all the other methods fall into this one. Social media is one of the ways you'll promote your fundraisers. You can create an event page on Facebook, and share it with as many people as possible. You can post the event page and the crowdfunding link to tons of local networking groups for filmmakers. Social media is also a way to tell everyone to tune in to the radio show or podcast you're appearing on. You can take screenshots of the article and put them on Instagram. You can make a Facebook and Twitter page for the film. Then on the flyers, you can put a link or "Find us on Facebook!". Most marketing is done through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram and all the others. You can also use SnapChat to post updates and behind the scenes footage of shoots and events. Most social media outlets all have live streaming now too. Make sure you post regularly! You can't be successful anymore without Facebook.
What I have done to fundraise:
I started by making a crowdfunding page as this would be the page I will be sharing throughout all my methods of fundraising, so this needed to be completed first. I researched into the different types of crowdfunding websites I could use and their pros and cons to using them. This way I will be able to find the best one to fundraise on and the one that will hopefully bring in some donations.
The first one I looked into was GoFundMe because I have heard of this one before. I found that it is still relatively new as it was founded in 2010. However, I thought that it must be popular as it's the only one I've heard of, and I associate it with Facebook particularly. GoFundMe started in America, and since it started in 2010 it has raised over $5 billion, making it the biggest crowdfunding platform. It allows users to create their own website with which they raise money. To do this, members can describe their fundraising cause and the amount they hope to raise. Photos and videos can also be uploaded to help further the description of the donation. Once the website is created, GoFundMe allows users to share their project with people through social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram etc. People can then donate through the GoFundMe and track the progress of their funding. Those who donate can also leave comments on the website in support of the project. If the member receives no donations then no charge is made, and Payment processors collect 2.9% from each transaction.
Kickstarter is another crowdfunding page similar to GoFundMe. It was created a year prior in 2009. One of the only differences is that in order to get the donations from the site, the whole amount must have been raised, whereas using GoFundMe allowed you to take out any amount that was raised. Kickstarter applies a 5% fee on the total amount of funds raised, and their payments processor applies an additional 3-5% fee. The web pages of project launched on the site are permanently archived and accessible to the public. After funding is completed, projects and uploaded media cannot be edited or removed from the site.
Another crowdfunding site is RocketHub. This site does the same as GoFundMe and Kickstarter do, by people being able to publicise campaigns through Facebook, Twitter and other similar platforms. When creating a campaign, users choose a deadline, target funding-goal and offer perks in exchange for contributions. RocketHub is most similar to Kickstarter, the only difference being able to take the money from the site if the total amount isn't raised. RocketHub charges 4% of funds collected, plus 4% payment processing fees, if the project is fully funded, and 8% plus 4% payment processing fees if the project does not reach its goal.
As GoFundMe is the most popular crowdfunding website I think this is the one to go for. This is because people are more likely pay a website money if they know it's real. One way to do this is to hear from people who have used it before, and to get their opinion on it.
From my point of view as a donator, I can draw back to the As Live production because we used GoFundMe as our method of fundraising and we got a small amount of our initial donation suggestion. Therefore, I personally know that is it a safe website and easy to use. I have also donated myself on a GoFundMe page in the past for a charity walk and I had a good experience with it, in terms of the money being safe and going straight to the person I intended it to go to.
From a fundraiser point of view, the site doesn't charge if you don't receive any donations. This is reassuring because I would feel the pressure for people to donate and then that may put pressure on the donators. I am also allowed to take out any money that we raise instead of having to raise all the money
Below is the GoFundMe page:
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| Our GoFundMe page |
I gave a brief synopsis of VET-MAN, letting people know what they would be donating towards. I also stated that we are in the pre-production stage now, and we will be filming around February 2019. This information just gives people a brief description as to where we are at, at the moment. I advertised why we needed the donations - for food, travel, props and costumes. Finally, for a perk for them, I said that any donators will be featured in the credits, and I explained how grateful we would be for any help. I started advertising the total amount as £750, thinking that the bigger the goal the more people will help get to it. However, I shortly realised that it might work better the other way around. If people see it and notice that there is only a small amount needed to be raised, then they would be more likely to donate as it would be seen as a more achievable amount to get to. Because of this, I changed the amount to £400. Any donations we get will be gratefully received so it doesn't matter if we made the £750 or not, anything will help us out.
The next thing was to research into the best social media accounts to share our fundraiser. I don't want to waste time in sharing the page to a site where the people on it aren't very engaged by donations.
Facebook
Facebook has the largest audience of any social media site worldwide. According to their own statistics, the site has more than 2.27 billion monthly active users, with active being defined as logging in onto the site in the last 30 days. Each day there are between 11 and 12 million active ads on Facebook, from roughly 1.5 million advertisers running campaigns.
According to the GoFundMe website, sharing the donation page on Facebook can increase donations by 350%. As well as asking your network for a donation, you can also ask people in your life to spread the word by sharing the GoFundMe with their networks too. As GoFundMe links well with Facebook it is a lot easier to use it on this particular social media site. On the other sites I can only post a link with no preview for the donation page. When people are on Facebook they just need to click on the post and then click donate now. Whereas on the other sites they'll need to copy and paste the link into their address bar and then go through the donation part. This could mean that people are more likely to donate on Facebook over any other social media site.
Scheduling posts on Facebook will make fundraising easier. With pre-prepared posts and uploads, you can schedule the social media account to keep your audience engaged and aware of your campaign throughout its duration. Around these posts you can then throw in timely shares at relevant times. Facebook should see around a post every day, whereas Twitter is better suited to multiple posts per day. Try to focus on a maximum of three platforms and use them well. More than that then you may unintentionally start to neglect some. The next platform I will be looking at is Instagram.
As Facebook is one of the most popular social media site around the world, I feel that I would be missing out on possible donations if I didn't share my fundraiser on there. From my experience, Facebook is the one account that I have connected with the majority of people I know, so it is worthwhile fundraising on this social media site. Each time I shared the GoFundMe page I wrote a message explaining how grateful we are for any donations.
Instagram
Instagram's popularity has been growing steadily since in first debuted back in 2010. It has more than 500 million active users, meaning that it's currently the second most popular social media network behind Facebook. The number of advertisers on Instagram has doubled over the past six months or so, to more than one million. This means that Instagram is now considered the best social media platform for customer engagement.
Things such as post visibility, tendency to comment and share ability are a way to measure engagement on the site. I found a website called Forbes who were talking about why Instagram is so popular, and according to them, in a survey of more than 2,500 micro-influences (bloggers with a large following), "60% thought Instagram was the best overall platform for engagement, with Facebook only getting 18%" (DeMers, 2017).
Below are the reasons why Instagram is engaging with audiences:
Mobile functionality
- Instagram is able to be downloaded onto phones and looked at while people are out. It can be argued that Facebook and Twitter do the same thing. However, on Instagram you are able to immediately edit images that have been taken on the move to post on the platform. You can't edit images directly on the Facebook and Twitter apps. This feature makes it "an in-the-moment experience" (DeMers, 2017), which naturally attracts more people.
Visual nature
- Visual marketing has become so popular recently because people prefer to interpret information through sight. Instagram appeals to that visual nature, the majority of the newsfeed is occupied by the horizontal span of images, and since they're all reduced to the same square format, it gives a certain level of formality to the experience.
Novelty
- Instagram can be seen as a departure from other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, mostly because of its simplicity. It can attract the younger generation, with the majority of its users being under the age of 30. Instagram has an energy that older social media brands have lost over the years. Older people tend to have Facebook because they've had it since they were younger, but now they are older, they don't want to try the newer phenomenon that is Instagram.
Function
- Instagram caters to a wide range of audience. It offers publicity posts like Twitter, but also has greater control over spam and reasonably tight personal networks. It's not just limited to one function, like sites such as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is purely for professional networking, whereas Instagram you can use for businesses, by changing from the normal account to a business account, or you can use it for personal use and to simply upload nice photos.
The graph below from statistia.com shows how Instagram has grown from 2013, 3 years after it had launched, until 2018. It has stayed gradual but gained more users recently rather than when it first started out. This is why now is a good time to fundraise on Instagram as it engages well with the public.
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| https://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly-active-instagram-users/ |
I have already made an Instagram account in order to advertise VET-MAN but I needed a way to gain donations on it as well. To do this, I added a 'bio' where I described who we were and what we were doing. After this there is a part for an web address, this is the sort of thing I don't have on my personal Instagram but it would be perfect for the VET-MAN account. People would usually put their YouTube links on there or their Facebook profiles, but to help the donations I inserted our GoFundMe web address instead.
In order to advertise both the Instagram and GoFundMe page at the same time. I shared the Instagram page on my Facebook and urged people to follow it to keep updated with the film and to see our behind the scenes photos. While I shared this I reminded our followers that if they wanted to help out, to click the link and donate.
Twitter is one of the ten most-visited websites, with around 232 million active users worldwide. This is the smallest about of users I seen from each social media site so far but it's still a lot of people. These users are sending over 400 million tweets per day. By carrying out my research I also found that the largest population of Twitter users are made up of 18-29 year olds who have had at least some college education. This is good as their age demographic aligns with our target audience, so if I was to fundraise on the site, I know I will be getting views from the correct age range.
I also found that tweets that include links are 86% more likely to get retweeted, a link will not only increase retweets but can drive focused, relevant traffic back to your website. We don't have a website but we have the link for the GoFundMe page that I could put out on the tweets.
As Twitter limits you on your messages, you need to craft your 140 character tweet so it influences people to give. It can be difficult to get the message of the campaign across in this amount of characters so make sure you factor in enough time to work on these. The first few words of a tweet are important as people skim read so it's worth doing some testing to see whether your followers respond to the words donate / help / give etc, at the start of the message.
As I have said previously, I feel that people engage better with photos rather than words, this is why I was very interested in advertising on Instagram from the start. Facebook is another site in which I can use predominantly photos over words, however, Twitter is mainly about writing sentences as people use it to write about their thoughts and feelings. As we have a lot of interesting photos from the test shoots such as using the owls, I feel that we wouldn't engage our audience on Twitter as well as the other social media sites.
Out of all the people I know, the majority of them don't have Twitter, they feel more attracted to and engaged with Facebook and Instagram. As a result of this, I feel like fundraising specifically wouldn't be worthwhile on Twitter. However, I have already set up an advertisement page as Tim Stewart to get people interested. As Twitter is more of a personal site where people write about themselves on it, I felt that a page from Tim himself would fit better on Twitter over the other social media sites. You are also limited on the size of the message you put up on Twitter, I feel like this could limit the message I would want to put up explaining about the project and why we're doing it and would like the donations. As a result of this, I feel that fundraising on Twitter isn't the best option for our project.
Youtube
According to wyzowl.com, more video is consumed on YouTube than any other social network. Youtube statistics say that over 1 billion hours of video are watched daily on YouTube in 88 countries in 76 languages. Youtube is the world's second-largest search engine after Google, and the site has a massive reach. Marketers find "overwhelming success" (wyzowl, n/d) on YouTube. Out of the 87% of marketers who have published video content on YouTube, a massive 90% found it to be an effective strategy.
YouTube is also aimed at a younger audience, 18-34 year olds to be exact. Our target audience for VET-MAN is 16-30 years old, therefore fundraising on YouTube is a perfect fit for our age demographic. With the hope that it has been successful for 90% of marketing teams and fits with the age of our target audience, we may gain some donations from putting a video on the site.
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| https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/press/ |
According to mediakix.com Vlogs (video blogs) in particular on YouTube have become very popular. Not everyone is a writer and not every idea is expressed well through writing. Vlogs are for those interested in sharing their thoughts, advice, expertise, comedy, day-to-day life through talking into a camera. Just like a blog is defined by its frequency of new and updated posts, vlogging needs regularity and the creator of the channel needs to publish videos daily, weekly or on some sort of schedule to keep up with the consistency of other vlogs.
Similarly to blogging, vlogging has undergone an evolution over the last decade that has taken it from a wild frontier to a widely accepted and high popular form of content, it can even be said that it has replaced traditional TV programming. Vlogging is impacting the future of media in many ways.
Vlogging caught on for the same reasons blogging did, it gave people an outlet for their passions and expertise etc. The video blog format fostered deeper and more personal connections between creators and audiences. People feel as though they can relate to bloggers because they talk about their day-to-day life and troubles they've faced. If people watching have faced the same thing then they will connect with the vlogger more - this is then how the vlogger builds a fan base called subscribers.
Luckily for us Katie has her own YouTube channel. She has 40,683 subscribers which is really impressive. The more subscribers she has, the more people will see her videos. Vlogging has really grown over the years, to prove this I can relate it to Katie's channel because 3 years ago she had 6,000 subscribers and this has increased by 34,000 to make the 40+ amount now.
In order to see whether her channel is a good place to fundraise for VET-MAN or not, I had a look at her videos and looked to see how she bonded with her subscribers, and how regularly she uploaded videos onto it. Katie posts many simple chat videos where she just talks to the camera about personal issues, what she gets up to during the day and she often uploads fashion videos. She always asked her audience what sort of video they would rather see, and whichever they ask for she will make. This shows that she bonds with her subscribers really well and the fact that they can be struggling with something and ask her to do a video on it means that she's on that personal level with them as well. She regularly posts videos, they've slowed down slightly since we've been back at uni but she is still consistent and each week is still gaining more subscribers.
As a result of this, I believe that fundraising on Katie's YouTube channel will be a good idea. She will be on the same level as our target audience, 16-30 year olds and with 40,638 subscribers, we can guarantee a lot of views, and hopefully some donations. I asked her if she could talk about our project and what we are doing with it. I also asked her to share the link for the donation page and to follow our Facebook and Instagram accounts to keep updated on the project. I've asked her to talk about the project when she can in new videos so her subscribers are reminded of the project and the donation link.
By creating a GoFundMe page, it allowed me to share our idea over social media and gives a link for people to donate if they wanted to help us out. I shared this over my Facebook and Instagram account, and Alex and Katie did too. I also had a few extra shares from friends and family so now the post has got further afield to people I am not connected with on my social media. The further it goes online, the better as more people will see it, meaning that there is a bigger possibility of someone wanting to donate.
I have set myself a target to share this on my social media accounts most times during the week, reminding people to donate.
Leaflets (flyers)
I considered leaflets before researching into different fundraising methods, just to get different types of people rather than people who only go on social media. The majority of people have a social media account of some sort, whether it be Facebook or YouTube but this doesn't mean that everyone aged between 16-30 has a social media account. I personally know a couple of people who don't have Facebook, the biggest social network in the world. So my fundraising attempts wouldn't even get to those people if I only tried through the online platforms. This is why I wanted to create a fundraising leaflet so I had something in paper that I could print out.
I researched into advice when making a fundraising leaflet to make sure I was including the correct information on the leaflet. I need to be careful and not confuse it with an advertisement. Through this research, I learnt to remember the purpose of the leaflet is to inspire people to fundraise for our project. It's important to have the information about the film on the leaflet but don't put too much on it. Aim the focus of the leaflet on what people can do - donate towards our budget.
I need to make sure I put the Facebook page and Instagram account on the leaflet because then if people want more information in what they are donating towards then they can look at the online platforms to find out. This way I am not overloading people with information on the leaflet, if this was the case then they may not even read it if it had too much writing on it. As I've found out through my research on Instagram, people engage better to photos rather than writing. As a result of this, I will ensure my poster has photos of our test shoots. This means the public can look at the photos and then read on if they are interested. As we are working with birds of prey, the test shoot photos should really interest people as they aren't the standard animals you'd expect someone to feature in a film.
The main approach to take when creating a fundraising leaflet is to keep it fun and positive. People want to feel like they will be making a difference by donating towards our project.
Keeping this advice in mind, I created a fundraising leaflet. I made mine similar to how a poster looks where it's all written on one A4 piece of paper rather than folding it like the traditional leaflet. I feel like by having the information and photos on one side will be easier for people to look at and they would be more likely to read it, rather than if they had to pick it up and look at the different sides. I tried my best to keep it simple with little writing but I had to include the essential information such as the synopsis, and donation information otherwise the leaflet wouldn't make any sense.
I researched into advice when making a fundraising leaflet to make sure I was including the correct information on the leaflet. I need to be careful and not confuse it with an advertisement. Through this research, I learnt to remember the purpose of the leaflet is to inspire people to fundraise for our project. It's important to have the information about the film on the leaflet but don't put too much on it. Aim the focus of the leaflet on what people can do - donate towards our budget.
I need to make sure I put the Facebook page and Instagram account on the leaflet because then if people want more information in what they are donating towards then they can look at the online platforms to find out. This way I am not overloading people with information on the leaflet, if this was the case then they may not even read it if it had too much writing on it. As I've found out through my research on Instagram, people engage better to photos rather than writing. As a result of this, I will ensure my poster has photos of our test shoots. This means the public can look at the photos and then read on if they are interested. As we are working with birds of prey, the test shoot photos should really interest people as they aren't the standard animals you'd expect someone to feature in a film.
The main approach to take when creating a fundraising leaflet is to keep it fun and positive. People want to feel like they will be making a difference by donating towards our project.
Keeping this advice in mind, I created a fundraising leaflet. I made mine similar to how a poster looks where it's all written on one A4 piece of paper rather than folding it like the traditional leaflet. I feel like by having the information and photos on one side will be easier for people to look at and they would be more likely to read it, rather than if they had to pick it up and look at the different sides. I tried my best to keep it simple with little writing but I had to include the essential information such as the synopsis, and donation information otherwise the leaflet wouldn't make any sense.
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| My fundraising leaflet |
I thought carefully about where to post the leaflet. Even though it's not aimed at an online audience, I still had to think about our target audience. As we are creating a film aimed at young people. I immediately thought of the UCA campus in Rochester as a very large amount of the students who attend are within our target age range, therefore I can post one in the canteen. I also work in a supermarket where they've employed a lot of young people as Christmas temps at the moment, but I work with a lot of young people anyway so I can post one in our staff room as well. Somewhere like an elderly care home wouldn't have the same effect because the people who live there aren't within our target audience. If someone donates towards something then they are going to want to see what their money is going to. As a result of this, it would be unfair to put one of the leaflets in an environment like this because the sitcom isn't aimed towards their average age range. I have easy access to a care home as I know the manager of one, but I thought it isn't about how easy it is to get a leaflet out, it's more important as to who it's aimed at and I should base my leaflet location on that.
From my earlier research about different ways to fundraise, there were a couple methods I didn't carry out. I didn't do the merchandise, networking or fundraisers because of our low budget. Keeping this in mind, we couldn't have created a fundraiser or hired a bar, or got t-shirts printed because of the price of them. However, it was good to see the really diverse ways that people can fundraise, with some of them I hadn't even thought of. As we have a young audience of 16-30 year olds, I also tried to stay on their level and mainly promoted our fundraising through crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe and on social media. I felt that it was important to put up leaflets because like the advice said previously, they still work. In order to keep with our age demographic I specifically put them up in places that would have our target audience, such as the main University campus and my place of work.
References:
- Kaplan, B. (2017). 7 Simple Ways To Raise Money For Your Next Film Production. Available: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/how-to-raise-money-for-your-movie. Last accessed 10th Nov 2018.
- wyzowl. (n/d). Why Video is Exploding on Social Media in 2018. Available: https://www.wyzowl.com/video-social-media-2018/. Last accessed 10th Nov 2018.
- https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/press/
- DeMers, J. (2017). Why Instagram Is The Top Social Platform For Engagement (And How To Use It). Available: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2017/03/28/why-instagram-is-the-top-social-platform-for-engagement-and-how-to-use-it/#18b26a7936bd. Last accessed 10th Nov 2018.
- Kemp, B. (n/d). Producing a fundraising leaflet. Available: http://www.adeptdesign.co.uk/blog/blog/post/21-producing-a-fundraising-leaflet. Last accessed 10th Nov 2018.
- Kemp, B. (n/d). Producing a fundraising leaflet. Available: http://www.adeptdesign.co.uk/blog/blog/post/21-producing-a-fundraising-leaflet. Last accessed 10th Nov 2018.
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