You got crowdfunding or fan funding questions? We got answers for ya!
Crowdfunding
First, we think crowdfunding and fan funding are slightly different. A crowdfunding site like Kickstarter is designed to take a creator from start to finish on a specific goal. Say, like making a cool photography accessory. At the end the creator delivers to “backers” that cool gear and perhaps goes on to make them for other retail customers.
Fan funding is like a tip jar. If you are a creator on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, Twitter, and perhaps other social media sites doing something your fans appreciate, they can support you with some cash, either one time or ongoing.
You will see us use crowdfunding or crowd funding on this site because some folks use the terms interchangeably.
How is FanBeach different?
We think of ourselves as a blend of the best features of the most well known fan funding platform and a digital marketplace version of something like Etsy. The digital item sales, to be clear, are entirely optional. You can make use of them or not, it is your choice. First and foremost, we are a fan funding platform for creators.
FanBeach is a Fan Funding Site, Not a Membership Platform
The site many think of as the leading fan funding service calls itself a membership platform. It has a system that pressures creators to find, purchase and sell merchandise to fans, and to produce additional, “special” content for their supporters, beyond what creators like you are already doing, on the far too many social media sites.
Earn More from Your Hard Work Without Working Harder
We think that’s too much extra work your fans don’t really need or want. They want to support you because they love what you do and want see you grow. So on FanBeach, you’ll be able to focus delivering high quality content to all of your fans on social media without the burden of creating additional exclusive content for those behind a paywall.
FanBeach creators also enjoy the industry’s leading affiliate program that earns them even more money!
Finally, our pricing is fair and easy to understand. Noticing a trend here? No fees hidden behind asterisks. Flat rates. Simple. Transparent. Please see our pricing page for details.
With FanBeach you register as a creator, get the link for your fan funding item(s), share it, ask your fans to support you by visiting those links, get paid – boom!
Apply to become a creator today: Creator Registration
We try to be realistic here where others appear to be, um, optimistic about crowdfunding or fan funding earnings.
It can be a bit complicated but here is a simplified example that errs on the conservative side – in other words, if you achieve average or better results, you’ll do better than this example.
The best method we’ve found is to take the number of views your content has in a month (30 day period) and apply a response rate to that of .05%
Because YouTube provides view counts (vs. Instagram) we will use it in this example.
Assume you have 100,000 views each month on YouTube and each of those views included your FanBeach fan funding item and you asked your fans to support you.
If .05% (we think this is an average rate of response) said yes, that would mean you’d have 50 fans contributing to you.
If you have 1,000,000 views, add a zero to the 50 above, which is, of course, 500.
Here is the part where it is complicated. Because you can offer tiers or levels of support ($2.95 – $199.95 – before our revenue share), how much those 50 fans are paying you depends on the choice they made.
It is safe to assume most will be at the lower tiers but you may be surprised by how many are generous.
Creators often have different pools of fans on each social media site. That means you can see substantial unique support by asking your Instagram, YouTube and other subscribers and followers to each support you and each can then become a valuable and steady revenue stream.
One last very important point: The formula above assumes you are following the “best practices” for sharing your fan funding links. Please see the examples elsewhere in the FAQs for help! You do need to share them and actively “ask” your fans to support you or your results will be smaller than this example.