Kickstarter: funding creative ideas, ambitious endeavors

http://www.kickstarter.com/

I’ve known about this site for a couple of months now but I’ve been seeing links to various projects all over the place this week. It’s a website where you can start a project and get people to back you on it. You set a goal and if it isn’t met, it’s over and none of your pledges lose money. But if it is met, you get money to help self-publish your book/short stories/EP/whatever and you have a little community of people to send it to afterwards to help spread the word about how awesome you are. 

Why do people support projects?

REWARDS! Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering smart, fun, and tangible rewards (products, benefits, and experiences).

STORIES! Kickstarter projects are efforts by real people to do something they love, something fun, or at least something of note. These stories unfold through blog posts, pics, and videos as people bring their ideas to life. Take a peek around the site and see what we’re talking about. Stories abound.

I first heard about the site because I follow someone on tumblr who had a project going back in the spring. She works at tumblr and is a writer and seems super sweet and funny, so I e-mailed her (and she responded! ha) and wrote an article about it for my writing class. This is her project.

Her goal was met and then some, giving her and her partner more money to make their book even better. 

I’m not sure why I’m writing this. I don’t have a project going or anything, but I just like the site. Obviously, if you don’t have much of an internet presence you might not meet your goal. Projects do get circulated around the Kickstarter site itself though. It’s great not only for the writers/musicians/artists, but for the people backing them. It helps people feel like they’re a part of something.