The Next Step Beyond Crowdfunding

One of the the things about crowdfunding is that raising the money you think you need is only half the battle. After you've reached your goal, that's the end of the line with the crowdfunding platform, since they're not designed to help beyond that. That's also the point where you need the another round of marketing help.

A new site called Shopstarter wants to be the next step beyond your crowdfunding campaign. The platform is designed to help the project creator manage backers and preorders after the campaign has ended.

The platform makes a lot of sense, since it allows the project's backers to create accounts with all the shipping information for the reward packages (which are updatable if people move), stay in touch with the backers, and even allow them to pledge more if they want.

Shopstarter also can import all the information from your Kickstarter campaign, which includes any videos, images or text.

The individual project "shops" are hosted for free, but are subject to 5% of the transactions plus 30 cents.

I see Shopstarter as only the first to jump into this area. What I'd like to see is a company that actually helps on the fulfillment side as well, since artists (and creators in general) are generally really good at making things and not as good on the operations beyond that. It's a potentially lucrative market, since the clients are already funded.

If anyone decides to use Shopstarter, please report back with your experience.

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