Two weeks into the campaign,
and my high hopes have been somewhat diminished. It began inauspiciously when on the day of the launch, and
after I had signed up for Facebook, and had been navigating about for an hour
or so, I was sent a message informing me that my password had been compromised
and my account had been locked. FB
also advised me to change the password if it was being used for any other
accounts, and it was - for several.
It took me hours to resolve.
I then realized that the campaign announcement message I had sent to my
sphere of friends, family, and colleagues via Facebook and Linkedin was not
clear. I've never been comfortable
with the prospect of directly asking people for money for film budgets, so with
my initial message, I was trying to lure people into the SHE LOVES ME website
where I was hoping they would click on the Indiegogo button, go to the campaign
page, learn what "crowdfunding" was all about, and donate, but they
didn't. It was too
complicated. I had to step out of
my comfort zone and be more direct with my solicitation. I sent a second message explaining that
I was trying to raise money for a film through Indiegogo, and I included a
brief explanation of what Indiegogo is all about, and this time I also included
a link to the campaign page. This
seemed to work. I started getting
donations and encouraging messages, and I was thrilled! The campaign was under way! The next step was to send out the press
release. Following the advice of
an experienced crowdfunder I was following on the internet, I chose PRWeb to
distribute the release. The press
release was supposed to be the
marketing tool that was to draw the most attention to the project. So far I haven't received any email or
donations from anyone outside of my personal connections, so I'm not sure the
press release was all that effective.
What I do know is that after two weeks into the campaign, I find myself
way short of the funding goal. Of
course it's still relatively early, and I'm certainly not giving up on it by
any means, but I am considering alternate plans. If I can raise enough money to shoot the first scene of the
script - say $15,000 - $20,000 - I will change the format of the project into a
webisode series, shoot the first episode, and take it from there. I've also been open to the idea of switching
the project over to an investment scenario. After a phone conversation on the subject with an old friend
of the family who happens to be a successful businessman, that notion became
reinforced with his confirmation that an investment scenario would be more
appealing to him, as it would be, he surmised, for other people with larger
amounts of money available for speculation. But then I'm back to the dilemma of asking strangers to
invest money in a high-risk venture.
Not my forte. Thank God I
have an attorney who is willing to perform that task for me, and I intend to
ask him to expand the phone list if things don't work out with the donation
scenario. So although it's been
one heck of a learning curve to deal with, and I'm slightly disappointed with
the donation numbers at this point, I'm still pumped about the campaign
overall, and excited to see how it evolves!
Mike Bizzarri
http://www.shelovesmefilm.com
