Crowdsourcing: An exercise in psychology

After more than a month of sharing some details of my life “with the world,” my crowdfunding campaign is over.

Although it didn’t reach its funding goal — which I knew was lofty from the outset — I wouldn’t say it wasn’t successful. And, it certainly did bring me closer to my tuition goal, for which  I am very grateful to my friends and supporters.

It has been an interesting experience, indeed. Aside from the obvious — reminding me why I quit business school (something having to do with a sales class) — the indiegogo.com campaign revealed some interesting observations into human nature (including my own) and relationships.

Doors were opened; doors were closed; knocks simply ignored (this happened more often than I expected). New relationships formed; blessings received from the most unexpected sources.

I think the most valuable lesson, however, was seeing how far I could push and stretch myself, how far out of the comfort zone I would step.

It reminded me a little bit of something an undergrad journalism professor and seasoned reporter once told me when I said I was an introvert and didn’t like to talk to people.

“That makes you uncomfortable? Then you shouldn’t be a journalist. Now get out there!”

He was famous among his students for pushing them to ask tough questions. So much so that the college newspaper staff, in a poem about their experience at the paper, humorously “quoted” him as saying, “Thou shall crawl up thou sources’ pant leg.”

I never forgot his words (not the ones about the pant leg), and I frequently remember them when I’m about to step out of my comfort zone. Which is to say, I remembered them a lot during the past month or so.

So would I do this again? Maybe. I certainly gained some insights that may fun to apply — to someone else’s cause.

A funny thing happened on the way to defeat… (Or, why it’s OK to not give up)

Photo by Marine*B via www.flickr.com

Question: How many times do you get knocked down before you stop getting up? Or, how much knocking on those doors can your knuckles take?

We humans are wired for self-preservation. One too many slammed doors and we give up. But sometimes it doesn’t hurt to try one more door… you never know.

If you’re been reading about my grad school exploits, you know the story: I followed a 10-year dream to go back to school, I lost my main source of income two weeks later, yadda yadda (catch up here  if you need to).

Call it denial but I refused to give up on the idea that I can continue my education after losing my tuition-paying funds.

In theory, I should have listened to the Universe since nothing went right after losing that work.

Crowdfunding, four weeks later: Pounding the pavement

It’s been close to five weeks since I decided to experiment with the idea of crowdfunding for tuition. I knew from the beginning this is not one of those “if you build it, they will come” endeavors, but I didn’t realize it would turn into a part-time job!

The biggest lesson I learned so far is that crowdfunding is all about marketing, and it’s a lot like marketing a company or product — because, in my case, that’s what I’m essentially doing. Since I’m targeting primarily businesses and others to do sponsorships in exchange for creative services or content/social media training, my Go to 11! campaign has had limited appeal.

My combination of strategies has included individual emails, both offering the “perks” and asking some people about referrals; a few Facebook and Twitter postings; some formal pitch letters (I dabbled in using Constant Contact since I know the platform well and it has a free trial). I have sent some informal group emails via LinkedIn and asked my Facebook friends to repost.

Contacting individuals directly has worked best so far — a lot of emailing! Which is why the campaign took on a life of its own as far as time commitment, and that has been challenging since my work and clients are a priority.

One interesting struggle is finding the fine line between keeping momentum on Facebook and feeling like I’m spamming my network. I erred on the side of minimum postings, only posting my indiegogo.com link about four times or so — probably not the most effective idea, considering crowdfunding works hand in hand with social media. I think this is a challenge anyone who has to build a personal brand faces: writers, speakers, consultants etc.

Three more weeks left on this journey. I am taking a break for the winter quarter from school, which I think will be a good opportunity to regroup, refocus and recharge.

The best part: I am not giving up!

A few ‘obsolete’ things that are worth hanging on to in 2012 and beyond

If you’re one of the few people who don’t live on Facebook 16 hours a day, you may still be catching up on the list it released recently of the 40 most-shared articles of the year.

No. 33 on the list, ahead of CNN’s story about the death of Steve Jobs, is a MoneyTalksNews article titled “Things Babies Born in 2011 Will Never Know.” Published on Yahoo Finance, the article was inspired by a Huffington Post list of 20 things that became obsolete this decade.

As we get ready to wrap up 2011 with some gingerbread cookies and eggnog, it seems fitting to revisit the MoneyTalks list of obsoletes.

Although we can only speculate on the Web 51.4.3 universe in which babies born this year will come of age, no one would argue that newsletter classifieds, movie-rental stores and videotapes have gone the way of the horse and buggy. And we can only hope that Yellow Pages and dial-up Internet will be nothing but obscure Wikipedia entries by then.

But a few things on the list are worth reconsidering. Take the idea of never forgetting anything — since all the information is in your pocket inside the handy little device called smartphone, why bother remembering stuff, right?

Say good-bye to math flashcards drilling multiplication facts into your brain, or the pain of remembering your mother’s birthday, or the punchline to that joke about the two men walking into a bar and …ummm… hang on a sec, let me pull out the BlackBerry…

Crowdfunding 101: Read the fine print

It’s been a week since I decided to take my college tuition dilemma to the masses and I have to say so far I have mixed feelings about the idea’s success. But the day is young, as they say, so I’m not giving up just yet.

One thing I learned immediately: Read the fine print. It’s not something I habitually do, and I suspect most people don’t either. Two days after the campaign went live, the indiegogo staff took it offline and returned it to “draft” mode (which made it unviewable) because three of my perks entered the contributors’ names into drawings.

Turns out, the fine print was pretty specific about any type of lottery, drawing included, not being allowed. So much for giving away the prizes of chocolate (which was proving popular) and gourmet popcorn!

I also realized somewhat belatedly that not all contributions are created equal — some funds would not be disbursedd by indiegogo until about 10 days after the campaign ends. These are all the payments that come in through non-PayPal options, such as direct credit card or check payment through the website. Fortunately, for me that’s not an issue since I only need part of the funds before the deadline ends, but for anyone looking into the idea of crowdfunding, it’s a good thing to know ahead of time.

So lesson No. 1 learned so far: It does pay to read the fine print — in some cases, literally.

$9,000 in 49 days? It doesn’t hurt to dream

Yesterday, I set off to “make” $9,000 in 49 days. Crazy, right?

If you’ve come here to read about a “get rich quick” idea, keep surfing. But if you want to read about a grad school student looking for creative ways to fund college tuition, read on.

After much talking, hand-wringing and pride swallowing, I decided if I really believe in something — this something being my education — I’m going to have to live with the pain and discomfort that comes with publicly admitting to a need, then asking for support. I launched a crowd-funding campaign through a site called indiegogo.com in hopes to attract business sponsorships in exchange for some creative services, but opened it up to individual contributions as well (there’s chocolate and popcorn involved but you’ll have to visit the site to learn how).

When our MCDM program director Hanson Hosein said our first class was intended to stretch us, this is probably not exactly what he meant. Nonetheless, since our Cohort 11′s slogan has become “Go to 11,” I am embracing the challenge of being pushed outside of my bubble. If I fail to find a way to continue in school this academic year, it won’t be because I admitted defeat.

Grad school perks: Things on the wish list become class assignments

During our group presentation in my MCDM class, the professor asked whether it helped to push us, ie require us to set up a blog in a hurry and syndicate/create engagement, all within two months.

I’ll admit it was quite a stretch but the irony is, I’ve been thinking about blogging for a couple of years. I started a personal blog a couple of times and abandoned it after less than half-dozen posts. I even got paid to blog for a visitor’s bureau for almost a year!

You know you’re in the right program when things on your “want to do someday” list become class requirements. I had registered the domain name for my Sandwiched In blog last spring when I discovered the term “sandwich generation,” which described my situation of caring for my kids and parents at the same time.

I parked the domain, thinking that if I get to that “someday” blogging thing, that may be  good topic. Leave it to my class to give me the kick in the pants required to jump-start the thing!