Crowdfunding comes in many flavors... You've got rewards crowdfunding -- the kind of crowdfunding where people back projects in return for rewards and popularized by sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. You've got equity crowdfunding -- where people actually invest their money into private companies online. You've got marketplace lending (also called peer to peer lending) -- where people lend small increments of money out to borrows and make a return on their loans. LendingClub is the...

In the world of crowdfunding, video games is one of the largest categories receiving money from backers. It doesn't take long to research but if you look at the most successful crowdfunding campaigns, you'll quickly see that the list is littered with video games. Projects like Star Citizen, Shroud of the Avatar, and Shenmue III have literally raised millions of dollars from thousands of backers. We've written before about the top crowdfunding sites for gaming. While this looks great, the...

Crowdfunding is getting a lot of press lately and it should. It's turning into an accepted process to raise money for an idea, product, or entire business. Entrepreneurs now have crowdfunding as a finance option when they're thinking about financing their business. Crowdfunding can be a complement or substitute for traditional forms of financing, like angel investing, venture capital, and bank loans. But with different flavors of crowdfunding to choose from, which is the right one for an...

According to a recent article in the Financial Times, people like you and me have helped contribute to the crowdfunding site, Kickstarter (read my description and analysis on the largest crowdfunding site) raising over $2 billion for 78,000 projects over time. This new form of finance and participative product design (here's my brief description of what is crowdfunding) is transforming industries like real estate (top real estate crowdfunding platforms), non-profits (top crowdfunding sites...

Kicking off a crowdfunding campaign requires some smart planning. Of course, it's worthwhile to do the essential things you should complete before you begin crowdfunding. And whether you have a lot of money to promote your crowdfunding campaign or you're running your crowdfunding campaign on a budget, it's important to understand how the crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo charge. Because no matter what, you're going to end up pocketing less money than you raised and that...