A particular brand of scam has been on the rise lately.
As we stride into 2024, we've seen a plethora of awe-inspiring campaigns that have left us in awe. However, with the rise of new and exciting opportunities, there's an inevitable surge in the emergence of cunning scams. Take a scroll through the discussions in this Reddit post, and you'll see just how prevalent these scams have become.
This particular brand of scam has been on the rise lately. It kicks off with someone claiming they can skyrocket your project to success. Once you cough up the cash, your project is supposedly set to receive a windfall of funds. But here's the kicker: the number of backers doesn't see the promised spike. Picture this: a $100,000 project with a mere 50 backers – that's downright suspicious! Fast forward a couple of days, and those substantial pledges will be canceled. Your project reverts to normal, and it might ultimately fail to meet its funding goal. We're waving the red flag here, guys. Anyone laying eyes on this blog better keep their guard up. There's also few more scams and spams that seem to be perennially in style. Let me clue you in on it.
Typically you’ll get these messages through Kickstarter itself, but sometimes the service will track down your e-mail and send it to you there. They claim to have carefully selected my project out of all the other projects–this is just a trick to make you feel special. Don’t fall for it.
These messages come under the guise of friendly advice. They usually say, “Hey, I thought you might like this article about crowdfunding!” The article itself is actually decent, but the core point of these messages is for you to go to the website and pay for the consulting service.
You’ll get people storming your inbox saying that they can promote your project to their 5,000 followers on Instagram or 7,500 followers on Twitter. Be wary of this.
Some of those who reach out to you might have many followers, but know that there are a lot of tools to build up a fake following.
Moreover, social media is never the strongest leverage point for a crowdfunding campaign. Yes, it’s there and incredible for driving awareness of your project and keeping people updated of your plans, but it’s never truly the direct driver for success. The core drivers of success are usually friends/family (your network), an email list of enthusiastic fans (from the pre-launch phase), and paid advertising.
Sometimes people will reach out to you and tell you that they’ll “promote your project” for you.
They’ll tell you that they have access to many different channels (with thousands of crowdfunding backers!) and they can feature your project.
What happens here is that they’ll go out and bombard these different groups, pages and forums with a short blurb about your project and a link to it.
While we've covered several scams above, not every service provider who approaches you is useless. At this point, you need to carefully discern and find those few nuggets buried in the sand.
