Crowd-funding doesn’t work? Tell that to Julia Nunes!

Written by Bradley from Ninja Milk – Creative. Social. Content

KNOW & GROW YOUR AUDIENCE

I have been following YouTube singer/songwriter Julia Nunes for a couple of years now and she stands out as someone who knows how to build an audience organically by posting video content of her performing songs (originals & covers) in creative ways from her bedroom.

Her YouTube account titled jaaaaaaa has since Mar, 2006 accumulated over 200,000 channel subscribers and her video views total 46 million hits. These kind of numbers would even make music artists/bands with large PR power very jealous.

CROWD FUNDING: Let the people decide a projects’ merit.

During the years that Julia has been building and growing her online brand a website called Kickstarter was establishing itself as one of the top crowd-funding platforms for creative projects. Using Kickstarter anyone can start a funding campaign to ask for contributions from people around the world who are interesting in pitching in for a project to help make it happen. The creator selects a fundraising goal amount and if  that total is raised the money goes to the creator. If the amount isn’t raised money goes back to the user who pledged.

JULIA NUNES + KICKSTARTER

Julia has released some albums and tracks in the past which you can buy from online stores as well as other merchandise. As she is an independent artist I would imagine the prior recordings would have been self-funded with tight budgets. But this is about to change.

Julia started a Kickstarter campaign titled “Julia Nunes Would Be Nothing Without Me” with a conservative goal of $15,000. It can be very intimidating to start a campaign knowing that your audience will make or break the funding process and are ultimately judging it’s merit. Remember if Julia doesn’t raise $15,000 in pledges there are no funds.

Here is her kooky video introducing the campaign:

Well, within 24-hours after launching the campaign her online community had pledged $19,000 to fund the creation of her album. Less than a week later the total was $42,000 and growing by the hour.

As I write this blog there are 11-hours to go before the month-long campaign draws to an end. Julia Nunes has raised over $72,000 from 1,527 online donating fans.

As a result of the overwhelming show of support and demand for Julia’s album to be recorded not only can she pay all the musicians and cover all the production costs but will now invest in the promotion and PR of the album. The media is also starting to take note and Julia has appears on CNN within the last 24-hours.

FIVE THINGS JULIA NUNES DID RIGHT

1) PRODUCT. She knew her “product.” Julia gave clear indications of what she was selling and what the community would receive as a result. In this case an album and if donations allowed a campaign to market the album release.

2) INCENTIVES. She was clear in presenting incentives for people who donated. A pledge of $10 gets you a download copy of the album. A pledge of $30 delivers a signed hard-copy of the album plus the download pre-release version. These are great value and line up with real world product values. It might seem obvious but some crowd-funding projects I have seen have not matched the incentives with monetary value.

3) MONEY CAN’T BUY. A donation of 2,500 will deliver Julia Nunes to your living room for a personal concert plus a stack of other swag. So far there have been 3-users donating this money-can’t-buy experience.

4) CREDIT THE COMMUNITY. The title of the campaign, “Julia Nunes Would Be Nothing Without Me.” Such a smart way of offering the credit for the project back to the people who now have a sense of ownership of the album’s creation.

5) REMAIN SOCIAL. Julia also used her Social Media platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to spread news of the project but also consistently showing her gratitude to the people who were making this possible and validating her as a musician.

Screenshot from Kickstarter

Let me know your thoughts on anything Social Media, Crowd funding, YouTube related and head over to my company website Ninja Milk – Creative. Social. Content to find out why I am so passionate about such topics.

UPDATE: The final total raised for the project was $77,888.00 which is an amazing result.

Cheers,

Bradley

(Director / Digital Producer)
Ninja Milk – Creative. Social. Content

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