Positives: -It was 20-30 times quicker to upload to ptwi, significantly less daunting and was hassle free. I literally did this in five to ten minutes, immediately after seeing this thread. Ks felt like an ordeal, and took the best part of a week to get set up, including multiple drafts, setting up screenshots just to fit their layout, filling out a spreadsheet that wasn't really aimed at the kind of project I had - not to mention their system for verifying payment details and getting checked for fit with their rules (they tell you to allow a certain amount of business days for someone to check it, and don't really make it clear that that's only done if they're automatic system flags something up)
- your website name makes my intentions more clear. With Kickstarter there's often this impression people have, that the campaign is the main or only source of funding for a project, which can be downright harmful to projects. I remember a game console Kickstarter getting lots of flack for asking for an amount that people thought wouldn't be enough to make it work. When you only need a little bit or nothing at all, it's not helpful to have to inflate the amount you're asking for, on an all or nothing form of funding. (To me now, crowdfunding is basically a "vague acquaintances and people in the same online communities as me" round)
Negatives: 1)I couldn't change the amount I'm asking for in total. It might be because I'm on mobile, but even with zooming in, it didn't seem like that was even an input box. $1000 is way more than I need to prove that it's worth continuing on that route. I'd be happier doing $200 but on just a few days of the ad being live, since the next stage is only really a $5 per year thing. (Edit: 5$ per year is roughly what I'd want to charge each user for a basic level subscription)
2) the message about paying $10 to show I'm not a spammer. That is shown once the page is live and it's rather confusing. I don't know your brand and in my experience in the UK most companies that check if you're real by taking money and then refunding do £1, so being asked for $10 on that basis makes me nervous. Makes me question why there wasn't a captcha, or email verification, or restriction to one upload. It took me writing this up to realise posting projects to ptwi is anonymous. That also explains using cryptocurrency and having to save a specific link to administer the page. Feels really odd but kind of cool.
3) I've never used any cryptocurrency before, and I also wouldn't want to have to explain how to use it to people I share the link with. Ideally I should be able to just send the link to people with a short warm intro and leave them to it
Here's the shareable page that I got:
https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_EDJsmGx...