Comments on: Niche Crowdfunding Sites Need to Aim Higher to Succeed

By: Rebecca Gutierrez

Rebecca Gutierrez — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:48:29 +0000

Great article! “Given Kickstarter’s success, it’s no surprise to see new services trying to piggyback on the idea of crowdfunding”. True indeed! There are lots of sites that have banked on this idea. So, here’s an interesting compilation of crowdfunding sites that will help differentiate one from the other, http://crowdsourcing.org/l/505.

By: David Cohn

David Cohn — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:18:19 +0000

It is indeed an interesting paradox – one I’ve witnessed as the founder of Spot.Us.

As I’ve always said from the start: Somebody could do what I’m doing tomorrow at the national or international level and have more success (ie: Spot.Us mainly focuses on local reporting – making even MORE niche).

And I’ve also said that the concept of crowdfunding news is bigger than Spot.Us and crowdfunding is bigger than news.

What irks me about spot.us not making it into the ‘big leagues’ as you note: Is that spot.us is a platform. Any news organization can use it and indeed the NY Times, LA Times, Oakland Trib, Mother Jones and others have from time to time.

The problem is from my selfish news-bias if news orgs don’t own some platform that does this for them – they’ll be at the mercy of whatever other open platform allows them some access (If it were Steve Jobs they’ll have a strict platform ;)

But that’s me on my high-horse of why didn’t news orgs create Craigslist.

The larger point is a tough nut to crack. Whatever niche it is you pick – you instantly shrink the size of your potential crowdfunders – whereas kickstarter is a great catch all.

By: komuves

komuves — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:51:00 +0000

Great post! Really like your ideas about the Paradox of Niche Crowdfunding. For example IndieGoGo started out as a platform for indie filmmakers, now they have community projects and startup business projects as well.