On January 6 Indiegogo announced that they are adding a new option for creators that allows them to keep using their campaign page for sales after reaching their initial funding goal. InDemand is now available to anyone who has launched an Indiegogo campaign and reached their full goal. You can find this option under “Edit Campaign”.
It seems like the news has attracted mixed feelings, but this new service offers some clear advantages. InDemand is now another thing that sets Indiegogo apart from other crowdfunding platforms (Kickstarter, for example) and keeps creators paying to use their platform while giving business a comfortable way to grow after funding. A few comments on the Indiegogo Blog suggest that some creators think that it will take the spotlight off of current campaigns.
A few perks of continuing to run your business through Indiegogo include the fact that you can still continue communicating with all of your, get customer information and analytics, and capitalize on the SEO you have built up throughout the campaign. Instead of finishing a project and trying to lure people to a neglected website, businesses can keep going on Indiegogo for the same 4% fee (and payment processing fees) as before.
According to an article in Forbes, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin said in a statement:
“InDemand gives our customers the turn-key solution they have been asking for to reach a larger audience and move into the next phase of their company’s lifecycle … Results from the pilot are strong and we are excited to roll out InDemand globally.”
Indiegogo has been pre-testing this feature with a lot of success. One campaign, Geek Pulse, which raised over $1.1 million for their performance audio system has since raised another $1.4 million through the InDemand feature. All of the current InDemand projects can be seen on this page – which has grown steadily since the announcement was made. An interesting point is that any campaign that has been fully funded can join InDemand, but if you decide to turn it off you cannot use the InDemand service for that project again.
The Indiegogo FAQ does address the worry that these campaigns will take all of the attention, saying:
“The same promotion methodology applies for live campaigns as in InDemand: Campaigns will appear with others on Indiegogo.com. We also regularly feature campaigns on our homepage, category pages, blog, newsletter, and social media pages, yet we don’t select the campaigns that are featured; campaigns earn featured spots by staying active.”
This is one way Indiegogo is saying that this process is not unfair; creators who keep their page active and drive traffic are going to be featured more on the site. Only time will tell whether this new feature will help or harm the platform, but it currently seems to be attracting a lot of attention. Indiegogo raised $40 million in a Series B funding round last year and have since been introducing and testing new features like Indiegogo Life, and Indiegogo insurance for backers.
