Chapter 1: How we raised over $18K to write a book
About 30 days ago, I happened to see Bud Caddell tweet about wanting to write a book about marketing in this brave new social media world but he wasn't sure any publisher would take it on. Bud is a prolific thinker and writer and I'm a bit of a fan of his Fan Economy presentation - it has contributed to a few strategies I've put forward to clients.
I had recently seen a new platform in action - one which allows people with an idea to release it to the world, rope in friends and family and hopefully raise funds. In 30 days Nic and Stan had raised $16K to fund them riding around South Africa, capturing stories about how every day people use their bicycles as part of their lives - in the hope of promoting cycling as a commuting option.
I sent Bud a message suggesting he test the loyalty (and pocketbooks) of his own fan base and put his concept to the test.
A couple of days later he sent me the link to the Bucket Brigade project - hoping to raise $5,000. It looked good to me so I ponied up the $100 to join the editorial board and then tweeted it out. Over the next few minutes we had $500 pledged - perhaps we were onto something. There's nothing quite like the marketplace validating your idea with hard cash.
I'm not going to say it was a massive immediate viral success - it took lots of work and great communication - but we quickly reached the $5K goal and as of writing, we're at $17K - with 3 hours to go. I won't give away too much more but the details will be in the first chapter of the book - which you can secure for just $2.
Quickly people recognised the real value was pledging $100 to interact with some pretty heavy weight thinkers during the writing of the book - it's cheaper than any course you'll go on ...
- James Cooper, CD at Saatchi NY
- Faris Yakob, Chief Innovation Officer at MDC
- Josh Spear, Co-Founder of Undercurrent & JoshSpear.com
- Adam Wohl, Co-Founder of MIR
- Mike Arauz, Senior Strategist at Undercurrent
- Gavin Heaton, Servant of Chaos
- And many many more – check out this Twitter list of bucket backers
The funding is now over and everyone is starting to get to know each other on bootcamp - the project management system we'll be using to collaborate across all these timezones.
Here's the original project on KICKSTARTER
I'm afraid if you've heard about this a little late, you've missed out but I'm sure we'll be engaging in plenty of croudsourcing activities.
