Craigstarter: Open source crowdfunding on Shopify

Hi all — A few months ago, when I was planning on launching my new book, I took some time to reassess the crowdfunding situation around the web. Previously, I had successfully crowdfunded two books on Kickstarter and the process was relatively straightforward. But the last time I did that was four years ago. A lot has changed, not the least of which is the rise of platforms like Shopify — incredibly extensible platforms. I wanted to see how difficult it would be to build a set of crowdfunding templates for Shopify. Turns out, it's not *too* tough (though, it's not a piece of cake, either). The result: Craigstarter. I used it to launch my new book last week. It worked EXTREMELY WELL. We sold over $100,000 worth of books in two days, and all the tiers, goals, and backend calculations went along without a hitch. As a writer and photographer, my goal is always to share the results of my publishing experiments with other independent authors / designers / developers. So I'm releasing Craigstarter as an open source, free to use and extend project. Why use something like this over a dedicated crowdfunding platform? The biggest benefit is you pay about 7% less in fees on a platform like Shopify. That's bonkers. But perhaps more importantly — you own your nook of the web when you use your own tools. With Craigstarter you have total design control, so you can match your brand / site. You also control the archive — once complete, your project doesn't live on someone else's site. Fulfillment and customer service is also more organically integrated when you build atop Shopify. Which means more privacy for your backers since you don't have to offload their info to a 3rd party. Of course, I don't mean to diminish platforms like Kickstarter in any way, they're incredible, and for folks who don't run their own shop or don't want to deal with the technicalities of setting up their own campaign, IndieGogo or Kickstarter are perfect options. But options are good. The more options the better for everyone. And so for those of us with a little bit of technical knowhow, a self-hosted solution that's open source, free, extensible, and proven to work for serious projects is a good option to have. Many thanks, and please let me know if you end up using this to launch a project! C

Maker

6yr ago

Glowforge

There are a lot of new things on here every day, but it feels rare that someone posts something that's got real numbers attached to it already. Congratulations on your successful fundraiser, I hope lots of people make good use of this tool! That 7% savings is huge on its own. Tons of benefits to DIY for crowdfunding too.

@deanputney Cheers!