Last week, as I was making coffee and heard the familiar “beep” of a new chat message, I smiled when I saw the message from was my friend James Altucher.

Someone had asked James, “What’s the best way to crowdfund to raise money for my project?” for Ask Altucher, the daily Q&A podcast that he co-hosts with his wife Claudia.

James asked me if I’d jump on the show for 10 minutes and explain “how to crowdfund”.

Only 10 minutes?

As I was setting up my microphone, I was wondering how I could cover anything useful about crowdfunding in only ten minutes.

We did it anyway and ended up riffing for 25 minutes. We covered a lot of great stuff, including:

• Why creatives have trouble asking for money (and why crowdfunding is the perfect solution for that) (4:15)
• When the concept of Kickstarter was conceived (and why it didn’t get built until years later) (5:14)
• How much money you should try to raise in your crowdfunding project (5:40)
• One of the biggest myths about crowdfunding (6:12)
• How the current largest Kickstarter project ever…actually failed the first time (6:28)
• How to get people to keep contributing once you hit your goal (7:40)
• One specific way to get the press to cover your project (8:45)
• The biggest myth about what press does (and doesn’t do) for your crowdfunding project (9:30)
• The one tactic you should steal from infomercials (9:50)
• How design impacts your crowdfunding success (11:00)
• How people view crowdfunding projects (12:20)
• One of the biggest mistakes I see in crowdfunding (and what to do instead) (12:50)
• How Matt Kepnes (Nomadic Matt) tripled his crowdfunding goal, even though his app only cost $1 (14:00)
• What kinds of rewards reduce production and shipping costs (15:00)
• How to make a great crowdfunding video (including what to address in the first 10 seconds) (16:25)
• Why you should think “bottom-up” not “top-down” when promoting your project (18:10)
• How Mike Del Ponte segmented and use his personal address book to find initial backers for his project (18:45)
• The FIRST thing anyone who is even thinking about doing a crowdfunding project should do today (19:30)
• How Kittyo used this trick to find 13,000 pre-launch emails and was funded in 36 minutes, 200% funded on the first day and raised over $270,000 (20:45)
• How I got started helping people with crowdfunding (23:00)
• Why good crowdfunding is good marketing (24:00)

Click the player below to listen directly or click here to open the episode in iTunes.

Ask Altucher: Ep 170 What’s The Best Way to Crowdfund?

The Power of Instant Media

It’s worth noting how quickly this all happened.

• James pinged me on chat…
• 12 minutes later, we were all chatting on the air.
• Less than 24 hours later, the episode was live in iTunes and Stitcher for anyone in the world with an internet connection to listen to, for free.

No filters. No scheduling.

No gatekeepers who can say “no”.

Just James and Claudia, generously and instantly shipping their art for free, while building trust and permission with an audience who wants to hear from them.

You have this same opportunity. We all do.

Enjoy the holidays. Enjoy the your time with your family. Laugh. Play games. Have some egg nog.

But it’s worth spending some time thinking about what kind of media you can create?

What kind of art can you ship to start building trust and permission with people, so when you launch your crowdfunding project, they’re not only already on-board, they’re actually excited to hear from you?

Leave a comment below.

Enjoy the episode, and happy holidays!

See you next year!

– Clay