Would You Marry A Farmer? How the Crowdfunding is going …..

I wrote my first post on the crowdfunding campaign over at Write on Track as it was early days and I was working how I felt using the various social media platforms would work out.

Would You Marry A FarmerI’m half way through in terms of time. The fundit campaign is for 35 days and there’s 18 left. With ?FundIt, it’s an all or nothing so if I don’t make the ?6,000, I get nothing. It’s not the end of the world – I can decide whether to do an ebook or see if a traditional publisher would be interested but yes, it would be disappointing.

Would You Marry A FarmerI’m one pledger/pre-order away from achieving 25% of my goal which I’m happy with. That’s with 56 pledgers. At the beginning, I worked out that I might need 300-400 funders if most went for the pre-ordering of a single copy and I felt if I had 300 pre-orders for the book, I’d be pretty confident of selling the 1000 print run. ?By the figures today, I reckon I’d reach the goal with another 150 funders. ?A few have opted for the ‘social media course and book’ option at ?115 which I’m delighted about and we’re going to be adding to those courses at We Teach Social as the weeks go on. There’s an Advanced Pinterest course there now and a ‘How To ?Blog For Your Business’ course. Amanda is going to be adding a ‘Facebook Competitions’ course which should be a popular one.

Would You marry A FarmerIt does my heart good to know that 56 people (and there’s about 20 people within that who I don’t ?know or are tweople I’ve connected with but never met) believe either in me or the book (or both) and know they are going to enjoy reading it. Especially when money is tight nowadays and there’s constant requests for money from charities or community events or kids outings. One lady tweeted me yesterday to say she is buying the book for a friend who cried with laughter when she read my original blog post. ?It makes the writing all the more enjoyable knowing that people are looking forward to reading it. I’ve been bowled over by the response of some people who, once they heard the news, went straight over to Fundit, pledged and shared it on their networks. The wonderfully talented Yukari Sweeney who I’ve never met but we’ve become friends through email and business (and I’m sure Yukari has little or no interest in farmers) moved me to tears with her response and enthusiasm. I’m not going to name all the friends who have been sharing it on facebook on twitter for fear of leaving someone out – I’ll leave that for the acknowledgements of the book – but it’s been great. Support is crucial in running a crowdfunding campaign – not just to help get the word out there but also to keep you motivated.

Social Media – Crucial

I knew that social media would be crucial for this campaign and it really is. ?It would be impossible to run a campaign without it. It’s one thing contacting some friends, letting them know what you’re doing and asking for support. It’s another to get the word out there via twitter and facebook. Plenty of friends are sharing it on facebook and I’m noticing people engaging and seeing it as a great idea but not so many are pledging. I think twitter is the key to success (so far anyway). People have pledged who I met through twitter, I’ve had conversations with them about farming or about food production, they’ve seen my tweets about the project and have either decided to support me on my journey or that it will make a great Christmas gift.

I had heard from a UK crowdfunder (who was very successful and doubled his target) that it was nigh impossible to get coverage in the traditional media as they prefer to wait until it has been successful so I sent out a press release last week to a few journalists I had contacts with and I wasn’t really expecting anything to happen. But it is! ?It’s been in one local free paper already (which I have still to see) and is to be in another local paper on Tuesday. It’s been in Agriland too. A journalist for a national paper who reads my blog rang me and is covering it this week. So, the plan is to draft up another press release and get it out there!

Liam of Got Ireland wrote a blog post about it last night and I’ve had one funder from his post already which I’m delighted about. For this project, I think online media is going to work best, the link is in the article, the person is already online, it’s just one click across to the campaign. It will be interesting to see how offline coverage works for it.

18 Days Left – 75% To Go

There’s 18 days left and I reckon it will take approximately 150 funders to reach the goal. If you feel you would enjoy reading ‘Would You Marry A Farmer? Confessions of an Irish Farmerette’ or if you know someone who would like it as a Christmas gift, I’d be over the moon if you could pledge and pre-order a copy today.

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