Crowd Funding Helps Break Barriers

Crowd funding or public Internet donation campaign is a collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money together to support the initiatives of a person or organization. These initiatives range from politics, arts & entertainment, social causes, civic services, business start ups, software updates, inventions, journalism and much more. Crowd funding works by allowing the user to sell small amounts of equity to many investors. So instead of going to a traditional lending institution the user can solicit many small investors to obtain the necessary capital. Before you commit to crowd funding or promoting your idea to the general public you want to make sure you protect your intellectual property by making sure you file for patent applications, copyright protection and trademark protection. Do not expect these sites to protect from someone duplicating your idea.

From figures obtained through Wikipedia in 2010 crowd funding sites raised $1.47 billion dollars for various projects, from the general public in 2013 it is estimated that figure has grown to $5.1 billion.Unsigned music artist has raised capital to take a world tour without out even being internationally known, they offered investors lifetime tickets to their shows. With their international tour they were able to build their brand and have leverage over the major labels that became eager to sign them after coming off tour. Film makers who were unable to see their projects to completion have turned to crowd funding to turn their vision into a completed project by raising thousands and millions of dollars from one small investor at a time.Crowd funding not only supplies the user with a wide net of potential backers, these backers also act as promoters for your idea, business or artistic endeavor.

Top 10 crowd funding sites from forbes.com (each site caters to a specific type of project and investor so make sure your inquire or what site is best for your purpose

1. Kickstarter
2. Indiegogo
3. Crowdfunder
4. RocketHub
5. Crowdrise
6. Somolend
7. Appbkr
8. AngelList
9. Invested.in
10. Quirky