Craigstarter on Github

A free to use / edit / extend crowdfunding tool for Shopify with multiple goals and variants as campaign tiers.

Shopify is an absolute massive ecosystem. Blending crowdfunding with straight up sales is a really powerful way to more directly own your platform for the long term, whereas one-off Kickstarters you immediately need to plan for off-platform websites, sales, communications, etc.:

Kickstarter is an excellent way to run a crowdfunding campaign. But if you already have a community built up, and have communication channels in place (via a newsletter, for example), and already run an online shop, then Kickstarter can be unnecessarily cumbersome. Kickstarter’s 10% fee is also quite hefty. By leaning on Shopify’s flexible Liquid templating system and reasonable CC processing fees, an independent publisher running a campaign can save some ~$7,000 for every $100,000 of sales by using Craigstarter instead of Kickstarter. That’s materially meaningful, especially in the world of books.

This is particularly relevant because I’m in the midst of learning more about how to run and setup Shopify stores, both for work, and ideally for some side projects. Gathering interest from a group of people so we can collectively fund / buy things is exactly the kind of thing I want to do.

Via @pat