Andy Coughlan has been in touch about his site Help Me Fund It which sounds really interesting – check it out!
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There’s a lot of buzz been going around in the past few months/years about crowd funding. Just check out the stats on compete.com for Kickstarter and IndieGoGo to see how much they’ve grown, just in the past year. There’s no doubt it can work, as born out by the successful funding of projects like The Underwater Realm, but it does come with the caveat that you can track down enough people with money to spare and are prepared to jump through all the hoops to deliver the many goodies that you’ve enticed people with to donate your project.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get money from people when they weren’t feeling all warm and fuzzy and generous, or just didn’t have fifty quid to spare because they have to buy a present for their partner or even the weekly shop?
Help Me Fund It, is a new web site aimed at filmmakers, photographers and artists that does just that. Rather than targeting people and asking for money (which, if you’re anything like me, can be really hard to do), you can now just get people to buy things for themselves, which, let’s face it, they all do anyway, and still help fund your project at the same time.

It’s based on the same concept as cashback sites like Quidco, where, by clicking through to your favourite shops on special links, the host web site earns commission on your sale that they share back with you (just keeping a small amount for themselves).

Help Me Fund It works in the same way, but instead of keeping the money yourself, you can choose projects to donate the money to. It costs you nothing, you get the thing you shopped for and you get to the warm and fuzzies knowing you’ve helped fund a project.

The site is very much a complementary service to the Kickstarters of this world and is designed to work hand in hand with them (you can even link back to your Kickstarter campaign from Help Me Fund It).

It’s very early days, but a few brave and most excellent people have already put their projects on Help Me Fund It, and now just need you to go shopping! There’s links to hundreds of UK retailers that people use regularly, including Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones, Maplins, Debenhams, and US shops should be going online in the next few months.
So next time you go to shop online, remember, you could be helping the next Spielberg or Warhol get their big break.
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ABOUT ANDY: Andy Coughlan is never happier than when he’s making films, writing screenplays or novels, making music or coding web sites. He occasionally blogs and has, on occasions, been known to fight his introvert preferences and tweet.