Funding

Don’t crowdfund in movie-making forums

By KO’D
Posted March 19, 2026

There is a very common error that I see wannbe creators make in every movie-making forum online: posting your crowdfunding campaign.

Ted Hope famously said, “‘Crowdfunding’ is two words: ‘crowd’ and ‘funding’. If you don’t already have the crowd, you won’t get the funding.” The overwhelming majority of crowdfunding donations do not come from strangers. They come from your extended network: the people you know, and the people they know. Ask your cast and crew to promote your campaign to their friends and followers!

Posting your campaign in movie-making forums is both low-effort and low-ROI. We are not your audience; we are your colleagues, and sometimes your competitors. We can offer well-founded critiques of your campaign, but why would we spend our money on your project rather than our own? Just because we’re all the same boat doesn’t mean we owe you something. If your project is a horror movie, and we hate horror movies, we’re not going to sponsor your movie just ’cause it’s “indie”.

Rather, find out where your audience hangs out, and post there. If you’re making a horror movie, post in horror-movie-fan forums. Those are the very people that (you hope) will become your audience!

We Minor Moguls, being independent creators, don’t have the resources for mass-medium advertising campaigns. We must be canny with our resources — our time and our money. We don’t want to waste either of them casting our seed on unknown soil in hopes some of it sprouts. We have to appeal to people’s pre-existing interests if we want their attention.

What if you don’t know where your audience hangs out, or even who they are? Then you have some work to do! It is vital for the independent creator to know who their work is for. “Everyone!” is never the answer. You’ve got to be able to identify and describe the individuals who make up your (hoped-for) audience. Only then will you know how to find them!

Break a leg!