Crowdfunding Potato Salad

Bonjour mes amis! Creative people are making tons of money by using the internet these days. And the best part is you don’t even need any marketable skills to do so. If you can make an ordinary potato salad, you can make money online!

One internet trend that has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years is crowdfunding. The idea is to collect a bunch of money from backers – the “crowd” – to fund a common initiative. It could be to raise money for non-profit purposes, charity, or to fund start-up companies or new products that can eventually be commercialized to benefit the public. For example you can make an interesting pitch about a new idea you want to try, along with a target amount you want to raise. If your idea sounds appealing to others they will gladly throw money your way.

Many ideas, games, indie films, smartphone apps, and companies that are worth millions of dollars today got their start by raising money through crowdfunding sites such as kickstarter.com. The virtual reality headset Oculus Rift had almost 10,000 backers on Kickstarter. Over $2 million was raised, which was enough to create a real prototype of the product.

But there’s a campaign underway right now to fund a bowl of potato salad 😐 Yup, that’s all she wrote. Zack Brown from Columbus Ohio recently started a crowdfunding project to simply make potato salad.

 “Early this week someone asked if I’d ever made potato salad and I couldn’t say that I had. So I turned to Kickstarter to change that.” ~ Zack Brown

His goal was to raise $10. He was curious to see how many people would actually be willing to chip in. Then suddenly, the internet happened 😮 He didn’t just get a few backers. He got thousands! His campaign was shared on Facebook over 200,000 times. His idea is so popular people are just eating it up 😀 As of this morning on July 8th people have pledged over $40,000 altogether for Zack to make his bowl of potato salad. That’s more than 4000 times what he asked for 😯 What is this, I don’t even.

And there are still 25 days left in this Kickstarter campaign. Zack is now promising to record his potato salad preparation on video and stream it live on the internet. He also wants to rent out a party hall and invite all his backers, who’s pledged more than $10, to join him in the kitchen. I guess that’s only practical for people who live nearby.

Who knew the internet would be so accommodating to someone who just wants to make a household recipe. If you want to learn how to raise money for your own crowdfunding project, here’s some food for thought.

1. Start a Kickstarter campaign called Grilled Cheese. Create incentives like letting your top backers choose an ingredient
2. Spam your campaign to all your friends and family members via social network like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+
3. ????
4. Profit

There you have it. I just revealed the secret to making tens of thousands of dollars on the internet. You can thank me later when you’re rich 😉

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