Kickstarter Emulates Patreon with Drip Subscription Crowdfunding

When you think about supporting intriguing projects, you usually think of Kickstarter, but there’s another platform called Drip that’s adding a new way for you to fund those kinds of projects, letting you subscribe to a creator and fund their projects through monthly payments. But to be clear, Kickstarter actually owns Drip, which was a standalone subscription platform and was about to go under last year until Kickstart swooped in and bought it. Since then, Kickstarter’s restructured Drip, hoping to give it a few features that will allow it to stand out in the competitive market of subscription crowdfunding platforms.

Kickstarter’s added their well-known time limit model to Drip, but it’s integrated differently. While Drip does have a time countdown for creators to get their projects fully-funded, like Kickstarter, it doesn't end campaigns after that countdown ends, unlike Kickstarter. On Drip, the account will remain active no matter how much money is pledge to it. So how do they give people the incentive to pledge? This is where the countdown comes into play. If you pledge between the 7 to 30 day time limit (which the duration of the countdown is set by the creators) you can become a founding member for the project and receive speaks perks.

Another difference that’s pretty interesting is that Drip will actually help their creators relocate their projects and their funders to different crowdfunding platforms if they want to. That’s pretty remarkable way of doing business, helping your users move over to a different platform, but Kickstarter seems pretty set on helping their creators and not just making profits.

"If we were in a revenue-maximizing situation, this would not be the smartest decision," Kickstarter's new chief product officer, Jamie Wilkinson, told the Verge. "But from the perspective of supporting creators, it's a no-brainer." Kickstarter cofounder Perry Chen added, "We're not basing our success or failure primarily on growth. It's about, are we succeeding in our mission? Are we helping creator projects come to life?"

Drip is currently an invite-only for creators, with 61 creators having subscription pages at launch. You can visit Drip’s site to get familiar with it and see what those 61 creators have to offer, like Mooneye Studios that’s funding for a videogame called Lost Ember. However, it won’t be long before Drip opens up to more artists in the beginning next year.

Sean Berry
Sean Berry
Sean Berry is Videomaker's Managing Editor.

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