 Hi, this is Emma from The Journey, and probably like you're doing, I'm at home working in my San Diego office here in California. I'm Darlene, I'm from GoDaddy's How-To, and I'm also working from home in Sunny Jam, Arizona. Love that backdrop. Thank you. So what if you need financial support and maybe more support than your personal community can offer or the government can provide? Well, good news, crowdfunding is worth considering as a strategy, but you might be asking yourself, what is crowdfunding? Well, crowdfunding is an online platform that lets you share a concept to a large audience and they can donate money towards a cause or invest in your business idea. It's basically a way for people all over the world to hear a story and possibly give you money, and the bigger the audience, the less each individual needs to chip in. All right, so platforms allow you to create a page with all the information about your story, you know, why are you doing this? Make a case. And I definitely, I recommend a video. I think videos are really compelling. So if you can do that, just explain your situation. I know sometimes that can be pretty vulnerable and difficult to do, asking for monies. I'm comfortable situation, but share your case and why people should actually donate to you. Sometimes people make crowdfunding pages on behalf of someone else. And look, we know these platforms aren't free, they're businesses too, but depending on which platform you choose, you'll see a small percentage of the money that you raise go to the company. I've seen anywhere from two and a half percent to 15 percent of your donated funds taken out as a fee. So do your research and read the terms of service carefully before you choose a platform and build out your page. Yeah, great advice. And here are actually a few of the most popular examples. First up Kickstarter. Ever heard of it? This is one of the big ones and it's geared towards creative projects. So think in mind, what are you doing? Are you inventing something? And so if you have a new business that you want to get off the ground, Kickstarter, that's I think the inception of the name, I love it. Kickstarter is the way to go. And you don't get to keep your money unless, unless you reach your goal through financial pledges. Next up is Indiegogo, this crowdfunding platform similar to Kickstarter, where you can pitch an idea in technology or creative arts. But you can also ask for funding for a local business or a nonprofit. So this is great for brick and mortar shops that might be affected by the COVID-19 closures. You can reach out to your community and ask for help from your customers who want to support your business, even if they have to stay in their homes right now. Indiegogo also offers flexible funding, which means you can keep the funds you raised, even if you didn't reach your goal. So our next crowdfunding platform is Patreon. And this one a little different because it helps you to support a person on a monthly subscription model, which is really unique, I think. But if you're a blogger, a podcaster, or maybe you even have a band, which is rad, if you do, then what you want to do is give your fans opportunity to sponsor you on a monthly basis. So you can start this Patreon account and drive people there to support you. And this could be your central hub, right? So then what you would want to do is drive all of your social media feeds to supporting your Patreon account. And people can donate as little as one dollar, like one dollar a month. That's it. So this can be a rather small request, right? And a lot of entrepreneurs and people who work on their own personal projects, they flock to this platform, I think, exactly for that reason, right? But the key is you. You have to be making something of value or popularity. It's perfect for YouTube creators or musicians or artists as the people who support you will be like your fans of your work, right? They love they love your podcast. They love your your music, your tunes. So this isn't really the platform for local businesses or just asking for help with your bills. But what is perfect to ask for help with the bills, among other things is GoFundMe. This is a great platform for just asking for help. GoFundMe is great for personal emergencies or for short term sponsorship of a project or goal. Right now, GoFundMe doesn't charge a fee for the platform, but there are fees associated with transactions. For example, when someone donates a hundred dollars through GoFundMe, the payment processing fee would come to three dollars and 20 cents. It's 2.9 percent of the total plus 30 cents per transaction. Again, the fees are different for every platform. So please read the terms and service. It's really important that you choose one platform, one platform to run your campaign, and it will focus social sharing into one space to collect donations and truly set you up for greater success. And one tool that you can also leverage is your business website or your personal website. And if this is a place where you do have fans or you already have traffic, people seeing your homepage, great, you can skip a lot of the fees by simply fundraising directly from your website. There are a couple of WordPress plugins that we can call out that a lot of people use when asking for donations. The first one is GiveWP. And unlike other crowdfunding platforms here, GiveWP doesn't take any of the fees based on what you raise. But since this plugin uses Stripe and PayPal, there may be some processing fees. The other plugin is Charitable, which is similar to GiveWP, but has a lot more features, more options for payment gateways, recurring donations, set up newsletters and marketing to name a few. And speaking of marketing, if you are using GoDaddy's website plus marketing solutions, we have another video. It will show you step by step. This is awesome instructions on how to add a PayPal button or a GoFundMe link to your personal website. Well, thanks, Darlene. It was so awesome to see you. Thanks Emma. It's good to see you too. And listen, we realize it's a difficult time for everyone right now. And we want to give our support to our community and businesses out there. And if you do have questions, you can always call our GoDaddy support. Stay healthy. Stay safe.