Crowdfunding is a relatively new method of fundraising for business-based and creative projects. The regulation surrounding the industry has been rather piecemeal.
In Europe, an attitude of waiting to see how it all turns out is pervading. Whereas in Britain regulators have put their best foot forward and made proactive inroads into regulating the industry.
As with any area of law, crowdfunding regulation is far too expansive to cover on a page. This post is intended as a brief overview of regulation in the area.
The UK Crowdfunding Association
The UKCFA is a self-regulating body to which LiveTree voluntarily signs up.
It is useful for fundraisers using LiveTree to know about the UKCFA because it releases a Code of Conduct to which we have to adhere. This is meant to protect you, the project-creator. It requires:
processes to be put in place to ensure that user information is kept safe and secure so it can be accessed in the event LiveTree ceases to operate;
hiring competent, professional, honest people and making sure we have the appropriate systems and processes in place to run LiveTree safely; and
having proper complaints procedures, and treating complaints fairly and in accordance with applicable regulation.
LiveTree works with project creators to find a funding solution that meets their needs. This means less complexity and less bureaucracy to get your project funded.
If you want to start making your project come alive, get involved!
It’s the Christmas season, and that means parties! Everyone loves a good party, but some more than most: we all know a friend who loves to make introductions. A name just came into your head just now – yes?
I have to admit – I’m one of those people. I love being able to help bring a great combination together, if it’s romantic, professional or even just conversational. And of course I love it when it happens to me. Even more, I love the people who can do it with real style, so that I don’t feel the pressure if it doesn’t work out. I’m sure we’ve all felt the dread on hearing the phrase ‘you must meet so-and-so, you’ll love them’ or even worse ‘you’re going to get on so well with what’s-his-face, you’re so similar’ – because if when we meet so-and-so or what’s-his-face and they’re a tool, you start to wonder whether they think you’re like the tool.
But some people really have the knack, and to them I am eternally grateful. They flourish both in the party season and throughout the year on Facebook.
Putting the ‘social’ in social media.
They’re the people who are always tagging you in someone’s post about a great rental opportunity – just when you were panicking about spending another month with your mad flatmate. They’re the people who create a messaging group to introduce you to a potential colleague – just like they said they would. And you’ll know them best of all as the people who are always enthusiastically shouting about your new start-up, side-line or crowdfund project – just when you thought no one was listening.
There must be a place where these wonderful people can really develop their inner promoter. They have the gift of creating connections in a world where everything is a potential marketplace and where networking events are king.
LiveTree gives those people the chance to let fly their secret marketing professional. And as part of the unique Invited Circle, they get rewarded. Because as anyone will tell you, word of mouth is the most powerful way to advertise.
Any project, if it’s a piece of art or a new business, needs more than just a lump of cash to get started – though goodness knows that helps. Businesses need suppliers, short films need a crew and every person who is going out into the world and trying to make their ideas take flight, needs a team to support them and keep them moving.
When people put up money to contribute to your crowdfunding project, they get Facebook shout-outs, posters, a signed t-shirt and all sorts of swag. Even private companies make money from it: your data is being bought and sold whenever a link is shared or a post is liked. But what about those champions who might not have the ready cash, but who tirelessly campaign to get your project seen? What about those who put you in touch with great people who can help you along? Well I guess you owe them a pint.
LiveTree creates a network, not only of creative people and suppliers, but of great influencers and communicators, and rewards them for their efforts. Not just the supporters, and certainly not those mega-rich businesses looking to get their hands on your data. The invited circle allows those matchmaker friends who are always on the look-out for the next great team to get paid for their good work.
They might be the sort of people who are always trying things out and telling people about it. They might already have a blog and a following. Or maybe they’re just dedicated to the fine art of a good introduction.
That person you thought of at the beginning of this blog? Share this article with them. They could be making more from their talents than just being owed a pint by everyone on Facebook.
The crowdfunding revolution was exciting, wasn’t it? Essentially, it began the slow path towards democratising and equalising venture capitalism.
But the crowdfunding revolution is dead. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Revolutions are just the means to an end. They’re all bloodshed and upheaval, uncertainty and ‘what ifs?’; they’re the untidy, chaotic mess out of which something new and better rises.
Revolutions are the rubbish bit. It’s the glittering new solution full of promise and improvement that we have them for.
With that in mind, it’s time to talk about LiveTree, a UK crowdfunding platform based in London, Hackney. LiveTree is the concomitant of the crowdfunding revolution. Where the other crowdfunding websites offer what could best be described as an ‘own brand’ service, this one goes one, two, three steps further.
You see, LiveTree is more than just crowdfunding. It is an effort in community empowerment.
So you want to raise the funds to carry out a project? Well, with crowdfunder.co.uk, for example, you could click on, set up the page with your description, your target and all the admin, share it on your facebook and your twitter, get your friends to share it, and hope the moolah starts to roll in.
LiveTree wants more from crowdfunding than that. And it wants more for you, for less: crowdfunder takes 5 – 8% of your funds in fees. LiveTree? 1 – 5%.
LiveTree was built not just as a way to get people to make money for their projects like crowdfunder was; it was made with social goals in mind.
Take Branch. It’s one of the unique elements of LiveTree that sets the platform apart from others like crowdfunder. Simply put, Branching is just people sharing your project on their facebook or their twitter or their blog or instagram or wherever else. But what makes it interesting is that LiveTree’s Branch incentivises people to share your project.
Whereas with crowdfunder people share your project because they’re your nan and they want to help, or because you pestered them in the twitter DMs; with LiveTree, if someone shares your project and someone else clicks through the link and pledges, the original sharer will get a commission for having been the Branch that connected that backer to your project.
So no more must you rely on your witty project bio to spur people to spread the word, because now they get money if they do!
Build Your Project; Build a Better World
What’s more, with LiveTree there is so much more scope to entice potential backers than with ordinary crowdfunding platforms like crowdfunder.
LiveTree’s roots are dug into a soil of support and community. Because of the grossly lower fees LiveTree takes in commission from the funds raised for your project, as a project-creator you have more leeway in deciding the amount of your funds to donate to charities that LiveTree has links with, such as Hope for Children, Doctors of the World and Youth Music.
And then, because of LiveTree’s inextricable links with charitable organisations, as a result of your decision to donate a greater percentage of your raised funds to charity than you would have been able to had you been using crowdfunder, your project will reach a wider audience than it would have done with crowdfunder.
Branchers; you know how you earn money from branching? That commission can also be donated to charity.
You know what they say, you’ve got to spend money (on causes that help shape a better world) to make money.
The crowdfunding revolution is dead, because with LiveTree there is no need for it to continue.
And there is so much more. To discover it, just get involved!
Kickstarter is the largest platform for crowdfunding a new business or creative project. Alongside it, the relatively new LiveTree is a just a sapling. But it’s growing.
Getting kickstarted
When considering your options, there are two big questions you need to answer: Who are you funding for? And who are you funding from?
Who are you funding for?
Sounds pretty obvious: what is the project and how will the money be used? This will become the central framework to any good campaign, establishing why you need the money, and why anyone should hand it over.
To an extent you’re also funding for, well, the crowdfunder. Upwards of 8% of the money you raise through a Kickstarter campaign will go in fees.
But have they persuaded you why you should hand over your money?
Let’s have a look at what you get for that fee. The Kickstarter model relies on the creator’s own social media network to form the initial donor base. Kickstarter is a way to organize and activate your tribe, it does nothing to create or build it.
It’s not all about the money
Kickstarter follows an all-or-nothing set up, so you only get charged a fee if you reach your target, as do your donors. The idea is that it takes away the fear of giving money to a project that will be a dud, because it guarantees social proof, which is what we all experience before watching a new series on Netflix: if I’m going to sacrifice another twenty hours of my life mindlessly absorbed in another program, it needs at least three unprompted shoutouts on Facebook before I do.
If we’ve learned anything from recent global events, it’s that social (media) proof can’t guarantee we a good idea will get approval. In a great blog, Dale Pearson describes how ‘group-think and insularity have been hard-coded into our everyday lives via a vast online echo chamber’.
Social proof is no longer enough, and without it your project might sink. In fact as of August 2016, the success rate of fully funding a project on Kickstarter was just 35.85 percent.
Dale is right that this generation needs to be not just the ‘online generation’ but also the ‘networking generation’. But don’t worry, you wont have to engage your racist uncle in debate to break out of this echo chamber – LiveTree will help build a network of creatives (that you don’t have to see every Christmas).
A creative network that powers your project
Who are you funding from?
Like Kickstarter, LiveTree uses a rewards system, where a successful campaign will send thanks and goodies to its contributors. Unlike its rival, however, LiveTree also offers supporters the opportunity to become ‘branches’, and receive commission every time they promote further fundraising. Branches can support other projects and gain access to a network which extends into creative communities and beyond.
This means anyone in the LiveTree network could end up supporting and promoting your idea.
Crowdfunding has taken off partly as a result of the difficulty in accessing individuals and organisations who traditionally support such projects. What if, as well as developing an online community, you were able to open up opportunities with industry funding bodies and professionals? LiveTree does more than just provide a platform, they work with creators to support development before, during, and after their campaigns.
After the campaign, LiveTree helps creators to move beyond funding, and connects them with respected suppliers. If you don’t reach your target, you have the chance to make your case directly to your donors.
A community that grows with you
When an organisation is motivated by building communities and developing creative projects, it is in their interests to nurture them from the start. Projects need more than just capital to get started. It will ensure those projects are ready to fly before being launched, and will provide a network of branches to call home.
LiveTree vs IndieGoGo: important differences explained
Before launching a campaign, all project creators want to ensure they’re using the best crowdfunding platform to suit their needs.
Many creators will have already ruled out Kickstarter, which gives you £0 of funds raised if you don’t hit your full target. LiveTree and IndieGoGo both let you keep all your cash, whether or not you reach your crowdfunding goal. With that in mind, we outline in this blog how LiveTree compares with traditional crowdfunding platform, IndieGoGo.
Potential reach: how far your campaign’s message will spread
Individual recommendations are the best way to get your crowdfunding campaign funded. People are much more likely to donate to a project if the call-to-action comes from an online voice we trust – be that an old friend you know personally or a prolific blogger you admire.
What most sets LiveTree apart from IndieGoGo is that, with LiveTree, there’s a huge incentive for people to promote your project among their own networks.
In short, users get paid to share your project.
LiveTree harnesses the power of the recommendation through one beautifully simple idea: branching. When a user shares your project to their own network, they become a ‘brancher’. Then, when anyone donates via that link – or branch – the brancher will earn £££ at a percentage you set.
The implications of this are huge. Branchers get to realise the value of their own online presence, which otherwise will invisibly line the pockets of data-harvesters like Facebook and Google. Everyone is given that crucial extra bit of incentive to share the projects they believe in.
The human touch: how LiveTree and IndieGoGo support their users
Another important factor to consider when deciding between LiveTree and IndieGoGo is how much help you’re going to get along the way.
Every LiveTree project receives bespoke support from LiveTree’s crowdfunding experts, from start to finish. They’re experienced at providing insider guidance for all kinds of projects that are seeking funding on all different scales.
From the moment you sign up, you’ll be assigned a dedicated Support Analyst from LiveTree. You can call up your Support Analyst for advice at any stage of your preparation and campaign. Analysts can also connect you to additional grants, communities of influencers, and funding partners like the BFI – all at no extra cost.
A major disadvantage of IndieGoGo is that its sprawling scale and impersonal infrastructure mean that the platform is flooded with projects: some brilliantly put together, others not so much. To make matters worse, IndieGoGo’s ‘featured projects’ are selected by an algorithm; you’re unlikely to ever talk to a human being. As a result, potential backers can’t see the wood from the trees. And, indeed, because of the lack of human intervention, IndieGoGo’s brand has been damaged by ‘scampaign’ scandals in the past.
Doing good: LiveTree’s integration with charitable donations
LiveTree directly facilitates donations to charities and social causes. Project creators can optionally select a Project Charity and choose a percentage of the funds to be donated. In return, the selected charity will help market the project through their own powerful reach.
The IndieGoGo brand, with no charitable function built into its platform, simply doesn’t have that same feel-good factor, which is so vital to projects going truly viral.
Here’s how LiveTree integrates branching and charitable giving into your campaign:
So which is more expensive, LiveTree or IndieGoGo?
With all the above features in mind, you might expect to pay through the nose for the bespoke LiveTree service. In fact, LiveTree’s fees are less than half of what IndieGoGo charges.
With IndieGoGo, you’ll pay 5% of the total amount raised plus payment processing, which is between 3-5%; this means that up to 10% of your funding can be lost to IndieGoGo’s fees. By comparison, LiveTree’s fees are set at 4.65%, all in.
With fees far lower than IndieGoGo and other crowdfunding sites, LiveTree gives project creators the freedom to let branchers and charities share in the benefits of their success.
With LiveTree, hitting your target is just the beginning. The revolutionary and ethical LiveTree platform will help to create passionate, invested communities around your project.
Join us for an afternoon with black young talents who either write, direct or star in their own projects, have built huge online followings and kick-started their careers along the way – they’ll share tips and tricks in a Q&A and screen examples of their work before free networking drinks.
One of the topics that requires highlighting is the issues facing minorities in the film industry. Is there a correlation between income, ethnicity and those who are filmmakers? Is there an ethnic and social divide in the film sector? If so, what can we do about it?
Shredding The Red Tape
We can pretend like these invisible lines of separation are not there but barriers do exist. Within the film industry we can see recycled narratives played out in various different ways for various different reasons. In film, black actors are often shoehorned into roles that do not reflect their reality or reinforce negative stereotypes. What is more frustrating is that some projects appear to have been commissioned predicated on what stereotype they play up to. Too often a predominately black film, or the story line of black character in an otherwise white film, revolves around the themes of struggle, slavery, drugs and violence or single parent lifestyles.
A potential cause is the metaphorical “red tape” and who approves what. Fortunately, this no longer universally applies thanks to the internet, communities, social media and, most importantly crowdfunding. Now it’s mostly about your vision and getting the money, exposure and support to turn an idea into reality.
The Wider Issue
When it comes to creativity the issues are broader than race, gender, religion or any other differentiating factor. The real barrier to entry is finding the freedom to create what you want to see in the world in the exact way you envisioned. Fortunately, power has become less centralised. Nobody has to be Oliver begging for gruel, now we design our own banquets and have everyone contribute and join us for the meal.
In the UK, Crowdfunding plays a major role in providing creative freedom and we at LiveTree are taking it further, beyond funding to a wider community of like-minded creatives helping each other achieving their goals.
No matter where you are from and what prejudice or obstacles you may face. We challenge you to make your vision a reality. Get Funded. Make a difference. Branch out.
LiveTree is announcing its partnership with the Kent Film Office to support the work of UK filmmakers. The partnership will help filmmakers with funding, promotion, support and access to film locations.
The LiveTree – Kent Film Office Partnership
LiveTree will offer competitions, access to the LiveTree creative community and suppliers to support their projects and will help filmmakers secure funding. The Kent Film Office will share content, film funding opportunities and competitions with its audience. Together they will promote the use of Kent as film location.
Helping filmmakers focus on creativity
“Developing the creative element of a film is only a small part of the process of the filmmaking process. From getting a film funded to working with the right suppliers, to finding the perfect location to promotion, many necessary tasks distract from the creative process.”, said Ashley Turing, CEO of LiveTree, “By partnering with the Kent Film Office we want to help filmmakers keep the focus on the creative process by helping them with funding, promotion, support and access to film locations”.
Assisting filmmakers with locations and permits
“Since we were founded ten years ago, the Kent Film Office has been successful in assisting filmmakers find amazing locations and getting permits for filming in public spaces across the county. Productions large and small have found their way to Kent to benefit from our locations and local support facilities,” added Hannah Lucey, Film Officer of the Kent County Council Film Office “And, with this new partnership with LiveTree, it will be even easier for filmmakers to take the hassle out of the production phase.”
About the Kent Film Office
The Kent Film Office was established in 2006 as an economic development initiative by Kent County Council. It provides a first class Film Commissioning Service to the film and television industries, assisting productions with a location finding and research service, obtaining film permits, facilitating traffic management requests, sourcing local crew and trainees and mediating any local disputes.
Rosamund Urwin unpicks the start-up rules of a new generation
A reblog from Evening Standard, Monday 18th April. (You can read the original article here.) You can also sign up to LiveTree using this invitation link.
With friends like these: small-scale peer research is on the rise Getty Images.
The rules of start-ups are changing. Gone are the days when you had to plan every detail before launch — now entrepreneurs just need to hit “go”. As LinkedIn founder and tech investor Reid Hoffman puts it: “You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.” If bank managers and venture-capital firms shrug their shoulders and turn you away, crowdfund or try new lending avenues. Most of all, you need to keep changing, developing, adapting.
London is ultra-competitive for start-ups. Here’s how the strongest survive.
Planting the seed
Research, schmee-search. In such a competitive market, entrepreneurs’ primary objective is to get their product out there fast. Better to send it out into the world with the hem unfinished than to see someone else wearing your outfit while you’re still making it.
As Robert Colvile writes in his new book, The Great Acceleration: “The latest craze is for the ‘lean’ start-up — start small, create a minimum viable product and be prepared to switch tack at a moment’s notice.” Hoffman puts it thus: “If you’re not embarrassed by your first version, you waited too long to ship it.”
Alex Head, the founder of catering company Social Pantry, can relate to that: “A resource you don’t have is time. I learned from the age of 15 — selling sandwiches off the back of my bike in Riyadh [Saudi Arabia] — what to do and not to do. I’m still learning.”
If there is some time, a new approach is small-scale peer research. Been to a dinner party recently, only to discover you’re actually there for a brainstorm about your friend’s business idea? This is (low-cost) market research for 2016. Sometimes these are straightforward ideas meetings with a hand-picked focus group from peers and former colleagues; at others, the wannabe entrepreneur is on the look-out for potential partners. You’ll know when somebody starts taking notes, and you’ll get asked for feedback afterwards.
“I was invited to one recently for a mindfulness business,” a fellow journalist tells me. “The other guests were a social media expert, someone in e-commerce and a management consultant. It was a guided conversation, so my friend could work out the best way of taking forward her idea.”
Sebastian Fernando is the founder of flavourme.co.uk. Launching at the end of the month, it is a sharing economy version of Deliveroo: it allows you to order home-cooked meals from your neighbours, delivered by flavourme’s fleet of drivers. It’s inspired by the cooking of Fernando’s Sri Lankan grandmother. Fernando, 27, reckons the most important piece of research is to look at why others who have done what you’re trying to do failed: “A year later there will be a solution.”
Another idea is to bring a business that someone else is already doing in another country here: home-cooked meal delivery is popular in the Netherlands and parts of the US. Jonathan Randall, who founded photobooth firm Flashmat last October, had the idea because a friend of his wife’s was already doing something similar in France.
Old school: commission market research from a specialist firm.
The new way: find out what works as you go along; the brainstorming dinner.
New money
Head, 30, and Randall, 32, both self-funded their businesses, and Fernando applied for seed capital. But there are new ways to get funded.
“Funding has changed enormously,” says Toby Darbyshire, who co-founded solar firm Engensa in 2009. “When we set up Engensa, it was all about institutional investors and venture-capital firms. Now, it has democratised, with the rise of peer-to-peer lenders and crowdfunding.”
Growth Street is one alternative to a bank overdraft. “Over the past three-and-a-half years, bank supply of overdrafts for small businesses has reduced dramatically,” says James Sherwin-Smith, its chief executive. “If you don’t have a bank overdraft, you either have to get more expensive finance or you have to build up cash to survive a dip or if a client pays late. That’s money you’re not reinvesting in your business — hiring another person, say.”
Growth Street is a business-to-business marketplace to solve that: “We connect companies that want to lend because they have excess cash to businesses who want to borrow.”
Haggerston-based LiveTree, which launched two months ago, is another new funding model. Ashley Turing, its 37-year-old founder, explains: “We’re a crowdfunding platform and a marketplace once the product is built.” The model is to refer friends “because we believe personal recommendation is the most powerful way to get your product out there”. But while Google and Facebook collect users’ data, LiveTree returns the profit from advertising (skimming off a small share) to them. Users can do whatever they want with the profit they earn, including donating it directly to one of LiveTree’s partnered charities.
Interestingly, Darbyshire, 34, also says that the sums available from early seed and angel investor rounds have shot up recently. “The first round used to raise maybe £200k;, now we’re seeing people raise £2 million from a network of angels.”
Old school: venture-capital firms, institutional investors or a friendly bank manager.
The new way: crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending or much bigger sums from seed capital or angel investors.
Fail to grow
Every entrepreneur stresses the need to innovate. “You don’t want a plan, you want an inkling,” says Joe Nelson, who founded TheyFit condoms in 2011. “You can’t be embarrassed to get it wrong. It’s not binary: if you mess up, you can keep playing the game. You still have 100 lives left.”
This is particularly true with online businesses, he says. “Everything is so fluid, you can change the website pages in the blink of an eye and be nimble.” Nelson, 34, would use feedback from every customer to improve both product and service.
If web-based, start-ups can do a/b testing from the beginning. That means visitors to the site will see one of two options. If there’s a big discrepancy in how much they go on to buy, the company knows which to choose. They can keep testing repeatedly to hone the site.
Sherwin-Smith, 35, found out the painful way why you have to keep innovating. He started his first business at school. Called Hitmatic, it was like an early version of Google Analytics. “It paid for my education. But Google bought one of our rivals [in the end] and our tech originally was better than theirs. I wish I hadn’t gone to university and had just worked on that.”
Head, who does the in-house catering at Brentford Football Club (150 people a day for breakfast and lunch seven days a week), argues having one consistent revenue stream is essential, especially in a seasonal industry such as contract catering.
Old school: everything polished on delivery.
The new way: fail fast, learn quickly.
Sell yourself
Fernando is launching flavourme.co.uk in Dulwich first, before expanding to other parts of London. He’s going to advertise primarily on Facebook because it allows hyper-local targeting of ads. He says that ads can even be timed to appear when people are on their way home from work and potentially thinking about what they’d like to eat that evening.
For Randall, too, Facebook is his main place for advertising. “It allows you to target people with particular interests,” he explains. “People often have Photobooths at weddings, so I want anyone who’s engaged — weddings can be one of these interests.”
Edzard van der Wyck, 35, is the co-founder of Heist, which makes hosiery without seams. In his five-strong team, three of his staff do the social side. “We can behave like a retail brand, engage with our customers and react very quickly to what they want. It helps us to hone the product and you get immediate feedback.”
Head notes that social media is also an important recruitment tool. “I always ask in interviews ‘how did you hear about us?’ It’s usually that they follow us on Instagram or found us on Twitter.”
But it isn’t all about the new world of media, either. Nelson went on Dragons’ Den. Even though he failed to get funding, it had a huge impact for TheyFit.
“It doesn’t matter if you win or not. That’s a million people who’ve just seen your product and — unless it’s one of the really bad ones — a sizeable minority will agree with your idea. We had 7,000 hits a second at the peak of that, completely free. Those people didn’t all buy but sales still rocketed. The show gets repeated and you get another spike.”
He says there’s no need for a PR agent “as long as you’re willing to do stuff. Spend nothing, be clever, get on”.
Old school: hire a PR firm.
The new way: DIY and online marketing.
When to let go
Nelson sold TheyFit last year for $1.3 million. But the new advice — including from Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler — is not to sell out too soon.
Fernando agrees with that. “I don’t want to be a serial entrepreneur, I want to do one thing really well. We’re a long-run business that requires shifting perceptions. It’s a bit like what Airbnb did: people couldn’t imagine renting out their homes before but now it seems normal. We want people to think, ‘Why would you go to Domino’s when you can order food cooked by your neighbours?’”
Randall’s eventual plan is to use the income from his photobooth business to move into other areas. “I’m looking at things that are more scaleable,” he says. “Start-ups are often burning cash to revolutionise something, but if you take an existing idea that works in another country, you can then put in place a manager while you can then go and pursue your passion project.”
He hopes that Flashmat would be the cash cow that keeps giving (and growing) but that he can use the photos that he owns either for “facial recognition, or other marketing uses. All the info I have could be valuable.” He notes that companies have been bought in the recent past not for their main business but for the information they hold on clients. “I’ll sell the business when it’s in a great state,” he adds.
Old school: sell as soon as a suitor comes knocking.
The new way: Please sir, can I have some more (money)?
Livetree is a revolutionary sharing platform that supports independent charities, music and fashion and here’s how.
Fashion
LiveTree provides up and coming designers with a means of funding their next collection and you can help them. Simply follow the crowdfunding link on our website, browse from the many exciting crowdfunding projects and donate to the one which you like the best.
Branch
But you can go one better than just donating to a designer’s crowd funding project. You can help them to get more funding by hitting the ‘Branch’ button and sharing the project with your friends. If your friends donate through your shared link, you’ll get a small commission directly from the designer.
What about music?
LiveTree also provides musicians and bands with a means of funding their next release and you can help them in exactly the same way. Simply follow the crowdfunding link on our website, browse from the many exciting crowdfunding projects and donate to the one which you like best.
Just like before, you can hit the ‘Branch’ button and share the project with your friends for a chance to earn commission through your link.
And what about the charities?
LiveTree is proud to support a growing number of charities by providing a quick and easy way to browse and donate directly through our site. But we’ve also found a unique way to bring our passion for music, fashion and charity together and here’s how.
Remember how you could earn a commission by branching a crowdfunding project? LiveTree also provides you with the option to pay your commission directly to a charity of your choice meaning you can help fashion designers, independent musicians and charities in one hit.
Want to try it for yourself? LiveTree is an exclusive, invitation only platform but luckily, for a limited time only – we’re offering you access through this link:
Once you’re in, you’ll have the power to offer exclusive invitations to your friends but first it’s time to dive in and give it a go. Click on this link right now to begin.
Close your eyes and imagine a best friend… in fact imagine a friend that’s even better than your best friend if that’s possible. This friend is so good, he or she will always remember your birthday. They’ll remind you of your friends and family’s birthdays too. They know your favourite colour, your favourite food, what you like to do at the weekends, where you like to shop, what makes you laugh and what makes you cry. They also know where you’ve been on holiday for the last few years… your entire relationship history… your shoe size and maybe even what underwear you’re wearing. They’ll know your deepest, darkest secrets – the ones that you thought nobody knew and they’ll even be working tirelessly to figure out what you want to buy next…
All of a sudden they’re starting to sound like they’re not your best friend at all… they’re definitely at the top end of the “creepy” scale and you wouldn’t be unreasonable if you thought of them as a snoop.
In fact, this “friend” is the stalkiest stalker there will ever be, and the reason they are stalking you, is because the more they know about you – the more money they can make from you.
The “stalker” that we’re describing is actually a collective group made up of the search engine you use, the social media websites you go on and even your internet service provider (ISP). Between them, they collate information on everything you do in your life on a daily basis. These corporates make billions from your personal data.
“So what’s the problem?” you’re probably thinking… “if it’s happening to everyone, who cares?”
At LiveTree, we don’t believe that big corporations should hold control of being able to make money from your online activity. We think, that if it is going to happen – it should be transparent and you should be in control. You’re not a product to be sold for mega-bucks. After all, it’s your data, through online searches, things you share with friends, things you like and photos you upload.
That’s what LiveTree believes and that’s why we’ve developed a revolutionary, social marketplace which enables you to browse the latest fashion, search out the latest music and even connect to and help fund some of our partnered charities. But what makes LiveTree different from anything else, is that it’s built to help you make money transparently from the things that you would normally do anyway.
It’s really easy – just browse LiveTree for the things you like, hit the “Branch” button to push a post out to your friends and if they buy the item that you’ve just shared – you’ll get paid branch commission. What’s more, we promise that we won’t be “stalkering” you in the background – take a look at our privacy policy right here.
So if you’re ready to own the web and become an internet pioneer in the process, register yourself as a new user by clicking on the link below. LiveTree is an exclusive platform and once registered, you’ll need to wait for a special invitation before you’re able to begin your LiveTree journey.
Before launching a campaign, all project creators want to ensure they’re using the best crowdfunding platform to suit their needs. 
