We are getting ready to launch our new site and this Romance & Finance theme could not have come at a better time! One of the things I’ve learned about being an entrepreneur is that we have to put love and money into our businesses to take them to the next level. This can leave us financing what we love from our savings and sometimes living paycheque to paycheque (& eating lots of rice + ramen) to make it work until we get momentum. All of this is possible but there is a reason why Kickstarter is so popular-funding what you love can be tricky! The story: I invested most of the OMHG profit from the last 2 years into building a new virtual home for our community based on input and insight from you. Our community needed a place to connect and collaborate, a better online Guide to Businessy Goodness, community taught classes and workshops, live events and, and, and! The ideas were endless and the end result was not your average or even above average site budget. But with Aeolidia brilliance the new Oh My! will offer all of these things for the creatives of the world. The struggle: There is one little problem with bootstrapping your business. Launches can take longer than planned especially when you have grand ideas. Our original launch date was December so I thought I could budget carefully and take some of my personal savings from our house downpayment and commit to our site redesign, right? In the lovely world of entrepreneurship sometimes everything happens at once and not at all as planned. So instead of launching the new site, paying myself back for loaning OMHG the money, and putting the downpayment on our house all easy 1, 2, 3 like, both the site launch and our house payment happen the week of February 15th. Add to that the investment of attending Spark retreat, Etsy training, and Altitude Summit-all expenses (no one tells you all these great opportunities cost money & rarely pay enough to cover costs if they pay at all!) that I couldn’t have predicted when I committed to the new site. I am in the position to cover the site or the downpayment for our new house. Talk about trying to balance love + money (noted: the importance of having a back up plan)!
Introducing our Community Financing Campaign!
The solution: Get creative! Instead of a Kickstarter project I am trying something new and running a 10 day Community Financing campaign. I am offering 100 spaces in our vendor marketplace at a special rate of $150 for the year from Feb 5-15th! If 100 vendors come onboard to support the launch of the site I can pay myself back for the site design and pay our genius team, hire an editorial assistant, cover our hosting fees and we will have a fully set up marketplace on launch day. Our 100 vendors get promotion of their services & supplies, a great rate on our new marketplace & the warm fuzzy satisfaction of helping a community thrive. Our family gets that new pink house on the hill and our community gets a virtual house all of our own. A win/win for everyone!
For this to work I need your help! Click here to visit the Community Financing page and find out all the details + benefits, check out a preview of the marketplace, peek at some of the new site features & help me launch our community of goodness.
Don’t sell services & supplies but still want to support our community financing campaign? Visit our Oh My! Shop to buy a $5 copy of my new set of Foundation prints and get an invite for the members only mailing list to be first in line for when our members site is ready for you! Have an idea for how you can support our launch? I’m all ears! Share in the comments or Tweet me @ohmyhandmade.com
Thank you for helping to build a foundation for our community-this would not be possible without you!
