Crowd funding is gaining in popularity right now, especially for new and revolutionary business ideas. Crowd funding gives business owners the opportunity to grow and develop their business when they might not otherwise have been able to. With crowd funding, your business is only owned by you, and not by any of your supporters. You will only be able to transfer the money when you reach your goal, so your supporters will not lose money. Crowd funding can give business owners a way to test out and get feedback for new business ideas and product ideas directly from the mouths of the consumer. The world of crowd funding is just now starting to take off and grow and the possibilities are endless as to where it can go from here! There is even a crowdfunding website now for kids! 

One of the biggest and most popular crowdfunding sites is Kickstarter. Kickstarter has been around since 2009, and it has helped to raise funds for a ton of projects such as films, music, video games, comedy shows, food-related projects, and much more. As of March 2012, Kickstarter has raised more than $400 million in pledges.
Co Founder Yancey Strickler says this of his crowdfunding creation:

"Kickstarter is sort of like a store but it's way better than a store. It's a place where people are coming together to make things," he said. "There's a radical transparency to this, where everybody watches and discusses all of your moves as you go from funding to shipping a product."

Indiegogo is another popular crowd funding site. It is considered to be KickStarter's rival. Recently, Indiegogo expanded to be able to raise funds in three new currencies: pounds, euros, and Canadian dollars. They are also now allowing users to create their campaigns in French or German as well as English.

Danae Ringelmann, co-founder of Indiegogo, on what makes her company different:
"What makes Indiegogo different starts with our philosophy and mission, to democratize fundraising and empower absolutely anyone anywhere in the world. What that means is we're an open and inclusive platform: no application, no rejection, no waiting. If you are passionate about an idea, there's a platform to to create a campaign for you to go test it, to see if there's a market for it without going through a gatekeeper. That's why we're global. If we're going to empower the world we have to be everywhere in the world. So far we're in 200 countries, we offer four currencies, and three languages.And we're incredibly data driven. We don't pick and choose projects that come on our site, we don't pick and choose projects to promote. That all happens automatically and algorithmically. We do that through an algorithm called the gogo factor which measures the activity of a campaign and the responsiveness of the community. We think these are the two factors that should matter in success. Those are factors that the campaign and its community controls, nobody else. "

Crowd funding does sometimes have it's drawbacks, though. The first drawback is that you have to gain the funding for your business venture. To do this, you have to be able to connect with people and sell them on your business idea. If you don't do this, there is no guarantee that you will be able to meet your funding goals. You have to consistently be able to connect with your backers and supporters and stay in touch with them. You also have to be able to come up with incentives and awards for your supporters to make them feel like their investments are worthwhile. You also have to be able to make your business venture stand out among tons of others! Simply finding a crowdfunding site to raise money on can really be a challenge these days. The "Crowdfunding Craze" is really taking off, and tons of "knockoff" crowd funding sites are popping up. Read more about it here.

If you can get over these few small hurdles, crowd funding can be a great way for you to finance your business dreams!