Does anyone here have any experience (Good or bad) with Indiegogo?

[c marvel]

I have tested the waters with Indiegogo campaigns and for the most part my experiences with Indiegogo's products (Or whatever term you choose to use) has not been good.
I supported:
-The first Sinister Grin Press campaign and barely found six ebooks I wanted and did not already have. I still have not claimed my perk from SGP or know when I will be able to claim it.
-The Lumma bicycle lights. I contributed in Aug. '16 and still have not got my bike lights or perk.
-The Sunday Comics. This really appealed to me. I'm fairly sure the first thing I learned to read by myself was the Dick Tracy newspaper strip. This campaign is a real joke or fiasco. I have left comments on their campaign page, sent emails directly to the head honcho of this and gotten nowhere. I have only received one issue of the Sunday Comics. They owe me a t-shirt (Which is supposedly in stock) and more print issues. Boy-Talk about chasing one's own tail.
Thanks kindly for listening to my grumbling mini rant.


Cap

[khaos]

I've done 3 purchases over 2 campaigns there all with one record label. I've had great luck but they are a great small label. I don't support much else on any crowd funding for those reasons.

[RonClinton]

No. I'm both selective in what I want (i.e. I don't need/want a publisher's entire catalog) and wary about those who need others to finance their wistful and somtimes overly ambitious dreams, so have not and will not support via crowd funding. I'll do a limited-edition in preorder on those very rare occasions when it's clear that's the only way I'll get my hands on a book, but otherwise all pre-orders go to Kim at Camelot who I pay upon ready-to-ship status. 'Sides, most "collectible" books plummet in value upon publication -- like the proverbial car that drives off the lot -- so 9 times out of ten (at least) one can find the same book at half-price or less on eBay a month after it comes out.

[Dan Hocker]

I supported a company making a movie on Indiegogo and a card game on Kickstarter. Everything went well with that. The problem typically isn't with the crowdfunding platform itself it's usually just that the projects are all sorta hit and miss. Often times you get people that don't really know what they are doing setting these things up. Promising too many rewards while not realizing how much money those rewards often cost. This tends to bog down the projects and delay everything. Some things to avoid when doing crowdfunding are projects that have a ton of physical rewards, projects who's goal seems low (this one is kinda subjective), and projects that don't have a working prototype from the get go. The last one I think is now a requirement for Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

The problem is that often times the people that run these projects aren't really business people and don't really have a firm grasp on what it costs to provide the physical rewards. The costs of T-Shirts and things outside of the actual product add up quickly and often they don't take shipping costs into account. On top of that they also totally low ball the money needed to make a project happen because they want it to get funded on the platform. This often leads to disaster, especially when combined with too many physical rewards.

Essentially I treat crowdfunding projects like I'm buying into the idea of something and not the project / product itself. This is especially the case if you are supporting video game projects on these platforms, since they tend to have a pretty high failure rate as often small indie developers just have no idea how much it truly costs to make a game. The other piece of advice I can give is just not to go for higher tiers when supporting the projects. Don't go after the cool bonus items just support the project for the actual product, often they are under no real obligation to actually fill any of the bonus items