There are several steps to successfully build a custom crowdfunding platform on your own. Every year, over $20 Billion dollars are raised through established, popular, and trusted crowdfunding applications. This has led the entire market to reach a forecasted industry value of over $250 Billion in the next decade. That being said, there has never been a better time for software programmers, system architects, and quality assurance (QA) developers to get in on the action.
As a software engineer yourself, you’ll want to understand how to effectively design, develop, deploy, and distribute your own custom application. With the latest disruptive AI and ML trends of 2022, building a powerful platform has never been easier. To help you get started, read on to learn how to successfully build your own crowdfunding platform.
Table of Contents
Find The Right Niche
First and foremost, you’ll need to find the proper niche for your crowdfunding platform. You want to choose a high-traffic, profitable, and popular fundraising niche that you can fill. Proper niche selection can take your business operations, outreach campaigns, and advertising efforts a fairly long way. There are tons of popular options you can choose from. Currently, some of the most frequent users of crowdfunding services are professionals in agriculture, real estate, and science. However, there are also many users in musical and artistic fields. Definitely, find the right niche to kickstart your own crowdfunding platform.
Configure Your Tech Stack
At this point, it is time to configure your tech stack with the latest tools, resources, and technologies. There’s so many powerful solutions that help you promote speed, convenience, and security throughout the development process. For example, you can use a Cargo Registry to enable full control over the deployment and dependency resolution process. Leveraging these solutions, you can benefit from an enterprise-ready, universal, cloud native programming solution.
This will support your developments whether in the cloud, on-premises, or as a hybrid platform. With these solutions in place, you can benefit from high-level storage capabilities, multi-site geo-replication, along with SSO powered integrations. Absolutely, tech stack configuration is essential to build a successful crowdfunding platform.
Review The Regulatory And Legal Requirements
Before you start developing, you’ll want to thoroughly evaluate the legal, regulatory, and governance requirements of your new crowdfunding application. You need to make sure that your platform will be secure for all of your target end users. This is crucial because of the complicated, unique nature of financial funding platforms. Generally speaking, applications need to meet compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.
These are related to identity verification, suspicious activity detection, and terrorist financing prevention. The inability to meet these standards is what leads many new crowdfunding solutions to fail. Many development teams spend too much time making the case for design and user navigation. However, meeting regulatory and legal compliance standards is crucial throughout the development process.
Partner With A Payment Gateway
Now, you are ready to partner with a reputable, reliable payment gateway vendor. It is unlikely that your crowdfunding platform will process user payments by itself. Instead, you need to choose a reliable third-party solution. These agencies are experienced with the complicated payment compliance process. Plus, they already have specialized agreements and licensing contracts in place with major commercial banks. When searching for a vendor, look for someone that supports online wallets, investor refunds, and campaign owner cashouts. Indeed, partner with a payment gateway provider to build a reliable crowdfunding platform.
Add Your Content
Once all the other steps are taken, you can start adding content to your crowdfunding network. Ultimately, this will be the most time consuming step of the entire development process. Throughout this phase, make sure that you have full access to the front-end’s source code. This will allow you to manipulate the user interface (UI) and experience (UX) to your ideal standards.
To follow best practices, have all your media files, content, and text docs ready before uploading any content to your application. Of course, this can save you a great deal of time and effort throughout the end-to-end development process. Surely, adding content is key to develop a successful crowdfunding application from scratch.
There are several steps to successfully build your own crowdfunding platform. First off, find the right niche to establish your platform in. Next, configure your tech stack with the latest tools, resources, and technologies. Before you start coding, take a close look at legal ramifications and compliance requirements. Then, partner with a reputable payment gateway provider. Now, you are ready to add all of your content. Follow the points highlighted above to learn how to successfully build your own crowdfunding platform.
