The headline is true, if you are willing to pay the price and don’t have professional standards.

If you’re the type who likes to drive a brand new Audi so people think you’re cool but you can barely make the minimum payment on your school loans every month, this proven tactic for raising $20,000 on Kickstarter is TOTALLY for you.

Brought to you by Swimming With Bears from the middle of Texas.

STEP ONE: Raise $5,000 through your existing Circle of Influence

You might question whether this is possible for bands with no mailing list and little to no following.

We’ve seen time and time again that raising $5,000 is within reach for most bands and solo artists.

I am not saying that it is a gimmee or that it will be easy.

It takes several key elements coming together in your project and lots of work bringing your project to the people, but it is possible to raise $5,000 through your existing Circle of Influence.

Your Circle of Influence is simply a list of the people in your life that you can bring your project to. This would include family, friends, fans, and even people that don’t know you yet!

The trick lies in making sure that you leave no stone unturned.

Let’s take a look at Swimming With Bears’ CanHeKick.It (now defunct) graph.

They have no email list and a small number of FB fans and they made it all the way to about $5,000 without a problem.

Now, all there is to do is raise the rest!

STEP TWO: Self Pledge $15,000

If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you’ve figured out how tongue-in-cheek this post really is.

Yes, it is well within reason to raise $5,000 from your existing Circle of Influence even if you have no email list or fan base.

It is, however, highly unlikely that you can raise $20,000 without some shenanigans.

Swimming With Bears appears to have made an obvious self-pledge.

I advocate against this possibility for 3 reasons.

1. It’ll cost you 8% to Kickstarter and Amazon
2. You can avoid this necessity by defining an optimal goal strategy using a combination of your Minimum Viable Project and Flex Goals.
3. It seems disingenuous to your backers.

But that being said, Swimming With Bears DID raise close to $5,000 from about 60 backers. That is an average of $83 per backer.  These amounts ARE doable for a relatively inexperienced band IF you are smart and IF you are willing to work.

If you are considering your own crowdfunding project, know that you can do it. Keep studying projects, especially in our 100 Music Kickstarters To Learn From series, and sign up for our 5 part email lesson in the sidebar!