ZOOP Crowdfunding for Comic Book Creators - An interview with CEO Jordan Pulaski

Crowdfunding has become the method of choice for independent comic book creators to finance and distribute their titles. We’re all seen the success stories with Kickstarter where creators surpass their financial goals and establish themselves firmly within the industry.

However, for every crowdfunding success story there are many other creators who fall short of their targets. Crowdfunding on Kickstarter, for example, is not an easy task. You have to let people know about your campaign, there’s social media, managing reward tiers, and then finding distribution channels if you are lucky enough to get funded.

And that’s where Zoop comes in. I got to talk with co-founder and CEO of Zoop, Jordan Pulaski, at San Diego Comic Con and ask some tough questions about his crowdfunding platform.

James: So, I have to ask you right off the bat…why should someone come to Zoop instead of Kickstarter or some other crowdfunding platform?

Jordan: Great question. Unlike many other crowdfunding platforms Zoop has a full-service offering that does many of the tasks of running a crowdfunding campaign. That way the creator can focus on what they do best, which is creating.

James: Can you break that down?

Justin: Sure. For creators Zoop can offer marketing and promotional support, shipping and logistics, and a simple ordering system so backers can choose the rewards that they want when they back a project. We can do all of the heavy lifting of the crowdfunding campaign.

We have two models. Right now we have our full service, which incorporates the marketing, and then we have our other more apples to apples, you know, comparative platform, that to everything else that’s out there.

James: What do you mean by ‘full service’?

Jordan: When we do full service we’re getting interviews lined up on podcasts and on YouTube channels, we’re doing review releases to news outlets, and online outlets and everything like that. And we’re trying to get placement in some of the larger outlets, if we can find an angle, find a story. If you’re just running your own campaign on our platform, we’re also going to promote it through all of our email, email blasts, all of our social media, that’s something that you don’t see everywhere else.

James: Marketing and PR services? That’s pretty comprehensive.

Jordan: It is. Look, we love all of our projects versus just certain projects for a short period of time, like other platforms tend to do. So there is a benefit to being on a smaller curated slate of projects. You’re not getting lost in the shuffle, you’re being featured on our homepage, constantly throughout your campaign. And like I said, we promote every single campaign through all of our social and email blasts, no matter what.

James: I love it. There are so many comic book creators who are facing the same problem. They admit they are not the greatest marketers and need a lot of help in that area.

Jordan: That’s the thing, like to your point, most creators just want to write and draw, they don’t want to promote, they don’t want to pack packages, they don’t want to deal with literally anything other than making their comics. The thing is, you can be the best comic book creator in the world. But if you don’t have a way to tell the world about it, it doesn’t matter. So you have to be that self promoting person, whether you do a campaign on Kickstarter, whether you do a campaign on Zoop, either platform will be additive, to your efforts and to your existing fan base, but you can’t rely on a platform completely to fund your project. You can’t just put it on a platform and be like, ‘Why didn’t it fund?’

James: All right, you know what I’m about to ask next, right?

Jordan (laughing): I think I do.

James: OK, because I know that people will be asking, what is the percentage that Zoop takes?

Jordan: Good question! So for full service, we take 25% of a campaign. But that also includes a credit card processing fee. And the reason for that is now you don’t have to budget for any variables. That’s a variable number that the credit card processing fee, right, it can be 2.9%, it can be 5%. If you have a lot of international backers that that percentage goes up, some people don’t know that. But we absorb that cost no matter what it is, versus having to budget for that yourself and deal with a mismanaged budget potentially, because you don’t know things like that on another platform where you have to do it yourself. Now, if you’re only running a campaign on Zoop, and we’re not providing the full services, we take 10%, very similar to Kickstarter. But that also again includes the credit card processing fees. We charge an additional percentage of so because you actually get full time support from someone at the company versus a Kickstarter where you can’t talk to anybody. So we’re there to help. We build out your page with you, we consult with you, we actually take all the credit card information, all the shipping information, we provide a shipping matrix for people, which is also something that they would have to do on their own. And we help with the pledge management chasing down delinquent factors and change credit card information and addresses, all for that extra 1%. And again, you’re not budgeting for a variable, you know, 10%, as opposed to eight and a half or, you know, 10. So it makes it very easy and streamlined for people. Plus, there’s that level of support that you just don’t get elsewhere.

James: For Zoop, what does the ideal comic book creator look like?

Jordan: On top of great content, I think a willingness to promote. So some people maybe are not so comfortable with the promotional side, the sales side of things. And that is something that we look for, someone who understands that they need to promote, someone who’s cultivated an email list, because that’s your strongest tool when it comes to crowdfunding. So the people who haven’t put in the legwork before they launch, we have conversations until we feel comfortable ready to launch.

James: That makes sense.

Jordan: Right? Someone can come to us and say, I want to launch you know, in a week. Do they have an email list? No. Why do you want to launch then? There’s no guarantees with crowdfunding, but we want to set you up to have the best chance of success. And because we’ve done probably collectively now more crowdfunding campaigns than maybe anyone else in the country, at the very least, like, you know, we have some experience, we know what works, we know what doesn’t work. So when we say something, it’s from experience from literally dozens of campaigns.

James: Love it. Okay, one more question. Are there any specific campaigns in particular that you want to talk about, or you want to promote right now?

Jordan: Yes, there is. It’s one that we just reopened, we ran a campaign called Comics for Ukraine. It did over $155,000. And we just reopened it this week, for Comic Con, to get as many more pledges as we can, before we go to print. This is a very important campaign for us. All the money is going to the operation USA and their funding, you know, helping displaced people in Ukraine. At one of the panels at Comic Con, we presented Operation USA with a check for $100,000 from the campaign funds.

James: That’s incredible!

Jordan: Thanks. And, you know, hopefully that helps a lot of people who’ve been displaced and really affected by the war in Ukraine .

To find out more about Zoop, current tiles now available to back, and their crowdfunding services for comic book creators go to zoop.gg

By James Gavsie
Host, Who Would Win Podcast
Twitter @jamesgavsie