Wusk: Crowdfunding Content on YouTube

Wusk Home Page todayh

Wusk is a new crowdfunding / micro-donations site that allows fans to contribute to any content on YouTube.  The startup just launched this past March at SXSW with their service and they  believe fans should support great digital content and the creators should be able to engage with their backers.

Wusk was co-founded by Joseph Holguin and Mehfuz Hossain.  Joseph has an interesting marketing background having taken his family farm online and expanding the brand nationally via DiazFarms.com.   He also founded CornerAgency a marketing firm that dedicates itself to helping businesses grow via online marketing.  CTO Mehfuz is a founding member and core developer of Pageflakes that was subsequently acquired.

Recently Crowdfund Insider spoke with Joseph to catch up with the Wusk platform and see where he sees his new site going.

Joseph HolguinCrowdfund Insider:  So tell me how Wusk came about?  And also please explain what “Wusk” means?

Joseph:   In the past year I would say 4 things came together to become the idea for Wusk.

  • I truly believe in social media and how it allows people to connect, engage and create value for each other.
  • Recently I was noticing a lot of news about musicians unhappy with streaming revenue and online video creators not happy with their profit share from ads.
  • I also began following Amanda Palmer and saw how her community helped her to raise $1.1million to fund her upcoming album. I also watched her TED Talk and agreed with a lot of ideas on how a community can support creators.
  • Lastly I started watching about 1hr of Vine videos each night and began to think about how content creators generate funds outside of ads, merchandise and product sponsorships.

So all that came together and created Wusk. A way for fans to directly support content creators and a way for content creators to engage with their fans on a whole new level.

What does Wusk mean? Wusk comes from the word Busking. Busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities (typically money).  So this can be someone playing a guitar in a coffee shop or the street corner and people from the community giving them donations (tips) as support. So people do the same thing on services like YouTube, soundcloud, instagram and vine. They perform on the public internet and now Wusk gives fans a way to contribute to them. We got the word Wusk by dropped the “B” from Busking and added a “W” which stands for “World Wide Web” or “Web.”

Crowdfund Insider:  What differentiates your platform from other services?

Joseph:  When I think of a lot other services I always say, “this is the Kickstarter of ________.”

Wusk is different from all of these services for a lot of reasons. We do not have any levels for contribution. We see all contributions from fans as equal. The idea is that if you already found value in someone’s content why must you still expect a reward for contributing. The reward was in the original content. This is good for content creators because they don’t have extra work of filling level rewards for fans. As part of contributing a fan is part of an “exclusive club” for 3 months from the last time they contributed. Once a fan is part of this group a content creator can engage with them in an exclusive way, either through online hangouts, real life meetups, exclusive content, news and other engagements.

Team WuskAs part of the Wusk service we will focus on helping content creators create unique ways to engage with fans through social media and real life. We’re excited to see how content creators and these fans begin to connect and we feel this engagement is going to be the backbone of the Wusk experience.

Another thing that sets us apart from the rest is that on Wusk you can donate to any content on YouTube even if a content creator hasn’t joined the service yet. We call this “unverified content”. Once a contribution is made to an unverified creator we work to contact this creator and sign them up for Wusk. If a content creator doesn’t signup after 6 months we refund the contribution. Once they join and go through the simple process of verifying their content they get all past donations that might have been made to them.

We created this process to open up the contribution system to all digital content on the services we support. In real life there is very little friction to giving cash to someone, so we wanted to make it more open online. This is important because a fan might want to give money to a creator but they might not know about Wusk yet. This way you can donate to all of your favorite content and we have an opportunity to share Wusk with more content creators.

Another reason we opened up Wusk to be able to contribute to all content is because everyone can be a content creator. With smartphones everyone has the power to create great content and share it with the world. If content goes viral or someone saw value in your content our system allows it to receive contributions from the very beginning. We’re also working on some other features but those aren’t ready to announce just yet.

 Crowdfund Insider:  Are you partnering with anyone right now?

Joseph: At this time we don’t have any specific partnerships but this is something that we plan on pursuing in the coming year.

Wusk LogoCrowdfund Insider:   YouTube is global – is Wusk a global platform?

Joseph:  At the moment Wusk only supports USD and US based content creators. We plan on opening it up in coming months. This will be for accepting foreign currencies as well as content creators from around the world. For the most part there are no limits to who you can share your content with in the world and we feel our international expansion will be important. We just want to make sure we have everything down before we open up to the whole world.

 Crowdfund Insider:  How will you get content on your site?

Joseph:  Right now anyone can paste a YouTube URL into our service and our system automatically creates a Wusk contribute page for that content. Also when a content creator signs up they also have the option to add their content to the service.

 Crowdfund Insider:  Is Wusk a rewards based platform?  Have you considered equity / royalty based crowdfunding? 

Joseph:  Wusk is in a way a rewards based service but not in the way Kickstart and other services are. We see ourselves as more of a value and experience based service. By contributing you are doing so because you saw value in content and want to support a creator. Then by contributing you can receive exclusive experiences from content creators. But we don’t have set rewards and levels that fans donate to and a contributor fills.

We haven’t really put thought into evolving the service into more of an equity/royalty-based system.

Crowdfund Insider:  How do you see Wusk evolving over time? 

Joseph:  We believe that Wusk will evolve to become the main way to directly support any content on the internet and in real life. The tip jar at performances is open to anyone who can drop money into it and we feel that digital content should have the same tools. If someone finds value in any type of content we want Wusk to be the way for fans to support content creators. At the end of the day we’re creating Wusk to help content creators get support from their fans and connect with them better.

Crowdfund Insider:  Where do you see crowdfunding going in the future?

Joseph:  As the tools continue to get better I think we’ll see a lot more projects and individuals being supported by the crowd. We’re getting to the point where a couple hundred, thousand or even million fans can join together and fund projects, people or content they enjoy. I think one day we’ll get to a point where anyone creating great content or products can find their fans, connect with them and receive direct support. It’s an exciting time and we’re happy to be working to give the power to the crowd!

 



Sponsored Links by DQ Promote