YNOT – A new marketplace designed to bring “crowd funding” to the adult entertainment industry has launched in beta mode. According to its developers, Offbeatr.com is the first resource of its kind.
Crowd funding, or crowd financing, has become a popular way for individuals and small companies to raise research and development dollars. One of the most well-known mainstream crowd funding sites is Kickstarter, which has helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs launch movies, music, books, video games and other projects. Unfortunately, Kickstarter and its brethren do not allow pornographic projects. Offbeatr does.
Like its mainstream counterparts, Offbeatr offers producers, performers, artists, authors and other adult content creators a way to raise money for their projects in exchange for unique rewards. Each project creator receives a dedicated page describing the project, how much money they hope to raise and what rewards they will give in exchange for pledges from the public.
Supporters use Offbeatr to pledge money to projects that interest them. If a project reaches its funding goal by the deadline its creator sets, supporters’ credit cards are charged and the project creator receives the funds. If the goal isn’t, met supporters aren’t charged.
“I would love to say Offbeatr was a totally original idea, but it’s not,” said Chief Executive Officer Ben Tao, who’s also the man behind adult content marketplace Extra Lunch Money. “While there are hundreds of crowd funding websites online, there are exactly zero which allow projects of an adult or sexual nature. If your creativity involves trying to get your Chronicles of Narnia porn parody made, good luck trying on a mainstream crowd funding site.
“So where does that leave people who have a great adult movie, website or mobile app idea and need a little funding to get it off the ground? Offbeatr fills that gap and offers several benefits,” he continued. “Project creators raise the money they need while retaining the rights to their projects, and supporters get unique rewards with the satisfaction of directly supporting project creators who are producing the types of adult content they want to see.”
Ela Darling is among the first project creators to give Offbeatr a try.
“When Kickstarter launched, I sent out some feelers to see if I could bring to life this fun fairytale porn idea I had, but I was shot down by the site admins because they didn’t want to host that sort of project,” she said. “Then I catered an adult art project specifically to the Kickstarter community, and it was successful, but it’s still disappointing that in spite of that success, I can’t bring other, bigger projects to a crowd funding site like that.”
Tao said he hopes to see a wide range of projects seek funding through the new resource.
“There should be a lot of creativity and variety in the projects posted to Offbeatr,” he said. “Project creators will be able to present what they’re passionate about and truly want to work on without worrying about how to make [the projects] acceptable to the traditional sources of capital. Before Offbeatr there was little chance of any adult project idea seeing the light of day, but with Offbeatr we offer something previously not offered: Hope.”
Tao said Offbeatr is looking for passionate and creative project creators to submit their projects for the site’s global launch. Offbeatr projects will be by invitation only during the advance industry preview period. Potential project creators can request an invitation by visiting Offbeatr.com or by emailing the staff.
