Crowdfunding through ChipIn

One of the internet's biggest strengths is its ability to connect many people together -- even if those people don't know each other personally. This has led to a type of outsourcing where instead of tapping just one entity or company, you tap many different people. Crowdsourcing has become in recently with many projects being cut down into smaller component parts and being distributed to different service providers/freelancers.

Another offshoot of this phenomenon is Crowdfunding. Instead of getting just one venture capitalist or investor, you harness the power of the "crowd" on the internet and get funding that way. More commonly, this is used for charitable purposes, but is not just limited to that. Crowdsourcing for applications and application features, especially for the bigger open source apps, is a way of getting funding for something that's meant to be used by everybody.

And here is where ChipIn comes in. ChipIn is a flash based application that can be used as a widget on your blogs or websites so you yourself can get funding for your project by tapping on the crowd! You can set specific goals (amounts) and each donation brings a bar closer to that goal. People can also pay via credit card or through the now ubiquitous Paypal.

The best part about this is that the service is absolutely free. They don't charge any fees. I don't exactly understand how their business model works but I'm not complaining.

Try it now: ChipIn