Projects on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other crowdfunding platforms are mostly on the up-and-up, but there are those just trying to make a quick buck. Here’s how you can spot them.

Kickstarter，Indiegogo和其他众筹平台上的项目大多处于起步阶段，但有些项目只是想快速赚钱。 这是您如何发现它们的方法。

如果某事似乎太不真实，那可能是 (If Something Seems Too Good to be True, It Probably Is)

This is pretty good advice for life in general, but it applies to online crowdfunding in particular. If a new gadget seems like it probably can’t be achieved with current technology, then it probably can’t. This is especially true for the kind of independent teams that seem to flock to Kickstarter for funding.

一般来说，这是一生中非常好的建议，但特别适用于在线众筹。 如果看起来新的小工具可能无法通过当前技术实现，那么它可能无法实现。 对于那种似乎涌向Kickstarter寻求资金的独立团队而言，尤其如此。

Now to be sure, some of these “concepts” aren’t presented with any kind of malicious intent. They’re simply ideas that aren’t feasible at the moment. The organizers would know this if they had the engineering or business experience needed to bring a complex hardware product to fruition.

现在可以肯定的是，其中某些“概念”没有任何恶意意图。 它们只是目前尚不可行的想法。 如果组织者具有使复杂的硬件产品实现所需的工程或业务经验，他们将知道这一点。

On the other hand, there certainly have been campaigns that fell more on the malicious side—those that were run without any intention of ever reaching completion, banking on potential customers’ excitement for a new idea to overcome their common sense. Scams like this have become rarer on Kickstarter since the company began requiring a working prototype for approval. Organizers now need to have at least some kind of technical competence. But these scams still thrive on Indiegogo—the Wild West of crowdfunding—where no such safeguards are in place.

另一方面，肯定有一些活动更多地落在了恶意方面-这些活动的运行没有任何意图达到预期的目的，他们利用潜在客户的兴奋来寻求克服其常识的新想法。 自从公司开始要求工作原型进行批准以来，这种骗局在Kickstarter上就变得越来越少了。 组织者现在至少需要某种技术能力。 但是这些骗局仍然在Indiegogo(众筹的狂野西部)上盛行，那里没有此类保障措施。

Take, for example, the Skarp—a razor with a laser cutting edge. It’s already a bit of a hard sell for anyone too skeptical to believe in a handheld laser tool that’s powerful enough to cut hair but safe enough to use on human skin. After the campaign was kicked off Kickstarter for lack of a prototype, the organizers tried their hands at Indiegogo, where it raised over $500,000. A year and a half later the product is still “coming soon” with no verified shipping date, and customers are left with a $300 hole in their wallets. This isn’t a verified scam, but it seems less than likely that the product will come to market any time this decade.

以Skarp为例-带有激光切割边缘的剃刀。 对于任何怀疑的人来说，已经有些艰辛 ，以至于无法相信一种手持式激光工具，该工具功能强大，可以剪发，但足以在人体皮肤上使用。 在竞选活动由于缺乏原型而在Kickstarter上启动之后，组织者在Indiegogo尝试了筹款活动，筹集了超过500,000美元。 一年半之后，该产品仍“即将上市”，没有经过确认的发货日期，客户的钱包里留了300美元的缺口。 这不是一个经过验证的骗局，但是该产品在本十年中的任何时候上市的可能性似乎都很小。

Another example is the Smarty Ring, a “smart ring” concept that was little more than a series of renders for a ring that would alert you to new emails and other phone notifications. After two separate Indiegogo campaigns, two years, and nearly half a million in raised revenue, the anonymous organizers disappeared, never delivering anything more than a few half-hearted production photos.

另一个例子是Smarty Ring ，这是一个“智能铃声”概念，它只不过是一系列铃声的渲染图，可以提醒您有新的电子邮件和其他电话通知。 在两次独立的Indiegogo活动，两年的收入和近一百万的收入之后，匿名组织者消失了，只提供了几张心胸狭窄的制作照片。

Which brings us to our second point…

这把我们带到了第二点……

不要相信匿名运动 (Don’t Trust Anonymous Campaigns)

Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns both have profile pages for the people who create them. Investigate those pages thoroughly before you put your money down. Google the people involved, and Google their partners, too. See if their background experience matches the project that they’re trying to achieve.

Kickstarter和Indiegogo广告系列都有创建者的个人资料页面。 在放下钱之前，请彻底调查这些页面。 Google所涉人员，Google及其合作伙伴。 查看他们的背景经验是否与他们要实现的项目相匹配。

Let’s look at a positive example: the Pebble Smartwatch. This wildly successful campaign helped launch an entire product category, but it didn’t happen out of the blue. The main organizer, Eric Migicovsky, had already successfully built and sold a series of Bluetooth-connected watches named InPulse. This experience gave him and his team a pedigree in both business and engineering in exactly the field he needed. All this information was readily available online, and was even mentioned in the original Pebble campaign page.

让我们看一个积极的例子： Pebble Smartwatch 。 这项大获成功的广告系列帮助推出了整个产品类别，但并非偶然。 主要的组织者Eric Migicovsky已经成功制造并销售了一系列名为InPulse的蓝牙手表。 这种经验使他和他的团队在他所需要的领域中，在商业和工程领域都具有血统。 所有这些信息都可以在网上轻松获得，甚至在最初的Pebble广告系列页面中也提到过。

A well-documented crowdfunding campaign should have a real person behind it—with a full name, social profiles that you can verify, and an email address that gets replies (again, with verifiable identities for all concerned). If a campaign has a single name behind it with no links to any kind of verified information, or worse, simply a business name with no history attached, keep your money away from it.

一个有据可查的，有据可查的众筹活动应有一个真实的人，有一个全名，您可以验证的社交资料以及一个得到回复的电子邮件地址(同样，所有相关人员都具有可验证的身份)。 如果广告系列后面只有一个名称，而没有指向任何经过验证的信息的链接，或者更糟的是，仅是一个没有附加历史记录的商户名称，请不要花钱。

只需拒绝Indiegogo灵活资金 (Just Say No to Indiegogo Flexible Funding)

Indiegogo’s lax standards for verification already make it a target for scammers. But what really pushes it over the edge is its “flexible funding” option. With flexible funding enabled, campaign managers don’t actually have to hit their funding goals (which are rather arbitrary in any case) in order to keep the money that backers have pledged. If you back it, they bill your debit or credit card immediately upon the conclusion of the campaign—even if you’re the only one who’s actually offered them money and they’re thousands of dollars away from their goal.

Indiegogo宽松的验证标准已使其成为骗子的目标。 但是真正使它脱颖而出的是其“灵活的资金”选择 。 启用灵活的资金，竞选经理实际上不必达到他们的资金目标(在任何情况下都是任意的)即可保持支持者承诺的资金。 如果您支持，那么他们会在活动结束后立即向您的借记卡或信用卡付款-即使您是唯一实际向他们提供钱的人，而且他们离目标还有数千美元。

The appeal to organizers is obvious, as is the danger to backers. Without reaching the goal, crowdfunding managers don’t have any kind of responsibility to deliver anything they’ve promised. They can simply pocket the cash and walk away. Sure, some of them might make a token attempt to finish at least some of their goals, but with not even the usual honor code of crowdfunding holding them to it, why would you trust them to do so?

对组织者的吸引力是显而易见的，对支持者的危害也是显而易见的。 如果没有达到目标，群众集资经理没有任何一种责任提供任何他们所承诺。 他们可以简单地将现金装在口袋里然后走开。 当然，其中一些人可能会做出象征性的尝试来至少完成某些目标，但是即使没有通常的众筹荣誉准则也无法实现目标，您为什么会相信他们这样做呢？

Be especially wary of flexible funding campaigns where the funding goal is exorbitantly high—it doesn’t take a million dollars to create a board game. These campaigns might be set to a high goal specifically so that it can’t be reached, thus letting the organizer pocket all the money raised without ever offering anything more than a campaign page.

尤其要注意那些灵活的筹资活动，因为筹资目标非常高-制作棋盘游戏不需要一百万美元。 这些活动可能会被设定为一个很高的目标，以至于无法实现，因此，组织者可以将所有筹集到的资金都用于口袋，而无需提供任何活动。

警惕仿冒品 (Be Wary of Knockoffs)

These days, it’s pretty easy to bulk order products from manufacturing hubs like China. And since those products are primarily marketed to larger distributors or retailers, regular consumers might not be aware of them (or of the economies of scale that keep them cheap). Put that together with an eager audience looking for new gadgets, and it’s easy for a scammer to pass off an existing product as something new and exciting.

如今，从中国这样的制造中心批量订购产品非常容易。 而且，由于这些产品主要销售给较大的分销商或零售商，因此普通消费者可能不会意识到它们(或使它们保持便宜的规模经济)。 加上渴望寻找新产品的热心观众，骗子很容易将现有产品作为新的令人兴奋的东西来传递。

Take LunoWear for example. The campaign raised over $400,000 on Kickstarter for what was implied—but never stated—to be handmade wooden wristwatches. Some of the campaign backers found the same watches being sold on an online Chinese market, sans branding and going for about a quarter of the price. Kickstarter suspended the campaign and never charged backers, after which LunoWear fled to Indiegogo and raised almost the same amount of money for the same watches.

以LunoWear为例。 该活动在Kickstarter上筹集了超过40万美元 ，这是隐含(但从未说明)的手工木制手表。 一些竞选支持者发现相同的手表在中国的网上市场上出售 ，没有品牌，售价约为四分之一。 Kickstarter暂停了竞选活动，从未向支持者收费，此后LunoWear 逃往Indiegogo，并为同一只手表筹集了几乎相同的资金。

Really, the recurring theme here seems to be to stay the heck away from Indiegogo campaigns. Here are some other general guidelines to use when deciding to back a crowdfunded project:

确实，这里经常出现的主题似乎是远离Indiegogo广告系列。 以下是决定支持众筹项目时要使用的其他一些一般准则：

• Consider waiting: If you can, wait for a campaign to finish and reach the general market before buying. Most of the time, if the product is successful, you’ll be able to buy it outright (with no risk) at some point.

  考虑等待 ：如果可以的话，请等待广告系列结束并进入一般市场，然后再购买。 在大多数情况下，如果产品成功，您可以在某个时候直接购买(没有风险)。

• Use a credit card with buyer protection: Some credit cards offer purchase security on payments made with the card, typically allowing you to apply for a reimbursement (and a chargeback to the merchant) within 90 days.

  使用具有买家保护功能的信用卡：某些信用卡可提供使用该卡付款的购买安全性，通常可让您在90天内申请退款(以及对商家的退款)。

• Curb your enthusiasm: Sometimes even crowdfunded projects that are made with nothing but good intentions fail due to supplier issues, poor planning, or lack of necessary funds.

  遏制您的热情 ：有时甚至是仅出于善意而进行的众筹项目也会由于供应商问题，规划不佳或缺乏必要的资金而失败。

Above all, use common sense. If something just seems to be off in a crowdfunding campaign, it probably is. Remember your Latin: caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

首先，使用常识。 如果在众筹活动中似乎没什么用，那可能是这样。 记住您的拉丁语： 警告购买者(让买方当心)。

翻译自: https://www.howtogeek.com/302017/how-to-spot-a-potential-crowdfunding-scam-or-flop/