Thursday, Aug 9, 2012    Text size: 

LOS ANGELES — Extra Lunch Money LLC has launched Offbeatr.com, a non-equity crowdfunding platform for sex and adult products — for the second time.

The site made its soft debut last February but now includes new details and a digital sales component where project creators can sell custom made content.

Starting today users can explore projects or pitch their straight, gay, or lesbian adult project idea in such categories of art, books, education, games, movies, physical products, or websites.

While similar to other popular crowdfunding websites, Offbeatr projects all undergo a public voting period before being allowed to accept funding from supporters.

"We screen projects that get posted to Offbeatr," Ben Tao, CEO of Extra Lunch Money said. "But we realized, we might miss projects that have a supportive community. Putting in a public voting phase helps identify good projects we might have missed and gives project creators feedback to improve their projects so they can be successful."

In addition to the voting phase, an Offbeatr project has two ways to raise money. The first way is through the selling of rewards, which follow the all-or-none funding model popularized by Kickstarter.

Similar to the company’s ExtraLunchMoney.com, a social marketplace launched in April 2011 where models can sell custom made digital content, Offbeatr project creators can also make money selling digital products like movies, e-books, and photos. Supporters can purchase this content and download it immediately.

The company said even if a project doesn't reach its funding goal, sales from digital products are paid out to the creator.

Tao continued, "All-or-none crowdfunding is more a gamble than a sure thing. It's scary knowing that if you don't reach your goal, even if you are close, that you end up with nothing. By introducing the digital product sales component we give project creators a way to hedge their bets and give supporters an additional way to support a creator without having to wait months for their reward."

The Offbeatr folks also launched a “Work for Porn” offering last May — a micro task platform where members can view and complete simple tasks and earn credits where they can then buy porn.

And that's not all.  Tao and company also run the Elm Avenue porn podcast show, "Where Sex and Business Meet."

But Offbeatr needed some funding of its own to get off the ground, including working with the LA Startup Club — a collective of tech companies that focuses on the challenegs of new business.

Tao told TechCrunch, “We’ve bootstrapped the business from personal savings and have been making money since we launched. As you can imagine seed and angel funding for adult businesses, even if you are doing innovative things, isn’t easy to come by. So we knew from day one we had to make money in order to survive. That being said we still like to try the ‘mainstream’ tech ways of getting money. I think we’re on our 3rd rejection from Y Combinator and even have been rejected by every Los Angeles startup incubator (and there’s like a billion of them).” 

To pitch a project idea or explore projects visit Offbeatr.com.