How I built a website to help crowdfund my Masters Degree
I recently got accepted into a Masters program for Data Science. Unfortunately the universities administration gave me my confirmation too late to apply for funding. Leaving me in a bit of a tuition bind.
Luckily, I was able to use my 13th cheque to fund almost half the amount required. However, this still left the other half needing to be paid.
After researching different funding sites and potential fundraising opportunities it became clear that most of them took a massive percentage of the proceeds (some were taking almost 10%).
This is simply outrageous to me.
I figured since I have the skillset, why not put together a simple website explaining the situation with my banking details for whomever wanted to contribute.
This would allow me to allocate the full amount received toward the Masters.
Here’s how I got the website up and running in a single day.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
As this needed to be a simple website I ruled out using any framework (e.g. React, Vue etc), since these add unnecessary complexity.
This left the tried and tested HTML and CSS website.
I started by writing a draft of what I wanted without any CSS. My focus being on the conveying the information as simply as possible. Anyone could then quickly get the just of the situation and have an easy call to action — Marketing 101.
After getting the core story in, I added a nice little thank you in the form of a Wall of Gratitude. Using the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
I also tried to make it more personable by adding a picture of myself, a nice headline and subheading and a gauge to give a visual representation of the progress that has been made.
TIP: I use VSCode and the Live Server extension was critical in developing this website quickly. It auto loads the changes in the browser which reduces needing to reload the index.html.
GIT IT
Next I needed to add it to my Github so that I could apply changes and keep the codebase somewhere remotely (in case fire).
NETLIFY + GITHUB = DYNAMIC DUO
Linking my Github repo to Netlify allowed me to add CI/CD pipeline to my workflow. Every time I committed a change to Github, it fired a redeployment on Netlify.
TIP: Step by step guide linking Netlify to Github.
Now I had the website set up on Netlify with this URL https://ecstatic-swartz-26fc94.netlify.app/.
Although it’s epic that Netlify allows you to host a website with a random URL it unfortunately doesn’t look very legitimate when asking people for money online.
Therefore I needed to buy cheap yet descriptive domain.
STEP IN GO DADDY
I never realized how simple and cheap it is to register a domain. Go Daddy made it really simple and affordable (roughly $12).
All you need to do is go to the website type the domain you’d like and follow the steps to buy it. It literally took me 5 minutes.
TIP: You can actually buy a domain through Netlify. I would recommend doing that to keep things simple and so you can ignore this and the next step. Here’s a guide on how to do it.
LINK TO NETLIFY’S DNS
To simplify things I made the DNS use Netlify’s DNS service.
This involved needing to change the DNS Settings in GoDaddy.
And BOOM! I had a working and secure website at https://www.fundmymasters.com or https://fundmymasters.com (it may take some time to propagate the change).
TIP: If you need a step by step guide on how to do this here’s a great blog.
DON’T FORGET THE LITTLE THINGS
After getting the working website I asked some close friends what they they thought about it and anything that they thought I could improve on.
This made me realize I didn’t have favicon nor metatags so that when sharing the website it looked really good on Facebook, LinkedIn etc…
Also add SSL/TLS certificate in Netlify so that your site uses https! Go to domain management in Netlify, click on HTTPS and add a Let’s Encrypt certificate.
These small things make the world of difference. Here’s what the sharing looks like after adding everything:
NOW FOR THE HARD PART!
After setting this up it’s time for the hard part — getting people to donate.
Luckily, I’ve been quite successful. As of this writing only 10% is left.
A massive thanks must go out to the people who have decided to invest in my future —it really means a lot.
I hope this illustrates that it’s really easy to get a website off the ground at the cost of a domain name. Hopefully you can find a use case to apply to your own life :)!
