Kickstarter helps artists, inventors, and other creative folks crowdsource the funding of their projects—how cool is that?

Project creators ask people to make a “pledge” to fund their project, if they reach their funding goal.  They can also offer incentives for people to support their project. For example, The New York Times article, A Few Dollars at a Time, Patrons Support Artists on the Web, tells the story of a music producer who offered an advanced copy of his album to people who pledged $15.

Some of the popular projects on the site, as of this writing, are:

• Designing Obama
• Poorcraft: A Comic Book Guide to Frugal Urban and Suburban Living!
• Patrick Blindauer’s 2009 Holiday Puzzlefest
• Robin writes a book (and you get a copy)
• Feltron vs Kickstarter
• OpenIndie: 100 pioneering filmmakers embrace modern cinema

At this time, you need an invitation to be able to submit a project, and because of current Amazon Payments policy (Amazon processes the pledges), “projects can only be started by people or entities with a U.S. address and bank account.”

You can follow Kickstarter’s news on Facebook, Twitter, and the fun Kickstarter blog, where they write about some of their funded projects, like the adorable Tiny Fabric Houses project, and the 365 Postcards project.

Hat tip to Kristine Maltrud of ArtSpark for turning me onto Kickstarter.