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Health & Fitness

Have You Tried Crowdsourcing Yet? (oDesk, crowdSPRING, 99Designs, Kickstarter...)

Top 6 Crowdsourcing Websites

Crowdsourcing was first coined in 2006 and is the term that essentially pertains to tasks and activities that are traditionally performed in-house or by suppliers and are now being performed by a group of people or a crowd instead. In essence, delegation of tasks is presented to a sizable number of people who share similar interests, skills, and abilities rather than to a specific individual or entity.

The results acquired through crowdsourcing are known to feature high-quality outcomes or just about the same outstanding results when compared alongside traditional outsourcing activities. By harnessing the power and skill of a group, crowdsourcers obtain crucial benefits and resolution to problems at more affordable rates.

All parties involved in a crowdsourcing activity receive some form of benefit or compensation from active participation.

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Crowdsourcers gain:

  • Task completion for a less expensive price point

More clients now prefer crowdsourcing over traditional outsourcing as a limited budget may still reap great outcomes. Since an activity is delegated to a sea of talented individuals, they are more likely to get the result they want at a fraction of the cost.

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  • More bang for your buck
  • With crowdsourcing, buyers are left to choose from a wide variety of finished products. The great quality of work, idea, or design produced by participants may come at a price, but the assortment also promises to be highly useful for projects that may arise in the future.

    • Convenience
    • With crowdsourcing, buyers do not need to perform tedious process of hiring and screening applicants one by one. Individuals or companies that present a task or problem are only obligated to choose the best entry and then pay the talent accordingly afterwards. In addition, the buyers are not required to maintain such talents in their roster of employees, thus reducing expenses on the long haul.

      • No need to hire permanent or temporary employees
      • Traditionally, employers or buyers are the ones who search for talents for whatever task or activity at hand. In a crowdsourcing scenario however, the talents or professionals are the ones who seek out for your need instead.

        • Excellent tool for outsourcing
        • Crowdsourcers who find phenomenal talent through crowdsourcing venues may later decide to offer permanent employment to or contract directly with talents to ensure high-quality work at all times. If you are seeking professionals with a great work ethic and that can carry out tasks leading to flawless results, you may start with crowdsourcing tasks, and recruiting the best of the best over time.

          Crowdsourcing Participants

          • High Cash Compensations

          When a buyer finds a task or job from a talent to be of excellent quality, the former will be more than willing to pay premium for the finished product.

          • Equal Playing Field
          • In crowdsourcing, all participating professionals- amateur or veteran, are all on a level playing field. A talent’s years of experience or employment background may not always be relevant when buyers select the best work from the crowd. This means that a total newbie is given a chance to be in competition against a seasoned talent.

            • Flexible Work Hours
            • A majority of crowdsourcing jobs are freelance or can be done from the comfort of one’s home. This enables participants to work at their own pace, provided they meet deadlines as well as terms and conditions set by the buyer.

              • Enhance your Professional Portfolio
              • Whether your work was accepted or declined from a crowdsourcing job, you can include the finished product as part of your professional portfolio. Any completed projects from crowdsourcing tasks should be compiled accordingly and will serve as a display of your improvement and skills as a professional in your chosen field of industry.

                Taking advantage of the benefits found in crowdsourcing is both smart and practical for companies big and small. Aside from being a cost-effective and efficient means of garnering the best results, crowdsourcing is also considered a noteworthy marketing tool that can successfully enhance brand awareness.


                Different Types of Crowdsourcing

                • Crowdsource design
                • Crowdfunding
                • Microtasking
                • Ideas crowdsourcing

                When it comes to the best crowdsourcing websites, it really depends on the niche you are in and the type of results that you want to reap from such an activity. For instance, there exists crowdsourcing for advertising and niche areas like web design too. For those seeking opinion and responses from a sea of heads, there are crowdsourcing websites that meet the needs of idea developers as well.

                We have successfully compiled the six best crowdsourcing websites that are worth checking out!

                crowdSPRING

                This is definitely the go-to site when you are looking for the largest marketplace for logos, graphics, graphic design, and even naming. Signing up as a buyer will enable you to get up to 110 entries for a single project you have presented using this online crowdsourcing platform. crowdSPRING currently has well over 150,000 talented designers and writers that serve the role of active participants in projects. All that a buyer needs to do is name their price for a given task and hundreds of creative professionals will be in action to produce a quality result. If you are looking to buy a highly-customized graphic design, logo, or web design, joining crowdSPRING will definitely prove to be an exciting first step towards your new venture. crowdSPRING offers a 100% money-back guarantee, further highlighting confidence in the talented designers that work under their popular brand name.

                99Designs

                Crowdsourced design is definitely worth every penny especially when acquired from 99Designs. Known as a thriving design crowdsourcing company, 99Designs mainly relies on the talents and skills of great numbers of designers from the world over. Small and big businesses need to create brand awareness spanning the products and services that they currently offer. In deciding to crowdsource a design or logo for your organization, you are essentially encouraging customer awareness of your business's existence; ideally increasing the chances of sizable returns in the form of revenue. Aside from logos, 99Designs can help your organization with projects such as web design, banner advertisements, and even design for merchandise as well. 99designs features 100% money-back guarantee to crowdsourcers of projects. There are over 80,000 talented freelancers that collaborate with 99Designs to give you exactly what you need. More than that, crowdsourcers have an option to facilitate a regular or guaranteed contest. Unlimited revisions are one of the perks of crowdsourcing with 99Designs.

                Kickstarter

                For highly creative and innovative projects to fund or be funded, one must look no further than Kickstarter. This crowdfunding company offers a platform for professionals like designers, writers, musicians, filmmakers, inventors, and financial backers alike, to connect and collectively build community around projects. Thousands of projects have been successfully funded through Kickstarter. Projectcreators have complete control and responsibility over their projects. A project creator sets the financial goal as well as the project deadline for funding. Project funding on Kickstarter is all or nothing, if the project falls short of full funding, backers retain their pledges and if the project is fully funded, it moves forward.

                Project creators interested in listing their projects with Kickstarter, need to meet general guidelines before their projects goes live.

                Odesk

                If you are looking for professionals that can accomplish simple yet crucial microtasks, you might try oDesk. And if you're looking for an efficient labor force at affordable rates, oDesk is definitely the website to visit. You may explore top specialists from this outsourcing website, namely web developers, software and development designers, information systems specialists, proficient translators, writers, and even administrative support members as well. Since you are only hiring on demand, there is no need to contract an employee under your company. The payment for a crowdsourced job is handled with ease through oDesk as the website employs an efficient and streamlined payment process. Crowdsourcers can post a job or project on oDesk for free. Professional freelancers seeking an opportunity to showcase their talents may also sign up to join oDesk. In terms of reliability and affordability, participating in projects facilitated by oDesk will prove to be a smart move.

                MinuteWorkers

                For crowdsourcing micro work, MinuteWorkers is an interesting platform to consider. If you have extra time to spare, you might like to sign up and earn extra income from micro tasks such as completion of surveys, signing up for websites, and even simple downloading of files! Participants are fairly compensated for tasks undertaken and the quality of work performed is high. Outsourced tasks are very simple and straightforward such that participants will only need to spend a few minutes to finish most tasks. Participants are paid through Paypal and or Alertpay and may withdraw funds once they have accumulated a certain amount in their MinuteWorkers account.

                InnoCentive

                Through innovative contests online involving challenges, InnoCentive is a platform for crowdsourcing innovation problems to talented minds (collective and or individual think tanks) from all over the planet. As well, solution seekers and challenge solvers originate from a variety of entities such as the academic institutions and other profit and non-profit organizations. Engineers, designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, and the like can gain numerous advantages by merely joining the InnoCentive community. The projects or challenges are posted within InnoCentive’s Challenge Center by solution seekers and provide a set of conditions that need to be met. Financial compensation or reward details for the winning solution are listed at InnoCentive. Judging by the increasing number of seekers and solvers in this web-based community, InnoCentive is undeniably a great success and a reputable crowdsourcing website for individuals and entities seeking solutions to complex problems and talented freelance thinkers alike. It’s an exciting online platform that feeds the need of professionals for relevant external challenges. The website aims to eliminate any middleman so everyone obtains the results they need faster and more conveniently too.

                Mechanical Turk

                One of the most popular websites that facilities crowdsourcing is Mechanical Turk or mTurk. The website is run by online giant, Amazon so you are guaranteed that projects or items posted are legitimate all the way around. The sign up process for mTurk will only take a few minutes to finish. Talented minds click on Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) or projects that they would like to work on. The tasks that are featured on mTurk are simple and very straightforward such as answering surveys, commenting on blogs, rewriting jobs, image labeling, and simple micro tasks as well. The payment system employed by mTurk is fairly easy in that payments for talents are directly forwarded to their Amazon payment account. Although it will take you a considerable amount of time to strike a fortune by becoming a participant at MinuteWorkers or mTurk, the tasks and projects are a tad bit addicting, especially if you have time to kill.

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