Is Crowdsourcing Right for Your Business?

Is Crowdsourcing Right for Your Business?

Tips for crowdsourcing

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Is crowdsourcing right for your business?

Steps to crowdsourcing in general

Picking a crowdsourcing company

Criteria

Directory of crowdsourcing websites

Crowdsourcing social change (no money)

Crowdsourcing answers

Transcription-services only

Translation-services only

Tasks in general

Crowdsourced service providers (CSPs) – companies that manage the crowd for you

Your role and theirs

Steps when working with a CSP

What to look for in a CSP

Specific CSPs

Crowdsourced design competitions

Steps

Sites for hosting your competition

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Is crowdsourcing right for your business?

Crowdsourcing must save you both time and money to be worthwhile. If you do crowdsource something, you must be able to articulate your objectives, the smallest steps needed to reach them, the tools and resources required, and also the lowest levels of quality and accuracy that you will accept.

When in doubt, contact the company and ask whether its workers are right for your task. The worker must be able to do the tasks online, the tasks should be basic enough for people with low skills, and the tasks should be achievable, verifiable, and measurable.

Steps to crowdsourcing in general

  1. Choose a crowdsourcing company.
  2. Place your order on their website, and specify the skills needed in your posting.
  1. Select the accuracy level and type of quality control you want. Each percentage increase in accuracy makes a major difference. Expect to pay more for higher accuracy requests.
  1. They may or may not convert your order into microtasks. You may have to do this. By breaking the project into smaller tasks, you can find workers who can do the work for less pay. This is because you’ve reduced the skill level needed.
  1. Workers are assessed on their skills to qualify to work on your task.
  2. They log on to the site to process your task.
  3. Other workers do quality control, based on the level you chose at the beginning.
  4. The workers finish your order by putting the completed tasks back into the overall project.
  5. You then download your completed order and pay for it.

Picking a crowdsourcing company

Criteria

  • Core competencies: What is their specialty?
  • Referrals: What do others recommend for getting the work done?
  • Track record: Does the company have tangible results that show their ability to deliver?
  • Reputation: What do others say or what can you find online about the company?
  • Testimonials: What are their customers saying?
  • Core crowd: Can they gather a crowd with the right skills and demographics for your needs?

Directory of crowdsourcing websites

Crowdsourcing social change (non-monetary – ie, not crowdfunding)

Crowdsourcing answers

  • – This seems to be the most popular one.

Transcription-services only

Translation-services only

Avoid open translation projects where there is little vetting. Otherwise, you might get a lot of errors. Quality translation requires more oversight than other types of crowdsourced work.

Tasks in general

Besides translation and transcription, these tasks might include Internet research, content moderation, data entry, other types of writing and editing, document digitization, document conversion (such as PDF to Microsoft Word, 100% error-free), and the tagging, optimization, and conversion of images.

  • offers a global workforce where employees can use their mobile phones to do simple tasks and earn either mobile money or airtime. It focuses on projects that require deep local knowledge and insight in a given geography. The company has completed market-research studies for the U.N., brand engagement and education campaigns for global brands, and data gathering in dozens of countries for the World Bank and major investment firms.
  • is a nonprofit that reduces poverty around the world by providing dignified, technology-based work to low-income communities. It is technically not a crowdsourcing site, but it is very similar. For the differences, see this link:
  • is one of the more famous crowdsourcing websites and is run by Amazon. The tasks that you want completed are known as a HIT, a Human Intelligence Task (HIT). To get started, log in with your existing Amazon account or create a new one. Then watch the video tutorial before designing your HIT, publishing it, and managing it. You must pre-pay with either a credit card or bank account.

After you set up your HIT, set your rules, including time allotted per assignment (to dictate how long a worker can hold on to your task) and an expiration date. You can target your HIT to workers with a high approval rating or publish it to the entire worker crowd. If you choose a higher approval rating, this will eliminate lower-quality workers and new workers who haven't yet been rated.

You can also check a box labeled “Required for Preview.” This allows those with the right qualifications to view your HIT details. The worker crowd at large can still see your HIT listed with a description, but only qualified workers can claim the task.

After you build the framework for your HIT, set your reward. The site sets five cents as the default. A higher amount can bring in workers more quickly. You can also request multiple workers for the same HIT to get more answers with a greater number of perspectives or for comparison purposes. Next, enter the amount of time you are allotting for the automatic approval of work, such as four days. This is a safeguard to ensure the worker gets paid. Otherwise, you have control over the payment once you review the completed work.

To review task status and the work performed, go to the Manage tab. Review work within the time frame you set, and approve or reject it. If you don't take further action, the system will automatically approve and pay the worker.

Crowdsourced service providers (CSPs) – companies that manage the crowd for you

Companies called crowdsourcing service providers (CSP) offer crowdsourcing services for a fee. Most of them have their own highly specialized crowds, develop their own sets of tools to manage the crowds, and help you conceptualize your project and split it in microtasks to be crowdsourced. In addition to more options and choices, you usually see deeper cost savings with CSPs than you see when crowdsourcing on your own. Just be sure that the CSP you choose puts a major emphasis on quality assurance and controls.

Your role and theirs

A good CSP will be clear about your role and their role, and the tasks that they will perform.

Your job is to

  • Articulate your need.
  • Provide timely and honest feedback at every stage.
  • Review the results with your CSP.
  • Make a decision on the results received.

The CSP's job is to

  • Help define the project.
  • Provide strategic guidance every step of the way.
  • Break the project down into manageable tasks.
  • Craft the creative or project brief, with your input.
  • Announce the project to their crowd.
  • Help vet or refine submissions (that is, provide a layer of quality assurance).
  • Provide you with the best submissions.
  • Complete the project.

Steps when working with a CSP

1. Work together to identify your need and desired outcome. (You and the CSP)

2. Develop the project or creative brief. (CSP)

3. Draw up a list of deliverables and a timeline. (CSP)

4. Assemble/upload project assets and supporting documents. (CSP)

5. Publish the project to the crowd. (CSP)

6. Review work submissions. (You and the CSP)

7. Provide feedback, make selections, or continue the modification process. (You and the CSP)

8. Review iterations or modifications, and then accept the work. (You and the CSP)

9. Pay the CSP. (You)

10. Pay the worker or work team. (CSP)

11. Apply the results or leverage the outcome. (You and the CSP)

What to look for in a CSP

  • A clearly articulated discovery process: They should have a process in place to get as much information from you as possible to understand your goals and objectives.
  • A transparent cost structure
  • An established process
  • A technology platform: Most providers have thought through the technology they need to carry out the crowdsourcing process and many have specialized systems to facilitate it.
  • A built-in crowd: Your project might require a custom crowd, but you should work with a CSP that has a base of primed crowdworkers ready to perform the kind of work you need.
  • A track record: Look for providers with a list of satisfied clients, with referrals at the ready, and with proven examples of how crowdsourcing has worked and how they have successfully helped to carry out projects and campaigns for others.
  • An acknowledgment that not everything should be crowdsourced

Specific CSPs

  • is the most highly regarded CSP. They can access workers in over 70 countries through other crowdsourced labor sites such as Mechanical Turk and Samasource. When a worker does a task, CrowdFlower gives you a spreadsheet of results that you can sort based on a confidence score. By partnering with multiple worker channels, CrowdFlower provides you with access to a workforce that runs 24/7.
  • connects clients with a global network of innovation experts.
  • provides planning and outcome assessment, crowd recruitment, community management, and a platform for collaborative innovation, research, and brand management. They do some work for nonprofits.
  • GeniusRocket ( offers curated crowdsourcing to create videos. Hundreds of vetted filmmakers, animators, and web and graphic designers have applied to be part of this community.

Crowdsourced design competitions

Crowdsourced design competitions are like a request for proposals, or a pitch or bidding process. Applicants perform speculative work, or work "on spec;" they work on a design to near or full completion and submit their design in response to an open call. Someone gets the job or their work gets picked, and they receive some kind of consideration for their efforts.

Most competition sites focus on marketing, branding, design, coding, ideas, and innovation. Most sites give you the title of “client,” but sometimes they use terms like "seeker." The person who submits a response might be called a worker, a crowd member, or a solver, or the title may depend on her skill set, such as a designer, a coder, or a creative.

In addition to giving you a lot of creative possibilities, the crowd gains exposure to your brand and can promote it to their social media connections.

Common pitfalls include an amount of prize money that’s too small, a crowd that’s too small, a project that’s too complicated, or a turnaround time that’s too short.

Some competitions let you walk away at the end without paying if you don’t select any of the entries. However, if you guarantee that you will pick a winner and will pay, you will see more entries because it's more enticing to designers to know you are committed to the competition.

Steps

  1. Pick a competition website.
  2. Name and define your project. Describe the product’s intended use and audience.
  3. Articulate your desired outcome, and list criteria that are as objective as possible.
  4. Outline special skills or considerations for crowd participants.
  5. Specify a timeline and a price.
  1. Assemble/upload project assets and supporting documents, such as logos and brand guidelines, and also point to examples that you like by other organizations.
  1. Publish your project.
  1. Review work submissions. Consider assembling a panel of experts to advise you and help you vet the completed work.
  1. Provide feedback. Good designers tend to wait toward the end of a submissions process to learn from your feedback given to others. Inevitably, you will find the design you want a few days before the project’s end. Also, participants are fueled by feedback and constructive criticism even if they are not selected; this helps them improve for future competitions.
  1. Review iterations or modifications.
  1. Accept work and pay worker. Make a timely decision instead of belaboring the final review process. Crowd participants want to know if they're on track or are the "winning" creator. If so, they expect prompt payment. If not, they can move on to the next assignment.

Sites for hosting your competition

  • - logos, web design, buttons, banner ads, stationery design, business logos, flash, or 3D design
  • – logo design, website and usability testing, article writing, content design, videos, and search engine optimization (SEO) analysis
  • - user-generated video, print, and banner advertising
  • - many types of design
  • - open-source software innovation and development
  • - logo design
  • - innovation
  • - innovation
  • - innovation
  • - print design, logo and stationery, logo design, company naming, or small website design (The average CrowdSpring project gets over 110 entries.)

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