What Is Crowdsourcing?
A few years ago, Jeff Howe of
Wired coined a term for a method of generating workflow that was becoming more and more popular all around him. That term was "
crowdsourcing"–a
method of outsourcing work to a large group of people or a community of
people rather than to individual employees or departments.
This is an old business concept that used to be second nature.
Businesses (generally small ones) would enlist the help of the common
people on the street to do a task for some reward or pay. This was
usually for tasks of menial labor or distribution, and sometimes crowds
would gather early in the morning to wait for these requests so that
they could earn a living.
Of course, the process is now a bit more complex. Since the term was
created and the practice became common knowledge, there have been
conferences and organizations built around it to share new ideas and
innovations. These include
CrowdConf and
Crowdsortium.
Usually crowdsourcing is implemented by larger companies that will
put out a call for communities or groups of people who are best suited
for the position. But individuals or smaller companies can also find
ways to utilize this tool. It might even be a great option for
non-profits and other groups that are limited in resources and so need
all of the targeted (but economical) help that they can get.
Here are five easy ways to make crowdsourcing work for you, no matter what your needs may be.
1. Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk is based on
HIT’s, or Human Intelligence Tasks. These are basically simple tasks
that are easy for the average person, but not simple enough for an
automated system to handle. The work itself is micro-labor. That means
you will be paid pennies per section of each task, adding up to greater
amounts for time. So if you chose to organize a website list to find
active links, you might be paid a few cents per link. Others pay up to
ten cents per section, which will add up faster. You can make money
here, or even post your own jobs for others to do.
2. Cloudcrowd
Another micro-labor site,
Cloudcrowd
is more translation, data entry and editing based. You can also work in
content creation, in a way similar to sites such as TextBroker. You
have to have a Facebook and PayPal account in order to qualify, but
chances are you have those anyway. The amounts are greater than
Mechanical Turk, but the tasks are also a little more time and energy
consuming.
If you have been looking for people who can transcribe your files,
provide translations or do data entry, you can find some good ones
here–however, you have to be prepared to pay a little bit more.
3. CastingWords
Anyone who has a typing skill can make some extra cash by doing transcription at
CastingWords.
It is associated with Mechanical Turk and allows you to search for jobs
related to transcription, which is pretty much just very quick data
entry. They pay through direct bank transfers or Amazon store cards, and
the pay isn’t bad.
If you are going to use Mechanical Turk to find people who can
transcribe for you, it is worth checking out CastingWords as well.
4. IdeaOffer
IdeaOffer is an interesting
site. You sign up and look through projects on the site. They will ask
you for any ideas you might have to improve it, market it, change it,
name it…whatever they need. You submit your ideas and the best ones will
be paid a reward. These might be anything from $1 to $100, but you can
usually expect about $5 to $10 for each reward.
While this isn’t great for making a lot of cash, it is a good place
to get help if you are stuck on your project. You will also be rewarding
concepts and creativity.
5. NamingForce
Do you like some real competition? Businesses looking for product or company names will come to
NamingForce
and ask for your input. The winning name will get a $100 bucks or more
for their efforts as they buy that provided name. It is harder to win
here because there is more to gain, but it’s an interesting site.
If you are looking for some good marketing ideas and names, then
this is a fantastic place to get what you need. You have to be willing
to hand out some real cash, but it is still a lot less than you would
pay a concept team. You will also be tapping into a fresh idea resource,
and that is important in a business-oriented market where creativity
can quickly become stale.
Crowdsourcing Gets Results
Of course, these are only a few ideas. You always have the
traditional way of giving an open call to your local community, which
will inevitably bring in some great minds for the task. But if you are
looking for something quick and need a greater pool to choose from,
these are some of the sites you can use.
http://crowdsourcing.com
