The following is a list of crowdsourcing resources given at the talk. Until the talk in Affiliate Summit, I (naively) thought crowdsourcing is limited to graphic design/web design and 1-2 other types of applications. Announce there will be multiple winners to boost designer participation (assuming that is the case!).Don’t be too cheap: most people aren’t going to be paid, so keep this in mind.Keep it simple: be realistic in your expectations and ask for what is reasonable.The project has to require your involvement: a crowdsourcing project is not ‘set and forget’.Don’t be a jerk: Designers thrive on feedback, give feedback and recognition.Tight deadlines are very effective as people like discovering quickly whether they’ve won a bid.You reap what you sow: define your project properly or you may get something very different from what you had in mind.Here are some suggestions given at the talk to get the maximum from crowdsourcing: The right solution was determined by taking the solution that the largest number of networks ‘voted’ would work best. In my academic career I used to create multiple artificial neural – instead of a single one – networks that solved a problem. This principle has been adopted by computer science as well (and probably other fields). Asking the audience for the answer is more likely to result in the right answer than asking your friend or Regis Philbin. Of course, this is usually more expensive than just using regular outsourcing sites such as oDesk or Elance – but the disadvantage of those is that no matter how good your contractor, you are ‘stuck’ with a single design.Ĭrowdsourcing works because of the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ principle: the idea that a crowd – a collection of individuals – is much more likely to get the right answer than a single individual.Ī good example is the game show “Who wants to be a millionaire?”. Since you get multiple people trying to create what you want, the results are potentially diverse and can be surprisingly creative. Using Crowdsourcing, you can submit a job description and get multiple bids each already satisfying the specifications you desire. According to Wikipedia, Crowdsourcing “ is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call“. This post is based on the excellent session, “Crowdsource Your Success”, that was given in Affiliate Summit East 2010 though I expanded it and added my own perspective.Ĭrowdsourcing is becoming increasingly popular these days.

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