Fergus Dyer-Smith

Crowdsourcing sounds like a great idea but venturing in to the world can be a little daunting. Having used sites like crowdSpring and elance for many years and now sitting on the other side at Wooshii I thought I would post some of the things I have learned that should help you make the most of them.

1. It is all in the brief – What do you really want?

This is the classic GIGO. The better your brief the better the end result, especially in creative projects. As a good friend of mine put it… “Creatives solve problems. Unless you can define the problem then they are just trying to solve a mess”

From my own experience it doesn’t matter whether you are sourcing a coder or a graphic designer the issue is the same. Provide them with as much info (but it keep it to the point) as you can and concentrate on your outcomes not the process.

What you really want is the solution to a problem. Accurately describe that and you can’t go far wrong.

2. Leap of Faith

Taking the plunge into Crowdsourcing can be a little daunting first time round. It feels a little foreign sending your work off into the webosphere. Believe me though you will get used to it. The trick is to remind yourself of the actual low risks at play. What is the worse that could happen?

Take $300 logo project if it all went horribly wrong, (and it won’t) what do you loose? $300 at the most.

3. Give new members a chance

If you have small non critical projects that you are prepared to crowdsource then try working with new members of a platform. What do I mean? Every platform will have established users with track records that you can check. These are great for projects that you need an air of certainty too BUT they will generally cost you more or won’t pitch on smaller projects.

You will often find that new users with no track record will go the extra mile and charge you less just to get off the starting blocks on a system.

4. Consider language

In a good deal of cases language is not a problem. In others such as complex website functions, being able to communicate point can become extremely frustrating if there is a language a barrier that you have to jump first. My tips
a. Is your project language dependant, visual projects often are not but complex functions or writing projects could well be
b. Use the evidence before you to determine a user’s language capabilities. What was their pitch like?

5. Ask for specific responses in your brief.

Some of the larger sites unfortunately have users that will just pitch on anything blind, taking no time to read your brief. You need to weed these out. In some cases it is possible to ask for a specific response. For example the way I manage this is to ask all submissions to include the word “Banana” in their pitch. Simple but effective

… Points 6 -10 to follow