Author: Mitch Keeler

Getting a ton of people to do your job for you is an webmaster’s dream, right? Well that task is not just a dream – and it does have a name. Crowdsourcing (according to Wikipedia) is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call.

To help answer the general questions about this type of service, we thought it would be time to turn to a professional, Matt Mickiewicz of SitePoint.com.

For the guy of the street who may not know, what is the quickest way you can describe crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is simply amassing a diverse group of people to work on a single task, usually by motivating them with some sort of incentive, like cash, a prize or simply public recognition.

What are the benefits of crowdsourcing something like graphic design?

Crowdsourcing graphic design through an established online player like 99designs allows business owners and online entrepreneurs to get everything from logos, to banners, t-shirts and business cards designed in a shorter time frame, with less hassle, and more options.

Rather than hiring a single designer based on his portfolio and hoping for a quick turnaround and a satisfactory result, you simply post a “project brief” to 99designs.com, name your budget, and within hours designers from all over the world start competing for your money by submitting fully completed graphic design concepts. At the end of a couple of days, you pick your favorite, and pay the winner. Obviously, the greater your budget, and the more interesting your project, the more designers you’ll attract to participating in your project.

So it’s all about diversity of choice, quick-turn around, and less risk.

Where do people often miss the mark or have misconceptions about crowdsourcing?

It’s often thought that the quality of work received through a crowdsourced marketplace is lower than what could be achieved elsewhere. That’s definitely not the case, as the spirit of competition drives a group to achieve an outcome that is often superior to what any one individual tackling the project by themselves could do.

How do you get a crowd of your very own to reference to when needed?

Your best bet is to go to an existing crowdsourcing marketplace. They’ll hopefully have the critical mass of users, and the technology infrastructure, to allow you to get your project done.

Can you give us a few examples of crowdsourcing marketplaces?

There’s usertesting.com for usability testing of your website. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mturk.com) for “grunt” work where you pay a few pennies to each individual. Uservoice.com which is a crowdsourced suggestion box for businesses. iStockPhoto.com is a crowdsourced marketplace for stock imagery. And finally, 99designs.com which caters to any and all types of graphic design.

I want to thank Matt for taking the time out to answer our questions about the art of crowdsourcing, and to check out more of his work – you can do so via Sitepoint.com.

Related Hosting Newsletter Articles:

• Lunarpages Community Survey
• One on One with the Lunarpages Trainer
• What You Need to Know About Logo Design

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under Interviews, Issue 10 - May 2008, Newsletter Archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed . Both comments and pings are currently closed.