Slideshare link: http://www.slideshare.net/sarasarrouf/crowdsourcing-power
For every hour or dollar that you spend on your business, how do you maximize the mileage from that investment?
If you are running an online business or starting a new one, chances are that you do not have unlimited capital. In order to succeed in this environment, you realize that you can’t compromise on the quality of you offering. Welcome to the world of crowdsourcing.
For every investment you make, you should evaluate wether you could have reached a better outcome by oudsourcing activity.
Elance has worked to expand their offerings, integrating some features to create more than a job site and more of a work tool. She creates a remote workspace for freelance workers to provide them with additional incentive to continue using the site after the job match has been made. The features are meant to help service providers manage a part of their work through Elance and give buyer and service provider more ways to connect and transact business.
Elance use many objectives to help skilled freelancers reach international markets. Although crowdsourcing is regarded as effective and has a benefit:
· Crowdsourcing cost: now even businesses with a moderate budget can brand their identity without fear of going over budget and unaffordable costs.
· No prize money guarantee: Elance now offers an escrow account so that once a buyer and seller match up, the buyer can place the payment into an escrow account via elance with the intent to assuage the provider’s mind that the money is there upon completion of the project. Actually designers worry that they might not get paid even after their design has been selected as the “winning design”
· All that free labor: designers have to demonstrate their expertise somewhere to someone before they can get paid.
· Wasted time and effort: crowdsourcing gives the designers gives the designers an opportunity to build an impressive resume and gives them an understanding of how they can work for clients. All the designs created can be added in their portfolio for future reference.
· No boundaries: even the small businesses with meager budgets can benefit from the large talent pool and brand their identity.
· Expert insight required: active participation and feedback from the contest holder’s end will help designers acquire a better understand of the business and so they will be able to create accordingly.
· Design with mixed messages: the designers should have a brief about their brand and what the company is all about to obtain good results.
Positive:
§ Elance offer an integrated chat function and a click to call function that allows the buyer to place a call to the provider for free.
§ Elance has create her own “remote work system”
§ She offers dispute assistance for buyer and provider.
§ She implemented a time tracking widget that a provider can apply to a deliverable , add notes and attach files.
§ She offers an archive of interactions and communications between buyer and provider.
§ She contains a wealth of well paying, high quality writing jobs for established web content developers.
§ Get the work done for cheap.
§ Provides more value for your money.
§ Great marketing tool.
Negative:
§ Ideas are open.
§ Disputes will be there and hence can’t be treated as a business model.
§ No confidentially.
§ Poor quality entries.
§ Wrong directions.
§ Popularity misleads.
§ Stolen or recycled names.
§ Missing the best talent.
§ Hidden costs.
Finally, Elance could be a good place for a novice to find their first jobs, plus the site provides some extras to help manage those jobs. Although who can understand a business and it’s vision than the business holder himself? Still there are many who preach that contest holders do not know what they want out of design and by entering a contest they erode the company’s brand. Wouldn’t business owners know and understand their business better than anyone else? I suppose the greatest advantage or disadvantage of crowdsourcing is that it has essentially demolished the monopoly of the few and created an equal opportunity playing field for everyone.
Slideshare link: http://www.slideshare.net/sarasarrouf/crowdsourcing-power
