Comments on: Is crowdsourcing really worth it?

By: What has social media done to traditional business models?

What has social media done to traditional business models? — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:10:14 +0000

[...] The key is that you set the payment level yourself and, as I discussed in a post on crowd-sourcing last week, you only get what you pay for, so be fair with the payment levels here. Smartsheet also has the [...]

By: Lauren Fisher

Lauren Fisher — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:14:52 +0000

David, this is the first I’ve heard of your project and it sounds like you’re doing it absolutely right. Paying for actual time spent rather than just offering one reward if people are lucky enough to win is a much fairer way to do it and, I’m sure, it has a positive effect on the quality of work you get.
This is truly bringing in external resource, tapping into those people who really know their stuff and expanding your access to specialist knowledge. I’d be interested to hear how many people you have taking part and how much has been paid out so far. Are there current examples of films that have been successfully crowdfunded? A great project – well done.

By: david geertz

david geertz — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:59:20 +0000

At The Biracy Project – a crowdfunded + crowdsourced project, we believe that people who participate for what is commonly referred to in the film business as deferrals, should be compensated if the project becomes a success. That’s why we’ve built a crowdsourced platform that issues points to people for their participation, even if they are not the winner of an issued tender for services on our film project. We base our value of work on 60 CDN dollars per hour and then apply units of time that we think people should be able to complete the tasks in. For example: if we ask you to choose between the costume designers red or blue dress you are issued one minutes worth of points, or if we ask you to design a dress in a sketch we might give you 2 hours worth of points but also give a cash prize of 120 CDN dollars to the person who we use. This way people are earning an equitable position in the film that is carved up when the film is released. The more points you have…the more you earn.

great post by the way…

By: Lauren Fisher

Lauren Fisher — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:37:02 +0000

The loss of the relationship is interesting. There is a lot that’s lost when the extent of the relationship is a brief developed the one commissioning the project. That is no doubt why so many designs are wide of the mark and of questionable quality. It’s definitely cheap, but there’s no point if you can’t actually use the end result. It can be a huge drain on your own resource of time then.

By: Lauren Fisher

Lauren Fisher — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:34:55 +0000

The point about it being from outside your company walls is an important one, and one that I should have brought up in the post. The act of extending a task beyond your immediate resource is certainly enlightened and displays a fair amount of forward-thinking. This is what’s so great about crowdsourcing, but,as you mention yourself, the money behind it is simply stopping it from functioning well as a collaborative process.

By: Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend

Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:16:53 +0000

I would vastly prefer to develop personal working relationships with designers. I’m in a good area for it, San Francisco.

From a time perspective, it’s cheaper to pay good money for a good job than to spend hours and hours filtering lowest bidder results.

By: @crowdmanage

@crowdmanage — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:10:52 +0000

The crowdsourcing of designs is just one limited form of crowdsourcing, and isn’t a very deep example because of the limited collaboration between participants. I think it is a good way to source ideas from outside your company walls, but it must be tough for the designers to make a dollar and a cent.