Have you ever faced difficulty getting promotional ideas for your brand? Or do you need someone who has experience in an advertising agency to write good content for your website? Maybe you just need some funding for your business. Crowdsourcing is a good way to get all of this work done. It’s a way to approach a worldwide audience of people who can contribute to the success of your project. Crowdsourcing helps you get the services, ideas, and content that you want for your business from a diverse group of individuals. It can be a lifesaver for a stalled business idea. We will look at some of the most popular crowdsourcing sites for your business in 2024 and see how they can help you meet your goals.
The Evolution of Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing started quite a few years ago. The term was first used in 2006 in a Wired magazine article written by Jeff Howe. There are many types of crowdsourcing, the main ones being crowdfunding, crowd wisdom, and microtasking.
Crowdfunding is when a large number of people come together to fund a project. For example, you need to raise money for your ice cream business. You can get the required funding for your business using a platform like Kickstarter.
Crowd wisdom is when you ask people to give their ideas regarding product or service marketing, for example. You can ask questions and get opinions using Quora or Yahoo.
Using Microtasking, we can break down a massive project into several small tasks that can be assigned to different individuals. You can even make it more exciting by turning it into a contest. For example, you could use Designhill to start a contest for creative design ideas for your brand merchandise.
The Best Crowdsourcing Sites for 2024
Let’s now look at some good crowdsourcing sites for 2024 and see what makes them so popular.
- Designing Ideas with CrowdSpring
Do you want to find designers at a very reduced cost? CrowdSpring allows you to do just this. You have to give the details of what you want, and the project is taken up by any persons who think they can contribute. You will quite likely get a lot of good and different ideas and select the ones that you want.
You will have to make a one-time payment of $200 for a one-to-one project or $299 for a crowdfunded one. This comprises payment to the site and the freelancer whose design you are using. It is backed by Q&A sessions and support tools for the project. You get ownership rights for the product you use. It’s far better than hiring one person and getting limited ideas from them. CrowdSpring has contributed some great ideas for commercial design firms. There are over 200,000 vetted professionals on this platform.
- Testing Programs with uTest
When it comes to the user experience, every website developer wants to know about the effective flow of their pages and the ease or difficulties faced while navigating it online. This is why user testing is needed. uTest has a diverse group of over one million professionals from 150+ countries that will test your digital products for you. It is a good site for programmers and developers who want their applications tested. The company was started in 2007.
You will be paid for the projects you test. You can join up on the site for free, giving details of the language you speak and program in, and the operating system you use. Your skills will then be matched with the projects available for testing and one will be assigned to you if it is a good fit. You can then submit your results and get paid.
- Get Innovative Ideas with Chaordix
Do you want some creative ideas for your projects but don’t have the resources to inspire you? Hopefully, you’ll have to look no further than Chaordix for some innovative ideas. The company was started in 2009. It is open to all kinds of ideas regarding business generation, community engagement and involvement, customer engagement, participating in brand management and marketing, and getting insights for all kinds of projects. The firm is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta.
The platform has been instrumental in developing and generating ideas for various projects from a variety of industries. It also gives suggestions to market-test the products and bring the best promotional ideas to fruition. Chaordix allows the community to participate and inspire facets of different projects.
- Revamp your Projects with RedesignMe
If you are looking for a way to relaunch your products or services but are not satisfied with the concepts that are being generated, RedsignMe is a site that will get you help from the online community to revamp your project. The site is devoted to web redesign and product redesign efforts. After joining the website and paying a small fee, you will get access to hundreds of opinions about your products and services regarding the strategy you want to implement, before actually launching it in the marketplace. You’ll get quite a few design ideas for your projects so you can implement the one you want. It is a great way to understand in advance the feasibility of your ideas and the effect they will have in the marketplace.
- Manage Tasks Effectively with Amazon Mechanical Turk
Do you have some tasks to do but are constrained to hold back because you don’t have the required resources or manpower to complete them? Don’t worry excessively; you can post it on this site and get help from real people to do it. It can range from data verification to running surveys. You have to pay to get work done on this site from the right groups of people. It helps to optimize efficiency, as you’ll get help from people to do repetitive and time-consuming tasks. It also increases flexibility since you can scale up or down without having to hire expensive resources.
It allows you to reduce costs by hiring talented workers from a distributed workforce who have the experience to help with your work. Experts can be hired through the user interface with simple API. They are usually asked to give their opinions or perform repetitive tasks. There are various levels of qualifications for freelancers being hired, and you have to pay accordingly. The site keeps 20% of the hiring cost.
The workers on Amazon Turk may not be connected with your project and may be unable to imagine its significance. Also, the low payments may raise ethical issues.
- Getting Various Tasks done with Upwork
If you don’t know about the existence of this site, you must be living under a rock! Upwork is one of the most often used crowdsourcing sites for all kinds of projects. No matter if you’re doing graphic designing, writing content, or anything else, you can post your skills and create a portfolio on this site. Upwork has a process for vetting workers, which is done when registering on the website. The site charges 5% from buyers to register and 10% from freelancers on every project they complete. There is also a $9.95 charge from buyers for each contract for new marketplaces and product catalogs.
You can post the tasks to be done and you will be given a list of freelancers who can do these tasks. You can then choose one to do your work after looking at their qualifications, ranking, and portfolio on the site.
- Getting the right start with 99designs
This site is primarily devoted to all kinds of design projects- from business cards to brochures and posters to stickers. It is a site where you can start a contest to get the best ideas and reward the winners with a design project. You can even design t-shirts, book covers, and even product packaging ideas.
There are an extremely good lot of freelancers available to give their ideas. You get the rights to use the design and have to pay the site for the different designs that you use. Four packages are available for a buyer on this site, and they are labeled Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The price of the packages ranges from $299 for Bronze to $1,299 for Platinum with access to from 30 to 60 designers. You’ll never have to stress over getting the right designers again and the results that you get will also be highly relevant to your requirements.
99designs is rather restrictive in that it does not let you get feedback on your own ideas by posting them on the site. Rather you are limited to the ideas given by the design community.
- Impress the 3D world with CAD Crowd
This is a crowdsourcing site for creative designers who work on 3D projects for clients all over the globe, using different types of CAD programs.
It’s more than just a graphic design site. You can use this place as a forum to get next-level ideas and convert them into reality. There’ll be access to scores of different CAD designers and modelers. They can help you design and draft ideas for your design projects.
The site lets you choose freelancers with different levels of expertise in your desired area. You can hire them for one project or many. There is no formal commitment; you must post your project and wait for the responses.
It’s a great way to get expert services for your 3D modeling needs so you have time to spare for other things. The projects will surely be done by experts with years of experience in CAD design with a background in construction and architectural spheres.
You can save money by hiring freelancers only when you want them, reducing the expense of having them permanently on your payroll.
You do not have to pay to join the site. However, CAD Crowd adds 20% to the quote for a job as the management fee.
- Solve Problems with Openideo
Openideo is a platform where people come together to solve common problems in their community. Through the site, anyone can give their viewpoint on how to address these issues using an internet connection and the IDEO toolkit.
This platform can help solve many problems by giving people a common ground to exchange ideas. It may involve a series of steps, with possibilities of error at any stage. You can get these ideas thrashed out and evaluated by experts from many fields, saving you the embarrassment of having them fail in the marketplace.
Openideo widens your experience by giving you opportunities to contribute to an initiative before it goes live. It uses the power of social media to give businesses great ideas to implement. It brings together people who share the same values and passions to create growth in business through collaboration and exchanging ideas. It helps promote social change, while at the same time making a business more effective in targeting a bigger audience. There are no charges to participate, and the platform is open to anyone.
- Collect and manage ideas with Ideanote
Ideanote is a great site for managing and organizing collected ideas. It gives you a system that allows you to group, score, and rate ideas. Then, you can shortlist them for future use. It helps you move the best ideas to the implementation stage. The site is user-friendly and remarkably efficient. It has AI automation that helps users make the idea collection process more interactive.
Rather than just allowing you access to its existing community so that you can use its collective wisdom to get your ideas, Ideanote lets you create your own community.
It’s a long-term solution that can be used to generate your own ideas. The platform also helps better engagement from users. Ideanote is a powerful tool that helps you generate your own pipeline of ideas and is a great resource for marketers.
Ideanote is a good starting point for collecting ideas and managing them through a streamlined process. It’s a blessing for those companies who are in the process of evaluating ideas for implementation.
This platform gives you the possibility to collect, manage, and evaluate ideas in one place through a collaborative effort. You can choose which ideas to implement and track so that we understand the effect on your business.
Ideanote has a free plan that’s limited to 10 members, while its business plan begins at $49 per month for 15 members. The charge is $289 for 100 members. There’s also a free trial for the business plan.
- Get Innovative with Wazoku Crowd
Previously known as InnoCentive, this business has been in existence since 2001. It has acquired a wide network of clients, ranging from startups to non-profits and Fortune 2000 firms. It has a community of over 500,000 contributors.
Wazoku Crowd is one of the larger platforms and one of the first firms to start the idea of innovation in research and development. It has even helped NASA with some projects.
It gives you a great way to crowdsource solutions. But it does not give you the chance to create your own community. Consequently, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to engage and build rapport with your own audience.
- Get Answers with Quora
Quora is a website that was created by two former Facebook employees, Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo. The idea was to connect those who had questions with a community of people who had the answers. The site gained in popularity after 2010 when it was mentioned in a TechCrunch article as a good source of ideas for stories. Now, it gets a billion visits per month.
Quora is one of the most popular Q&A platforms on the internet, and it gets answers from a diverse group of people, some of whom are professionals. The answers can veer off track sometimes. Quora+ has a free membership as well as a paid plan at $6.99 per month. It’s great for businesses that want answers from different people without the intricate details. Quora’s information is public, and there is not much security, so it is not great to discuss details about your company or its projects.
- Gather Opinions with UserVoice
UserVoice is a crowdsourcing platform that allows you to get feedback about a product from customers before launching it in the market. This platform allows you to create feedback forums that allow customers to share their ideas, give feedback, or report issues. It lets you develop better products by streamlining feedback.
UserVoice does not go into much detail about providing further analytics beyond the initial feedback. It keeps all the ideas in one place so that you can review them well and use them to develop your products.
Conclusion
Many sites are famous for crowdsourcing in 2024. We have reviewed 13 of them in this article, but there are undoubtedly a lot more out there. Most of these sites are devoted to designing or generating ideas, getting answers to questions, and getting opinions and customer feedback. However, their popularity on the internet shows that crowdsourcing is an idea that is here to stay.
