Crowdsourcing Case Study: 99Designs
Increasingly, crowdsourcing has become a popular business model. Despite its popularity, there is a high level of skepticism for crowdsourcing services. Today we quickly review a company that has successfully built a crowdsourcing business model. 99Designs.com is a marketplace where you can crowdsource your design work such as logos, web templates, and other design needs. They built a very lucrative business model that attracts a large set of designers to the marketplace.
Reach – Usually trying to find a good designer or an agency accommodating to your design needs and vision can be very complicated and miscommunicative. Compared to the traditional search, posting a design job to a marketplace like 99designs will provide you access to numerous freelance/independent designers and small agencies on demand.
More Options – Unlike the limited designs created by an individual designer or agency, a crowdsourced marketplace enables you to receive quantified number of designs created by designers all over the world to choose from.
Turnaround Times –Working with a specific design agency can limit your work from completing based off their schedule. Using a crowdsourcing business model, the multitude of designers are not only fighting for your bid with pricing, but also on how fast they can finish your design.
Affordable – Design services is an expensive process when working with agencies and in many cases you may not exactly get the design you might have envisioned. 99Designs makes it affordable for anyone to create a project using pre-defined pricing models and receive several designs bids and offers. Aside from these reasons on why crowdsourced marketplaces work, you will find additional benefits below:
| Traditional Design Buying | 99Designs Model |
| Individual Reach | Marketplace of Designers |
| Slow Turnaround (~3-15 Days) | Faster Turnaround (~2-3 Days) |
| 1-5 Bids = Expensive Rate | Competitive Marketplace = Cheaper Rate |
| Expensive Successful Placement Fee | Flexible Split Fee Payscale |
| Unreliable Results | Higher Guarantee of Designs Approval |
| Upfront Payments Increases Risk | Pay after Design is Completed |
At Jobhuk, we have applied similar principles and built a crowdsourced marketplace for recruitment. Here the employer (buyers) crowdsource their recruitment efforts to a large pool of professional recruiters and agencies around the world.
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