Crowdsourcing For Dummies Paperback – May 28, 2013

It's very informative and written so as to be very understandable.

quik delivery great info!

If you've heard the buzz about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding but aren't sure how it works or how it can help you, then Crowdsourcing for Dummies is the book for you. It explains in clear, concise English who used crowdsourcing and how and why they use it. The author examines the subject not just from the perspective of those looking to crowdsource a project, but from that of crowdsource workers as well, which is important if you want to attract people to your project.Because crowdsourcing, it turns out, is really about management, and this book shows you in simple steps just how to find the right skills for your project, track work and quality, handle trouble, and successfully conclude the job. It's a comprehensive book, but clearly laid-out into sections and chapters so that you can easily zero in on the ones that apply specifically to you, whether you are a multi-million-dollar enterprise looking for new ideas and publicity or an individual looking for some help designing a label. Or even if you're a potential crowdsource worker.Crowdsourcing isn't hard, but there are important nuances to master if you want to do it right. And like your grandma said, "If a thing is worth doing..."As the internet community continues to expand and more people trust it as a means of doing business, you can expect to see crowdsourcing and crowdfunding increase exponentially. This book will quickly bring you up to speed, and it's a fun read, too.

I am familiar with crowdsourcing - I write reviews etc on several sites, e.g. Wikipedia, TripAdvisor and Amazon - so I was curious to learn more. There is plenty of information in this book and I now know much more than before. Where I am having difficulty is how the information in the book can transfer to useful action. In marketing, one has to find the customer, attract them to the product or service and keep them loyal. I visited recommended sites mentioned in the book and they are too open and more is needed to sift and filter. Big companies pay for Facebook to attract "likes" and hook with competitions.For the smaller business that is trying crowdsourcing as a cost-saver, what are the practical means to attract, create intention and convert to action? The 3 sites I mentioned at the beginning reward me intrinsically, in that I feel good about contributing and helping people to make decisions about purchases or find information that is reliable - I am using my skills and knowledge. I don't get from the book how to hook up with a business looking for my skillsets - it is all too random and down to chance. So my needs to be a crowdworker are not guided as much as I hoped.Flipping that over, how do small-to-medium enterprises manage to find crowdworkers. How are they going to market their needs? It is these pre-steps that are not covered, as the book has plenty of advice on how to manage a crowd. As anyone who has tried to build a following on a blog knows - you need some impressive pulling power (e.g. celebrity) or a successful way of getting noticed.The book has plenty of background snippets (this I like) but there is a lack of lightness through humour that is a hallmark of most "dummies" books. A few cartoons etc, would lighten up a heavy read.If you have good IT skills and Internet knowledge, there is potential to use the book to set up as a Crowdsourcing consultant - just like charities needing Fundraisers. The businessman or woman could be too busy to learn new skills and put the effort in but they just might want to hire an expert and social media guru.

Crowdsourcing for Dummies by David Alan GrierI read this book because I have head lots of bits of information about crowdsourcing but wanted to fully understand what it was all about and if it could be useful to my business.Book structure.I own many Dummies books (draw your own conclusions!) but I have learned so much from them and saved a lot of money on buying in expertise by learning to do things myself. This book is laid out in typical Dummies fashion with lots of hints, tips and examples and also all the Crowdsourcing terminology is covered in plenty of detail. There are plenty of diagrams and tables to back up the text.Content.The book hand holds the reader through the entire Crowdsourcing process giving plenty of advice and help. All of the social media routes are explain in plenty of detail and how the system actually works is done very well.By reading the book I can now seed my crowd and get my data back and I have already done some market research using these Crowdsourcing techniques thanks to this book.In a nutshell Crowdsourcing for a business person like me is a new marketing and ideas channel to add into the already conventional techniques used. I now know that Facebook is a brilliant business tool as well as a way of keeping up with friends, family and colleagues - they have now become my idea testers and ready-made market research groups with very little effort. If you have not tried this way of getting ideas and opinions than this book will show you how and hold your hand all the way.Crowdsourcing can also be made as a funding source which I have not needed to try yet but several businesses I know locally have used it to raise small sums.Overall.If you need to know about this I cannot think of a better way to start than this book. I am already getting great results from just asking the right questions in social media setting and it's much easier and cheaper than sending out questionnaires or running competitions. Some of the explanations are quite long but at the same time nothing is missed out and this book can be read through to get an overall picture and also used as a dip into book to look for the next idea or reference.A very useful and instructional book.

As a complete novice in all things related to business finance, I find myself at something of a disadvantage when looking at the various finance options to take my R & D business forward.Like many people in my position, I'm excited about the development of new technology, and not as interested as I should be on developing the right investment model for the business ... hence the reason for picking up Crowdsourcing for Dummies.What I wanted and got was a step by step introduction to this particular flavour of funding, clearly and even wittily written by people who know their stuff. Whilst not exactly a cover to cover read in bed, at least it was something to dip into, to provide background, and even give me enough confidence to find out more.Crowdsourcing isn't the easy or quick fix that it might appear from coverage in the press, and it is clear from my take on the book that as much hard work has to go into developing your business plan and model as other forms of funding.We may or may not pursue this as a funding option in the future, as we don't know if our kind of product will have the kind of mass appeal that seems to be favoured by this form of funding, but I did learn a lot.

Crowd sourcing is an innovative way to use the internet to help fund creativity and produce new content that could not be produced through the usual channels. The idea is to use the skills and small contributions of the crowd to make big things possible.I had heard of the author before because of his contributions to the IEEE and Computer Society but I had never realised that he was crowdsource evangelist. I have contributed to wikipedia perhaps the most famous crowdsourced resource but this book is about the much more practical side covering how you can use the crowd to raise money, carry out complex task and most importantly for me find information. It is this practical aspect that makes this book so useful, but that will probably also be its weakness as the first generation of crowdsource tools are swallowed by new sites and new tools. I have seen this in Web2.0 sites like bloglines and Google Reader. You get used to one tool and then it disappears. So this is a potential weakness of giving detailed descriptions of particular tools. But if you want to leap straight in this is a good place to start.

I have no previous knowledge or experience of crowdsourcing - beyond a vague idea about what it is. This both expanded my knowledge and opened my eyes about the possibilities that it represents. I had never thought that things like Wikipedia is a "crowdsourced" project, but of course it is and it alone shows what is possible.As usual the For Dummies style is both entertaining and informative. I guess it is a style that does not appeal to everyone, but I love it. Anything that both informs and makes you smile at the same time is not bad thing.For anyone using the internet commercially I'd suggest that this sort of book is a must-have, especially for small start-ups looking for ways to generate funding. Crowdsourcing is neither easy nor foolproof, but you need to know about it and it's hard to think of a better way of investing fifteen quid or so than buying this book.John Birch