99Designs Uses Crowd Sourcing to Help You Design Logo's, Business Cards and More

I'm launching a subscription, members-only site for CEOs with no marketing department.  If you've ever watched Rachel Ray on "30-Minute Meals", you'll understand what it's all about.

There is no shortage of marketing advice - -and it all sounds good.  But it's the DOING that seems to get everyone's undies in a bunch.  So, the idea is to create a space where CEOs with no marketing department can take 30 minutes out of their day, read, learn and implement a simple marketing concept and be done with it.

How 99Designs Uses Crowd Sourcing to Design and Choose Logos

I need a logo!  I have a designer that I normally use, but this time, I thought I'd try 99Designs.com.  It's a crowd sourcing design web site where you post your idea as a project and watch the designs pour in.

They've systematized the design interview and I have to say that I'm impressed.  I posted the project less than 24 hours ago and have already received 6 design options and 3 of them were really - really good.

But the feature I'd like to share with you is their new voting feature that actually allows you to send a link with the designs to your network and allow them to vote for their favorite.

The voting basically occurs as a poll - here's the link to take a look and vote yourself if you like: http://99designs.com/logo-design/vote-tzv3heF

Should Freelance Designers Crawl Under a Rock?

So you might think that freelance designers should be in an uproar about this DIY Marketing tool - huh?  Well I say that freelance designers should REJOICE !  This is an amazing opportunity for freelancers to promote themselves for other higher-profit work.

It's targeted advertising - you invest your time for a smaller fee, but the design you submit and the designs that win will win you happy, loyal customers who would be happy to pay a higher price for what you're offering.

The Versatility of Crow Sourcing is Growing

IdeaScale has been our crowd sourcing tool and has been really popular - but the point of this post is to show you that the crowd sourcing trend is moving into all kinds of applications.

A few lessons from the 99Designs experience:

• Integrate your survey with social media.  The voting process they have is easy and fun to use.  It easily integrates with my social media accounts AND my Gmail account.  So I was able to invite my colleagues and friends to vote as well.


• Look for ways to integrate crowd sourcing into other aspects of your business.  Chances are that you may not have considered all the different ways in which you can now quickly and easily integrate the wisdom of the crowds into your projects.  Put simply, if it's not proprietary - it's a candidate for crowd sourcing.

So let's see which logo wins and if the wisdom of the crowds matches my preference!