This word has been going around since 2006 - you may have seen it being used on social networking sites - but if you are thinking, ‘what the heck is crowdsourcing?’ Don’t get lost the crowd, you need to know what crowdsourcing means to you as a freelance student.

At Freelance Students, we want you be ahead of the game (well, that’s what we’re here for), so here’s our rough guide to crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing Defined…

You can get a million and one definitions online, go find them if you want, but here’s mine:

What? Crowdsourcing, simply, is the chopping up of a whole job, usually completed by one person, and using a number of freelancers (the crowd) to do the separate components i.e. instead of employing a content manager to edit a website, all the little tasks that make up the whole job, proofreading, copywriting, image editing, HTML coding and the rest, are assigned to different freelancers.

Why? Due to greater connectivity (social media, freelancing sites and, yeah freelancestudents.co.uk), companies can link directly to freelancers and vice-versa. This means, for certain positions, there’s no need to recruit employees, per se , as the employer can get freelancers to do the smaller parts – thus, avoiding the costs, and hassle, associated with employing people. But that’s outsourcing, right?

Wrong! With crowdsourcing a company can communicate the jobs they need doing to a large network of freelancers - as opposed to the old method of using regular freelancers on their ‘books’. It’s kind of like eBay for freelance work – sometimes freelancers bid for each job. With crowdscourcing, any number of freelancers can be involved in the same project. One great example of crowd sourcing, that we all know, is Wikipedia.

What Crowdsourcing Means to Student Freelancers…

Yeah, you got it: there’s much more freelance work available, making it a possibility for students everywhere to give up working in fast food chains and to work, as I do, at 4 am, in my bedroom, ill attired for public appearance - let alone for work! But beware, because there’s more freelance work, and therefore more freelancers, the pay is not always as it should be.

How Crowdsourcing Helps You: You know you are good at what you do but freelancing can be hard to break into – especially with large agencies dominating the market. So, if you can’t get to work for an agency, it can be hard to make any money as a freelancer. But aha! As part of a crowd, student freelancers (and, indeed, all new freelancers) can take on larger agencies – fighting to relinquish these jobs from the grubby fists of large agencies. Power to the people, woo-hoo!

Guess what? Freelance Students is a type crowdsourcing site too – we’re putting you in touch with loads of potential clients giving you the opportunity to show the world you are awesome. With us though, you won’t have to bid against other student freelancers.

Three Top Tips

1) Get a written agreement of your task. Try to ask for contracts where possible.

2) Often, crowdsourced work is part of a larger project and, as such, you may need to contact the other freelancers involved. Ensure you have a contact for everyone working on the project – so you can communicate.

3) As you have to compete with other freelancers, it’s quite competitive (meaning you could get undercut) – make sure you know your lower limits – don’t work for peanuts.

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