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Crowdsourcing infographic: Choosing between fixed fees and hourly rates

Ross Dawson, February 28, 2012 at 10:19 am

[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website]

One of the most important issues in using service marketplaces is choosing between fixed fees and hourly rates.

Click on the image for full-size pdf

Originally all the service marketplaces used fixed fees. Odesk, by introducing hourly pay supported by a provider monitoring system, grew rapidly, resulting in almost all the other service marketplaces following suit with this model.

However one of the many challenges for those new to using crowds on service marketplaces is working out whether to pay fixed fees or hourly rates.

We addressed this issue in Chapter 8 of Getting Results From Crowds. Above is the relevant excerpt from the book, supported by visual icons to represent the different situations. Each row shows the situations that support the use of fixed fees or hourly rates.

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Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.

Ross is author most recently of Getting Results From Crowds, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, and Implementing Enterprise 2.0. (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.