You were just Crowd Sourced

Crowd Sourcing...Why do we care? I think the real question is: Why should you care? By being here, you were just Crowd Sourced. Every time you visit a site, whether that's viewing, reading, commenting, sharing, interacting or even leaving, you have added some sort of value to that page. You can bring value with just the click of a button at no cost to me. Realistically, one couldn't necessarily say no cost was made because of the time spend putting into this, and you could always argue that time is money, but relatively there was no money pulled out of some lonely wallet on a desk in order to bring this blog to you. Either way Crowd Sourcing can be an effective marketing practice and shouldn't be taken lightly.

You can think of Crowd Sourcing as the practice of people (i.e., Crowds) offering value to an idea, product or service based on a business' technologies and formatted systems because of some foreseen personal value. In other words it's you, the people who offer their services in order to improve or better a certain aspect of a business or group's inner workings because you find some value in it yourself.

To highlight some thoughts on the process of Crowd Sourcing:

The Internet has generated a whole new world for the Crowd Sourcing practice. Think about all those websites that gain user generated content at little to no cost to them and are in turn able to create a profit. Some of those being: eBay, Amazon, or YouTube. However, Crowd Sourcing isn't left only to the Internet.

One of the biggest offenders, and also one of the biggest trend setters of the new millennium has been American Idol. Since the early 2000's they have created such a following that we have been able to witness such acts as Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Jordin Sparks make their way to stardom. This all because they were willing to sign themselves up for a televised competition. It was the fact that they set their business up in a way in which the talent came to them, they had nothing to lose. They were able to take advantage of people wanting their ticket to stardom. American Idol has now spawned shows like The Voice, Dancing with the Stars and America's Got Talent. It's not just the fact that the talent is coming to them, but how they also get the people involved. Allowing the viewers to vote on their favorites only reinforces the security of their business, because now people are invested because their vote had a say in the results and they will be voting on who they would like to hear next.

Time is money, and when you can get other people to invest that time towards your cause, that is money.