[Crowd Leader] Neil Perry: International Business is A Fact of Life for Crowdsourcing

If you’re in the crowdsource business, then it is important to quickly understand that, like it or not, you are now in the international business world as well. After all, there is a reason why they call it the World Wide Web. The very nature of crowdsourcing can encourage international project development, management, and even collaboration among those in the crowd.

As one small measure, in just the past four months, we at Poptent have had five international creators selected to do work for major brands: Two spots selected were from Indonesia, and one each from Spain, Canada, the Czech Republic and Malaysia. Overall, Poptent has creators based in more than 100 countries around the globe and I’m seeing similar patterns from others in the space.

What does this mean for you?

Well, there are a few specific things that you, as a crowdsource leader, are going to have to quickly come up with a plan to address on the international front. This article will identify a few of them, but certainly not all of the implications of your budding global business.

Your first issue is product availability. If you are asking folks to crowdsource videos, concepts, or designs, etc., you must recognize that the products or materials under consideration may not be available worldwide. While many brands claim to be global, for many reasons their products and services may not be available worldwide at this exact minute. You need to assess this on an assignment-by-assignment basis and be ready to help both the involved creators and brands understand any shortcomings here, or you will be missing some pretty important elements up-front.

Second, you need to address product packaging. Even if the product or service that you are working on is global, the packaging or design can and likely will be different around the planet. As an example, one of our recent projects featured Pringles Extreme for their European division, which had a slightly different look than does the same product here in the U.S. We quickly determined that the European design had to be sent in a graphic to be wrapped around the U.S. package for accuracy.

Once you have tackled those two issues, you must then consider how you are going to pay your overseas creators. Many creators are unwilling to accept checks drawn on U.S. banks. Direct wiring is not always easy and prone to mistakes from poorly recorded account numbers, involving U.S. banks and international banks. We have seen PayPal used successfully, but remember, there are fees associated with paying through PayPal or other services, which have to be calculated into your financials. International banking issues can be complicated and difficult to navigate for even an experienced international business person.

A final basic issue involves the legalities of doing business in different countries. Since a crowdsource participant can sometimes be an independent contractor, and other times a temporary employee, there are issues when you do not have an office for your company or business operating in the participant’s country where the payment will be sent. We have recently seen such issues arise in some South American companies, and I would expect that as crowdsourcing continues to expand its global activity bases to include more international efforts, we will find more countries where there are issues.

There are many more challenges out there on the international side of crowdsourcing, but these are just four key ones you will need to carefully consider.

Of course, you could just restrict your crowdsource community to be U.S.-only as one solution, but that eliminates a great source of creativity and activity, and it is very difficult to ascertain for sure whether someone who is participating online is from a specific country or not.

Whatever the case, it is an exciting time to be involved with crowdsourcing and I will check in from time-to-time with some frontline perspectives on new international considerations as they develop.