CONS
• Many clients have no agency guidance or contribution towards a viable
strategy and in some cases have very little control over production value,
especially if the end result of the project is completed or finished work.
• When it comes to spec work, as opposed to merely an idea, the risk/
reward ratio is fairly high. Not only is this taking advantage of an
individual’s efforts, but it can lead to work of a lesser quality.
• Legal issues are often overlooked and the IP of an individual’s work
is disregarded with no written contracts, nondisclosure agreements,
employee agreements or agreeable terms with crowdsourced employees.
• The crowd’s reliability can be somewhat altered by the Internet. As an
example, many articles on Wikipedia may be of a high quality and edited
by multiple people, thereby taking advantage of the crowd’s collective
wisdom. Other articles can be maintained by a single editor with
questionable ethics and opinions. As a result articles may be incorrectly
assumed to be reliable.
• Additional costs may be needed to bring a project to an acceptable
conclusion.
• A crowdsourced project may fail due to the lack of financial motivation
or reward. As a consequence, a project may be subjected to fewer
participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest, global
language barriers or difficulty managing a large-scale crowdsourced
project.
• A crowdsourcer may have difficulties maintaining a working relationship
with the community throughout the duration of a project. A danger is that
some crowdsourced employees might feel a brand has taken advantage
of their time or skills.