Today we’re featuring a special guest post from the graphic design gurus at MycroBurst! Co-founder Joe Witte is here to give us the scoop on what the term crowdsourcing means for you and your business and how you can already see its effects in action as Wikipedia is proving to be greater than Encyclopedia Britannica.

We’re all pretty aware of what a brand is but when it comes to crowdsourcing, what’s that all about? Crowdsourcing is defined as outsourcing tasks or a job to a network of people, or “crowd” who can participate to complete those tasks, commonly for compensation. One example of crowdsourcing that most of us are familiar with is Wikipedia.  Hundreds of thousands of people have combined to write more than 21mm articles in more than 280 languages in only 12 years!  Compare this to Encyclopedia Britannica, which has been in existence for more than 200 years, but only had 65,000 articles in the latest edition.  It’s hardly surprising that EB is no longer going to be available in print edition after Wikipedia came onto the scene and took over.

Crowdsourcing has exploded to include all different industries including problem solving, content creation, product labeling, video development, research, and even graphic design. Ahhh, graphic design and branding.  Developing a professional brand has often been the Achilles heel to small businesses that desperately fight to attract new customers. Historically, great branding was relegated to entrepreneurs with deep pockets who had the capital to hire a design agency, costing upwards of $10,000.  Meanwhile, bootstrapped companies used to be stuck with a logo that was thrown together by their printer that might not have had a color option available.

Along came online design companies which delivered reasonably priced custom logos that were quickly delivered electronically. This helped smaller companies out, but results were often spotty. And ultimately, crowdsourcing was spawned for graphic design.  The results since have been astounding. Our website MycroBurst provides customers with an average of more than 100 logo design concepts to choose from, received from more than a dozen designers from around the world… in just 7 days.

Making this solution even more appealing to entrepreneurs is the affordability of crowdsourcing your own design. The minimum investment for a logo design is only $199, and websites and brochures start at $250 for an original design.

Tapping into global talent at an affordable price has never been easier than with use of a crowdsourcing website! No longer is “outsourcing” relegated to major enterprises- now every start-up can create a fantastic website and have a custom brand that rivals that of any major corporation for less.

Joe Witte (@wittejoe) is the Co-Founder and Executive Vice President at MycroBurst. Joe oversees business development, operations and works closely with the Founder & CEO, Zaheer Dodhia, on corporate strategy. Prior to partnering with Zaheer at Guru Corporation, he worked at DoubleClick and USA Networks. Joe has helped start several companies including Travel Ad Network, CentricSource and OC2 Interactive. Joe has extensive entrepreneurial, marketing and global business experience. He was an Army Captain in the Iraqi war and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Joe has been featured in Entrepreneur, FSB and The Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University. Joe has two beautiful daughters, and enjoys playing tennis and snowboarding.