CrowdSpring – A Writer’s Story
posted in Design ContestsAn old article I published about CrowdSpring places 4th in the results on Google for a search on “CrowdSpring” and as a result, I’ve received various stories from others that have had a bad experience with a design contest website.
This one is particularly interesting as it raises some important questions about the CrowdSpring business model, and their dictatorial style. Please take a few moments to read Kathleen’s story below.
I entered the world of crowd sourcing at crowdSPRING (cS) on July 13, 2010, with high hopes of a creative challenge participating in writing projects on a global playing field. I left it feeling used, cynical and disheartened after my account there was deactivated on September 2, 2010—the second time in just 52 days–for the heinous crime of questioning staff on project award anomalies and curious website glitches.
About halfway through this first sourcing stint of mine, I was selected for a project award on August 4th. Interestingly enough this boon occurred only a day after my first deactivation (I’d complained about several ignored e-mail queries, still never adequately answered). The timing was auspicious, but it served its purpose in nudging me to participate again once they chose to reactivate me. This time, however, I worked only on nonprofit or higher award projects.
It wasn’t long, though, before project completions and award methods continued to send up red flags and suspicions of fraudulent behavior on the part of the cS staff, the buyers or both. Writing projects—mainly naming companies/products, creating taglines—are sealed in such privacy at cS that fake projects, fake awardees (ringer accounts set up only as project awardees) and outright intellectual property theft can be easily executed. More than once I suggested to cS staff that greater transparency would be a better business model for them as it would help retain savvy and talented “creatives” [their term for worker bees] over longer periods if they can see what’s truly going on.
Before my final deactivation, I’d wisely gathered data on the projects I participated in. Out of my 13 projects that closed within those 52 days of activity, more than half were not awarded by project buyers but by staff itself creating a serious in-house bias issue. More than half of the 12 people actually awarded on these had joined cS less than two weeks before their respective projects ended, including myself. One winner had joined on July 25th while his/her project ended July 26th and then hasn’t participated again since.
I also gathered data on another five projects I worked on but that had not yet closed when my account was yanked—aggravating because I was confident I had a really good chance at an award on at least two of them but was not allowed to log in for any updates on status. I’d had the good sense to keep a record of each submission and relevant data to help me track and investigate any use of my entries and changes in domain ownerships. This proved fortuitous as, indeed, the buyer on a high-ticket company-/ domain-naming project selected my work for an award. So a month after King Bee autocrat and co-founder, Mike Samson, branded me an “inactive droid,” this worker bee collected one of the larger awards given on any comparable project.
What makes my “How Curiosity Killed the Kat at crowdSPRING” cautionary tale more compelling is the e-mail trail of exchanges between myself and staff revealing the cS personalities involved and showing how questions are either ignored or non-responsively answered and, ultimately, not tolerated. Two among those sent by Samson himself outright threatened to deny my recent award selection, and only pressure by the Chicago buyer on my behalf allowed an honest project completion. I was vigilant enough to protect myself with information and careful research, but clearly many, if not most, involved in crowd sourcing are taken advantage of and never see a penny for their efforts.
I correspond with another participant who was ripped off by cS, and I imagine there are dozens of similar stories from creative sourcing sites. I can’t speak to design projects at cS or to these other sites, but the heavy cloak of secrecy combined with a dictatorial business model that simply removes anyone who dares to question it, creates an ideal recipe for fraud at crowdSPRING.
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Hi Brian,
My name is Audree, and I am the community liaison at crowdSPRING. In reading this post, I felt it was important that we set the record straight. Kathleen is correct that she was removed from our community, however, there are several points in this article that are completely untrue and I hope you will publish this comment for all to see.
Kathleen claims that her account was deactivated for the “heinous crime of questioning staff” when in reality her account was removed from crowdSPRING for violations of our user agreement after several warnings to her that her behavior was unacceptable.
She goes on to say that we “threatened to deny [her] recent award selection” when in fact we sent her a letter to let her know that if she had awarded entries, we would help her to complete those projects and make sure she was paid. And, when one of her entries was ultimately awarded, we completed the project for her and she was paid on the same day that the buyer gave final approval of the project.
Quite simply, this article was written by a disgruntled user. There are many angry people who like to vent on the internet. What we find most surprising is that you, Brian, would give merit to these lies without even contacting us to check if the facts were correct. We understand you do not like our business model, but giving a voice to false facts is unprofessional and sad.
Regards,
Audree
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Audree,
If you disagree with giving a voice to disgruntled users as you have clearly stated in your comment, then you are simply proving my opinion of CrowdSpring’s dictatorial philosophies to be incredibly accurate.
Your support and argument for your employer would have been much better served if you responded to the questions Kathleen raises about the CS staff, the questionable staff awards etc.
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JohnT says:
@audree
We understand you do not like our business model, but giving a voice to false facts is unprofessional and sad.
We only have YOUR very vague claim that the facts contained in Kathleen’s letter are false. Accordingly, an employee of CrowdSPRING calling out someone else as being “unprofessional” is in of itself, unprofessional. And sad.
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JT says:
This is Kathleen’s husband, JT. I was a designer creative for the site. I entered a few contests and built a portfolio page on the site. After my wife got booted off for persisting with her questions (which were mostly for the writing side), my account (discreetcharm) was also mysteriously deleted. I would be interested to hear why that happened, and what part of the user agreement I violated. Perhaps there is a clause for spouses of deactivated members in the small print.
We can forward email threats from the co-founder of cS to anybody curious regarding the payment for the winning entry. All of the statements in Kathleen’s account can be verified from email exchanges we have on file.
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Kathleen Martin says:
I’m forever puzzled by any management’s familiar PR spin of branding whistleblowers with the label “disgruntled.” How is this a helpful tactic other than trying to divert attention from company misdoings by tossing out an ugly-sounding epithet? I mean, after all, anyone perfectly “gruntled” and happy once aware s/he is amidst a band of self-serving miscreants would clearly see no purpose to exposing a company’s misdeeds. Duh.
In this instance, in my case, however, that “disgruntled” dog just won’t hunt, Audree, and that shoe label simply doesn’t fit. I suppose I could be dubbed disgruntled IF a loss of livelihood was involved, but that’s laughable to worker bees at crowdSPRING. No one but staff and the king bees themselves could be disgruntled by job loss at cS. And besides, well before September 2nd I had already decided not to participate further in any projects and instead spent my last logins gathering eye-opening data on my projects, their buyers and user awardees. The only effect of deactivation was, as I noted, a real nuisance in trying to follow my five outstanding projects after 9/2.
Or, I might be called disgruntled if I had never been selected for an award, or if cS had been successful in their attempts to deny me award monies, but that didn’t happen either. In fact I received two awards for my 52 days of spare participation, and these two total to more than (for e.g.) user OopsyDaisy’s five awards in a five-month period. So now, what exactly are you claiming I’m “disgruntled” about, Audree, et al? Those working for month after month with no award should be disgruntled indeed by now.
It’s real simple: I’m sharing my crowdSPRING experience and data-gathering info because I’m a whistleblower and watchKat. I hope it will serve as a cautionary tale to would-be users and buyers of your enterprise. I’m not even suggesting that anyone happy to work under a heavy cloak of secrecy while placing total trust in people who stand to profit alone from your efforts should stop doing so. Personally I don’t buy lottery tickets or gamble at casinos since I get it that the house wins in the end, but live and let live and to each his own poison.
In any event here is some concrete advice to current or would-be worker bees at cS:
1. Buddy up. Note fellow users in your projects and contact any who show up in multiple projects. Find out how to get in touch with them outside the cS walls so you can have each other’s back should some sudden deactivation occur. I hope this is still possible to do, though I noticed the cloak of project secrecy getting heavier and heavier at cS just days before my departure.
2. Keep careful records of your every submission on every project, noting entry numbers where you can, start and end dates, buyers’ names, activity updates, etc. If you are submitting parked or pre-owned domain names, collect WhoIS data on how to contact the current owners. [Thankfully I had done that research and was able to see the shift in ownership of my winning Telemedicine naming project to start the ball rolling toward collecting my money.]
3. Research the spare bits of information cS provides on companies / buyers of projects. It might help you determine the sincerity of the project, and every contact name, number and address may come in handy should you have pending project entries when rudely shoved into the dark.
Whistleblower creed: “For evil to prevail, it only requires that good people do nothing.”
Regarding Audree’s ludicrous claim of “user agreement violation” as why I was deactivated, I ask her to prove it. She can’t, of course, so that’s why she’d respond with the details are “a matter of privacy.” I’ve seen the party line spouted on the cS blog and know this is the staff “go-to” defense for any question or accusation. Allows them to hide behind that cloak of secrecy. Fact is, I would not now have $1,250 in the bank for my winning project entries if her claim had even the slightest bit of truth to it. Explain the award monies, Audree.
Besides, I can produce the e-mail Mike sent deactivating me. Strange how the serious charge of “breach of contract” was never mentioned. The reason, to quote him, was my “ongoing questions and requests for explanations, none of which seem to satisfy you.” I can also produce e-mails from Mike making threats he’ll refund the Telemedicine project and cancel my award if my husband and I don’t “withdraw any negative reports about our company on internet sites.” That’s either blackmail or extortion — Ross should know which.
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These crowdsourcing sites are scams and dirty from both the user and the admin side. I do think Kathleen has a valid point here and the award monies being sent is a bit shady on crowdspring’s part.
That site was started by lawyers. They know the loopholes and decided to exploit a weakness in our industry. Just because I can follow a recipe, doesn’t mean I am a “Gourmet Chef”. I’m sure the same thing has happened in their industry as well, but we all know that “Don’t waste your time going after lawyers because they can sue for free.”
It will only be a matter of time before these things are dead in the water. It’s too easy to recycle designs, steal designs, or worse yet – commit copyright infringement that these sites neatly get you to agree that they are not responsible for, despite being the host for these bloodsport contests.
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If you notice, Audree is the same as the “creative” at CS that posted in your February 3, 2009 article, “Why CrowdSpring Owners Should Be Ashamed of Their Business.”
In that article she states, “I am a creative at crowdSPRING. am currently home with my kids, which is the most important thing to me at this time. The other important thing is that I get to create. CrowdSPRING lets me do that, and I love it. I really don’t see it as hurting the design industry. I see it as a fun way for people with small budgets to get some creative work done.”
Since Audree was such a good little drone by speaking the CS line, I suspect she was given a position at CS not long after.
Now she has come back as the “community liaison at crowdSPRING,” and how she is a liaison with a community that she has never been a part of is anyone’s guess.
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Glen, JT and I were willing to give Audree the benefit of the doubt when all the nonsense first became apparent at cS, like perhaps she was earnest and sincere herself and simply was unaware of what actually was going on beneath the secrecy and dictatorial rule. Her conscious part in it all became clear, however, when she ignored email sent to her cS user account on September 24th (regarding the buyer’s request for my W-9), and then again on September 29th. Curiously, up until September 23rd, which was when the Telemedicine project buyer named my entry as the frontrunner, my kat330 cS user account was still receiving regular email — certainly peculiar since I received four “You’ve been invited to a featured project!” emails between 9/9/10 – 9/20/10, starting a week after my removal, while I’d received nary such a one buyer invitation prior to being ousted. Go figure. I was just happy I was still getting project activity updates on the five projects pending once I could no longer log in to check on them.
But like I said, ALL emails to me from crowdSPRING stopped abruptly after a 9/23/10 email where the Telemedicine buyer announced me as the frontrunner, and I knew the drill from the first award that I should be receiving a notification email, a survey about the buyer to fill out, etc. Getting no response from Audree about the required W-9, JT and I sent queries instead to her comcast email account (easily found online). She indignantly replied that we do not contact her at her personal email, to which I replied with the obvious, “Wouldn’t need to do so if you were responding through your cS mail account.” That’s when we stopped giving Audree any benefit of the doubt. She may prefer to live in denial in order to keep her job there, but the fact remains I would never have seen that $1,000 project award if my “eyes on the inside” peer had not sent me the final activity notice announcing me as the winner, and had I not seen the change in domain ownership at GoDaddy the morning of 9/29, and then had the buyer not intervened on my behalf after Mike threatened to refund the project and pull the award.
JT got an earlier email reply from Audree that I quote from: “Last December, I joined the crew. I have been working for them, and on the side working on my own book. I no longer participate as a creative. Audree” However, if you check out her user account at cS, http://www.crowdspring.com/user/audree/, it sure still seems she’s actively involved. Initially when I noticed the discrepancy, I gave her the benefit of the doubt that perhaps she has to beta-test new project areas, or initiate a new project’s activity by posting a fake entry. Now though, when she won’t simply answer JT’s very legitimate question on why his account was removed from cS, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still actively collecting awards while on the staff. But conflict of interest issues are merely par for the course in the unwellSPRING of crowdSPRING.
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Travis Keenan Tiffin says:
I was forwarded this article from a former CS user who thought I would find it interesting, and I did. Unlike many of my designer colleagues, I was never particularly bothered by the crowdsourcing model itself. I always felt as though the ship had already sailed as far as the globalization of ‘design’ went and therefore it was pointless to complain about it. In fact, I grew to LOVE the arena and was growing into a loud proponent of the model and the site itself.
However, as time went on, I finally got “bit” by CS directly. I had a buyer unlawfully take my winning design and implement it immediately, long before I was ever paid for it, and before any exchange of contracts occurred through the site’s wrap-up process. I complained bitterly to the CS staff, was assured that they would stand behind me, but in the end…they simply defended the buyer’s desire to run me ragged, through approving an unreasonable solution which I would have to negotiate if I wanted to be paid.
This one experience was enough for me to cut ties completely with CrowdSPRING, and so I cannot comment on how things have evolved since, but I have always found it HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS that they keep my portfolio page active? A great deal of that artwork was done outside of CrowdSPRING long before I ever heard of them. I can only conclude that they leave it there in an effort to ‘appear’ as though they have greater numbers of qualified designers working on their behalf than they actually do. When in reality, I’d never lift a finger on their behalf again…because they couldn’t be bothered to do so on my behalf.
Here’s the link to my user profile, which will no doubt finally be deleted once they read this.
http://www.crowdspring.com/user/traviskeenantiffin/
Travis Keenan Tiffin
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My account can also be found there though I’m not allowed in anymore. Number of active users… I’d say a small percentage of what’s advertised.
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The user account total cS touts is inflated to a ridiculous extreme. One of the excuses I was given for the staff not answering my questions was this from Mike on August 3rd, quote, “I hope you can understand that with a community of 90,000 users we receive and reply to many hundreds of requests for help each week and take all of the very seriously. We do try our best to answer promptly, but sometimes it does take a bit.”
I’m not sure they can claim 90,000 counting each and every username in the database from day one, but when you cull those who are only curious passersby, ringer accounts set up for awards, and those users who come back as alteregos (many times over) for a variety of reasons, there are probably 1,000 active, individual creatives maximum at any given time, and still that could be overstating the situation. As one example on the writing side, there were 680 total entries on the Mona Foundation tagline project. That total is on the high side of entries for such projects — most are half that many — yet almost 5% of this total was contributed by me alone. So if 20 other writing creatives posted as many entries as I did, that would be only 21 active accounts. Then if you factor the same creatives entering across multiple projects, well, you can do the math.
Travis, I’m also unhappy with what is removed and what is left when any user exits cS. It should either be a clean sweep by mutual consent or everything left intact by mutual consent, not pick and choose by dictatorial decree. Yeah, I get the same “inactive droid” message as for you when entered this way:
http://www.crowdspring.com/user/kat330/
And if you click on my name as the awardee on either of the two projects I won, you’ll get that as well. However, if you search this way, you’ll get some stats and info still on-site:
http://www.crowdspring.com/search/creatives/?q=kat330
Just as you will for yourself at: http://www.crowdspring.com/search/creatives/?q=traviskeenantiffin/
and for my husband, JT: http://www.crowdspring.com/search/creatives/?q=discreetcharm
My initial post here only touched on my info-gathering efforts on projects and creatives before I lost login access. I’ve been withholding a lot of facts for a fully interviewed story on the matter by some media that gives a tinker’s d*mn about fraud against us “lowly artists.” Hopefully this will still happen but, in the meanwhile, I’ll share one particularly interesting finding. Comparing two awards selected by cS instead of by the actual buyers on projects ending July 26th and July 30th, staff picked entry #286 by SourAppleBrilliantMadness and entry #1 by Ustaipan respectively. Now there were a total of exactly 286 entries in that July 26th ended project and 501 entries in the July 30th ended project. So rather than weigh each individual entry on its own merit, the lazy, underhanded cS staff merely chose the very final submission in one instance and then the very first entry in the other case! Further evidence that award selection is a complete cr*pSHOOT at crowdSPRING whenever buyers bow out of the process, which is around 60% of the time (or even more now) for writing projects.
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Travis et al, I’m unable to get to display a comment in response to yours I’ve tried uploading here since the morning of October 30th. Without a fix to the problem, I can only suggest anyone interested in my reply – which includes further revelations about cS operations – should try my Posterous link at my name to ask for it, or perhaps I’ll post it there floating out of context. Sorry for the scavenger hunt.
Kathleen
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Rachel Stene says:
I am another whistle blower ex-crowdSpringer, also puzzingly labeled as “disgruntled” by the staff at cS. Kathleen’s story rings true for many of us who used to compete at cS. I cannot understand why cS would think we were disgruntled when we were all winning. I had 19 wins in 8 months, and that was in between doing other jobs. I was very pro crowdsourcing and publicly defended cS frequently, between posts on their forums and an article. (all of which I wish I could take back now!)
I know of at least 4 others who have done likewise, all of whom had wins which dwarfed mine! But, every single one of us successful competitors was labeled disgruntled and threatened to have our accounts pulled.
It’s just not worth it to even try to compete at cS! We were labeled as trouble makers simply for asking questions about policies, and continuing to question when we received vague answers of “we’re listening, keep talking”, or “this is private and against our policy to talk about”, etc… These were questions about how major policy changes would affect us, or how they operate their “IP protection”, not personal or private questions.
Everything is very secret at cS, you cannot find out even the slightest details concerning their rulings on IP cases, or how they “pick” the winners in abandoned projects, when they would award, for instance, a 2 star ranking design over 5 star. That happened more than once and their answer was always the same, they cannot discuss those details (because they are a small company with busy lives).
And since their policy change, allowing buyers to abandon projects with no financial penalty, other than a non-refundable $39 posting fee, they have a lot of abandoned projects. These projects are awarded a maximum of $250 (which is a terrible deal if you are competing in a $1000 contest) and the winner is picked in secret by cS!
Please designers, do NOT compete at cS. It is a waste of your time and effort. If you like crowdsourcing, there are other competition sites which allow for transparency in all processes and are much more rewarding!
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And JT, you are right. When cS was advertising over 60,000 creatives, I went through the profiles and found that 40,000 had never even made one entry. Of the remaining 20,000, most had only one to five entries. Other creatives and I, who were averaging entering 5-10 contests a week and saw the same creatives over and over in them, estimated there to be maybe a 1000 actual active creatives at that time (within the last 12 months), and that’s being generous.
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@Rachel
“These projects are awarded a maximum of $250 (which is a terrible deal if you are competing in a $1000 contest) and the winner is picked in secret by cS!”
It IS a terrible deal. But it’s even worse. Crowdspring ‘cut’ the award paid on abandoned and refunded contests to $100 back in the Spring.
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Wow!! I just can’t wrap my head around what’s going on there.
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[Aside to Brian: Thanks for posting my October 30th comment for me yesterday! Wedged in now before my comment sending readers elsewhere may be perplexing without a note about the delay attached, so let this serve as that. Also want to note that the asterisks in "damn" and "crapshoot" were JT's idea in case these words caused my initial posting to be "awaiting moderation" for four days. If they display here, however, that's not the reason. So do you know what aspect of my post caused the need for "moderation" so I and others can avoid the mistake in the future? Thanks for edifying.]
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Kathleen,
It was held in moderation automatically because of the number of external links in the comment body. Thanks
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EverestDesign says:
Hi Everybody, I have been a CrowdSpring “Creative bee” for some time and couldn’t cop with the “ringer accounts” situation, I just couldn’t, if they were honest to disclose their abandoned project award method, everybody will feel better, but knowing that you have been cheated off is behind acceptable, ringer accounts means you are so not doing great as you’re making people think.
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Designer says:
The truth is that cs is made up of just a handful of real designers and the rest follow and copy design concepts. This has happened to me on every contest. If you file a violation they do not follow through and fix the problem. They claim it takes time but nothing ever gets resolved. Copyright infringement runs rampant at cs. If you value your work and the hours you spend on creating it I would stay away from cs.
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Sorry if I repeat myself here, but the crowdSPRING operation goes beyond copyright infringement and fraud. I have two e-mails from co-founder, Mike Samson, where he threatened to withhold my $1,000 project award unless I retracted and removed negative comments I left online about cS practices. Obviously I refused to be extorted by him and only managed to get my award because I could directly contact the project owner. Usually that is made impossible at cS, or the project owners are not legit themselves. I really lucked out on that score.
So while the cS operation is subject to a number of legal actions against it, the owners feel secure that none of their “worker bees” have the resources to sue. If they had successfully kept that award from me, I absolutely would have. I’m not that far from Chicago, and there are plenty of lawyers with dual Illinois and Indiana licenses. What puzzles me more is why I couldn’t interest a single media outlet in doing an investigative story on Samson and his practices. I tried to interest Bob Garfield of “On the Media” (which, coincidentally, is where I first even heard of cS last July) and Julie Snyder of “This American Life” (which is conveniently based in Chicago), as well as various print media. Guess they figure cS is such small potatoes, it’s not worth exposing them.
[kat330.posterous.com] -
Diana Kelley says:
Where can a buyer of these services that are offered on crowdspring go as an alternate creative work source?? Can anyone help with that information? Would appreciate that resource solution.
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I’ve used CrowdSpring for a number of national-level artwork tasks and am very impressed. I’ve dealt with a dozen artists and all have been polite and eager to provide feedback and artwork revisions when asked. In the end, both parties benefited from the work and resulting transaction. If CrowdSpring has a series of well-defined rules to protect both artist and buyer, then all involved should agree with the rules if they want to be a part of the CrowdSpring concept. If they cannot agree, then they should exit quietly and allow others artists and buyers continue using this viable and trustworthy service.
