Previously we’ve discussed about places or websites where designer & artist can sell their vector arts. It called marketplace, or creative market where designers & artists earn money by selling artworks and buyers come to find and buy creative arts they upload. The digital artworks can be resell many times and designers or artists can make money with it as a passive income. In contrast to it, crowdsourcing platforms provide the native way or the active income method on making money, which is still the #1 choice of freelancers.

Here we will find out which crowdsourcing platforms offers the best to both for the clients & freelance designers especially. Basically crowdsourcing platforms offer registered freelancers to grab jobs or projects posted by clients and will be paid by the registered clients through the crowdsourcing platform itself.

The advantage and how it different with selling artworks on marketplace is the price offered by crowdsourcing platforms are usually high and attractive, even though it’s just a one time job. While selling artworks or images on marketplace depends on the quantity of sale you made. The price per artwork is usually very low and it will need hundred or thousand of sale per artworks to be achieve satisfactory income. And the competition is much higher.

At the other hand, freelancers who choose to find online job offers with crowdsourcing platforms should be willing to give full commitment once they got the job. Fulfill all the client’s requirements and must complete the job on the time given. Failed to do so, most probably it will be a disappointing effort and more worse, no payment.

But once you got the job done in crowdsourcing platform with client’s satisfaction, the reward is lucrative enough, not comparable to selling artworks method on marketplace.

What is Crowdsourcing Platforms & Which are the best for freelance designer?

Crowdsourcing Platform is a hub just like Marketplace website, where there are supply – freelancers offering services and demand – clients looking for talents (freelancers) to be hired to complete their projects.

For that reason, we find out and listed here among the most popular design crowdsourcing platforms that offers skilled freelancers, specifically designers and businesses as well. We only highlight the top sites that you might looking for lucrative offers.

We also provide user’s review rating from Trustpilot, a top global review site where people freely give review & rating based on their experience with the company that they worked on. Alternatively we use Indeed.com as the review, if Trustpilot not avalable for that specific company. Therefore, you may have the basic info on how the expectation of every marketplace platform listed below. So check them out..!

Table of contents

1. Freelancer
2. Dribble
3. Designhill
4. Upwork
5. Fiverr
6. Toptal
7. People Per Hour
8. CoWorks
9. 99designs
10. Guru
11. Robert Half
12. FlexJobs
13. Crowd Content

Design Crowdsourcing Platforms List

1. Freelancer

As the name given, they’re the one of the most popular freelance hub for designers and businesses looking for skilled services as well. Based in Sydney Australia, Freelancer.com has 43 million freelance expertise in variety of categories to serve businesses. While registered businesses is about half of it.

Freelance.com is an award-winning world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing platform so far. Basically freelancers or designers will bid for a specific job posted by a client. The best bid will be chosen by the client. And freelancers will compete in a design contest by clients and the best will win the job.

As designer, you’re free to sign up to be the Freelancer. Create your profile, select skills of projects you are interested in, upload portfolio, receive project notifications, discuss project details with the employer, bid on projects (free members receive initially 8 bids per month) and enter contests. Besides design category, you may also find other categories such as writing services like domywriting to serve your requirement.

• User Rating: 4.4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 5,532 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

2. Dribbble

Being one of the most popular designer’s – hub or community where they showcased their portfolios, socialize, get hired and for creative agencies searching for right creative talents. Designers can get short term job or permanent career as well.

Recently Dribbble has reportedly acquires CreativeMarket a well known marketplace site. But they both remain to operate as independent company as they claimed. The acquire is believed to benefits both parties as they may make use the full potential of a popular marketplace – CreativeMarket and famous crowdsourcing platform – Dribbble itself.

With both companies combined, they have over 12 million monthly active users in more than 120 countries. You designers should look no further, go join them..!

• User Rating: 3.3 ⭐⭐⭐ | from 11 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

3. Designhill

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Founded on 2014, Designhill is a New Delhi, India based company. It is one of the world’s top website platform known for design inspiration, design jobs and competition. Designhill is a graphic design platform for designers to earn, participate, work and share their works. Designhill is also a one point stop for business owners to source high quality designs.

Designers are welcome to join their creative marketplace to offer creative skills to the public worldwide. Basically designers can earn from Design Contest, Designer’s Gig and from PrintShop, where you can sell your ready made arts.

For business owner: Designhill – Book A Free Design Consultation Today!

• User Rating: 4.8 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 1,797 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Yes

4. Upwork

Upwork is like searching a job in a marketplace, similar to others freelancing sites. As a skilled designer looking to earn money online, you search for the best job on Upwork.com that suits your skill and you bid on that project. You know that you can do the job according to the budget and time span given by the buyer.

With Upwork, it may took much time to get the jobs. The commission deduction on Upwork applied at both party, 10% from customer side and 10% from seller side. If you have lot of time and you want to earn big, Upwork should be in your list.

• User Rating: 4.4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 3,719 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

5. Fiverr

Registering with Fiverr is like opening a shop in online marketplace. You as a designer (freelancer) called Seller, create your potential services, wait for a prospect, called Buyer to come and buy your service, called Gig.

Fiverr get 20% commission from your earning, even still you get $5 order or get $5,000 order, Fiverr still cut 20% from total. So, you’re probably earn little considering your time effort to complete the job in Fiverr, compared to others.

There are couple of ways freelancers may generate income withe Fiverr; Join Fiverr as freelancer and start offering your services. Or freelancers may also learn more skills in Fiverr to upgrade your level and being Pro Seller.

If you intended to focus more on your skilled works to serve your clients as you become Pro Seller, you may start to use their ‘smart suite’ to build, manage and grow your business without headache with all the documentations & paperworks. AND.CO may help you prepare and manage your works, so be your own boss.

If you just want to get services from Fiverr you can join as a new buyer with $100 free credit for you.

• User Rating: 4.0 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 3,183 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Yes

6. Toptal

Toptal is a specialized freelancer platform, as they claimed. Toptal which stand for Top Talent, initially specialized in software developers, but have now branched out into finance & accounting, project management and design categories as well.

With their motto, ‘Hire the top 3% of the freelancer talent’, they are serious in screening talent application process to identifies experts in their categories who have the passion and drive. And generally the numbers are 3% and below, according to them.

This means, their client portfolios are mostly from high standard and the projects that you as freelancers may expect are ‘mission critical’ projects.

So be prepare to apply with Toptal, to make sure you’re among the top 3% talent expert. After hardly passed the screening process, you may expect good earnings based on hourly rate or weekly rate depends on part-time or full-time you are and projects you handle.

• User Rating: 4.7 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 1,140 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

Related article: 5 Creative Ideas Using Stock Images for Your Marketing

7. People Per Hour

PeoplePerHour, a London based crowdsource company, offers a big platform for businesses to find any kind of freelance expertise. They have quite big amount of freelancers, almost 3 million (at today’s date), surely have the ability to offer 1 million registered businesses. The ration 3:1 is perfect for freelancers looking to find good job offers.

Besides London, they also have branches in Greece and India, (I think their startup company is from Greece, because most of the team’s name sounds Greek :). Anyway, compared to top 3 or 5 company listed above, freelance designer should try this company,

• User Rating: 4.1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 3,131 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

8. CoWorks

Coworks is the easiest way to find and hire top freelancers and is the number 1 freelance work platform for brands and agencies. Here they called clients or business owners as Employers and freelancers as CoWorks. Their basic concepts are the same as the above companies we have discussed. Employers finding services and CoWorks offering services.

• User Rating: Not available
• Affiliate: Not available

9. 99designs

99designs is an another freelance designers hub looking for client’s job. And clients or businesses to find creative talents as well. Based in Melbourne Australia, it allows businesses to post jobs and get a range of designers pitch for the work.

Since 2008, 99designs has grown from a small, online forum into a global community of talented designers that is now the go-to solution for businesses, agencies and individuals. Freelance designers..! This site should also be on your bookmark.

• User Rating: 3.9 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 674 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Yes

10. Guru

Guru is one of the oldest online startup company specialized in higher-end consulting and freelancing platform. Founded in 1998 the same year Google was incorporated. It lists over 3 million professional freelancers and almost 1 million employers all around the world.

The site interface is simple and straightforward, ‘Find Jobs’ – for freelancers, ‘Find Freelancers’ – for employers. For both options, you will see a comprehensive Search tool with ability to choose Jobs Category, Locations, Employer’s Amount Spend or Freelancer’s Earnings, etc.

Basically they don’t charge employers for joining and posting jobs, employers’ jobs will be quoted by freelancers later with ‘handling fee’. Freelancers have option to participate as their freelancers, either as free member (with limited job offers) or with membership plans (extra benefits).

• User Rating: 4.0 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 7 Indeed.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

11. Robert Half

Robert Half, is a company that helps to find part-time or full-time professionals for another company and to helps solve their business challenges. As for professional workers looking for a job, they will assist you in locating a career for you or for a short term job that may fit your skills.

Their Creative Group offers sophisticated matching technology and a personalized approach for freelancers or if you looking for better full-time job. Not to forget, as for businesses looking for perfect candidates for your incoming project, this site is worth to be check it out.

• User Rating: 3.9 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 12,151 Indeed.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

12. FlexJobs

FlexJobs is a platform that connects people wanting access to flexible jobs, to prospective employers. It is not just an ordinary online job-seeker site, rather FlexJobs specialize in job search for remote working, part-time, freelance and many flexible working conditions. That’s how they come up with the name.

There are variety of categories offered for job seeker or freelancer available including creative industries. Hence, we see many good reviews about them and they’re one of the good crowdsourcing platforms for famous employers as well.

• User Rating: 3.8 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | from 21 Trustpilot.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

13. CrowdContent

This site specializes in providing qualified content writers, within a curated and managed delivery platform. They don’t offer specific design category, so if you (designers) want to try your talent in writings, perhaps design related article, just like we do :) this CrowdContent should be in your list.

• User Rating: 2.6 ⭐⭐ | from 7 Indeed.com reviews
• Affiliate: Not available

Number 14 and the rest to be continue in Part 2 later. Please feel free to comment and add us lists that we might be missed.