Elance is a leading online marketplace that connects small businesses with freelance service providers from around the world using a crowdsourcing model. It allows buyers to outsource projects and find skilled freelancers to complete the work. Elance offers features like chat, video calling, and skills certification tests to help match buyers with providers. It also provides an escrow system for payments and project tracking tools for monitoring milestones and deliverables. While crowdsourcing provides benefits like access to an international workforce, it also presents disadvantages for buyers and providers.

1. CROWDSOURCINGIN ELANCE

2. Since it’s opening ELANCE has envolved into the world’s leading projects-based market place and workspace, helping tens of thousands of small and medium businesses outsource their projects to service providers in a wide variety of categories. Most of the businesses today use ELANCE to achieve more by finding great people in getting work done in a new way.

3. Elance is using the “remote work system”, creating a strategy of “Crowdsourcing” for freelancers: - To encourage them to use the workspace after the job match with the buyers - To increase the number of the customers

4. To help skilled freelancers reach international markets, ELANCE use a “Crowdsourcing” platform with the three features to connect and transact business. 1. The interview Process; Elance offers: - a chat function - a click-to-call function allowing any buyer to call anonymously and for any provider. - a certification tests for the providers to evaluate their level of expertise, which give buyers more of an assurance of a provider’s skills. 2. The payment system; Elance offers: - an escrow account where the buyers place the payment to the providers upon completion of the project . - once a provider completes the job, there is no guarantee that the provider will pay, however Elance also offers dispute assistance for both buyers and providers.

5. 3. Tracking Project Status: - reporting system where buyers can set milestones for providers to meet and report on their status showing progress against milestones . - time tracking widget that a provider can apply to a deliverable or milestone and attach files

6. This “crowdsourcing” has some advantages and also some disadvantages:

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