Start-Up Watch COD: Trada brings crowd sourcing benefits to SEM

Just when you think you’ve thought of all the places and ways that crowd sourcing was going to be used to accelerate business, along comes another fascinating approach. And people, lemme tell ya, this one is DEFINITELY fascinating.

The people behind it are a company called Trada, which offers small and medium sized businesses the opportunity to pay search experts by the purchase for sales driven by SEM. And don’t forget agencies, who can also utilize the service to provide scale to their SEM accounts without hiring staff or availing themselves of automation platforms.

So, here’s how it works: A company determines what it is willing to pay to drive a web sale, and posts the offer on the Trada community site. More than 1000 SEM experts that are members of Trada can review the offer and determine if they think they can help. Different experts are essentially pitted against one another. These experts can generate campaigns of thousands of KWs and focus their time on optimizing performance while the original business owner gets risk free CPA sales and scale. The SEM expert is essentially working on “the spread,” the amount of money between what it costs them to drive a sale and the brand’s CPA offer.

The laws of supply and demand drive this community, of course. The savvy business owner provides the true maximum they are willing to pay to maximize interest among the optimizing community. If you sand bag your max, naturally the sales that can be driven by experts will be lower. And if you really sandbag, you’ll find no one is interested in your campaign because the outlay of time and resources doesn’t make sense for them. So by introducing transparency into the world of search, savvy businesses and search experts can both profit by dealing with one another fairly and honestly.

Here’s a vid explaining the value proposition:



Now, huge brands are probably going to be better served by utilizing in house experts and an automation platform like Kenshoo or Marin. But many small agencies and businesses find the costs on the investment of time to use these platforms prohibitive. By creating the Trada community, this company has unleashed people power against the challenges, and I for one think that this concept is probably a winner.

For businesses, a solution like Trada may also help level the playing field between them and the search providers. Because let’s talk brass tacks. Who do you think knows more about Search, you or Google? As Google makes changes and adjustments to its business policies, how are your interests affected? You know the changes are good for THEIR bottom line, after all why else would they make them? But are they good for YOU? Chances are, you don’t know and don’t have time to figure it out yourself.

Trada community members know a great deal more about Search than you do – after all, it’s how they make their livelihood! When you align their interests with ours via CPA, you have important allies in your corner.

If you are a small or medium sized business or agency, I suggest you find out more about this concept. Given the CPA model, you have literally NOTHING to lose!