From all appearances, Trek Light Gear is a substantial operation. The company sells many products, like its signature lightweight hammock, backpacks, tarps and apparel. It operates a flagship store in Boulder, Colo., distributes products online and sells at festivals and events all over the country. But Trek Light has a full-time staff of one: Seth Haber, the founder. 'I'm always trying to seem bigger,' he said. For example, when it comes to product development, branding and market research, he has felt the pinch of being a small operation. So last year, he turned to crowdsourcing for help. Through a local company called Napkin Labs, Haber gained access to a large pool of consumers for feedback on how the company was presenting itself and where it should be going. The process began with a brainstorming session with the principals of Napkin Labs, Riley Gibson and Warren Ng. They filled a white board with diagrams and notes, clarified Haber's goals for his business and identified his crucial branding question: Should he focus his efforts on the company's hammock or expand into related areas, like products for campers? To get an answer, a series of exploratory questions was posted to the Napkin Labs crowd members, asking them about their camping experiences and what frustrations they might have endured. Additionally, they were asked for feedback on the brand itself. After a few weeks, Napkin Labs tallied up the responses and delivered the crowd's verdict: expand the business. 'It really confirmed my decision not to pigeonhole the business around the lightweight hammock,' Haber said. Napkin Labs later delivered a more detailed report and is now deploying its crowd to work with Haber on new product ideas. Although compensation varies by project, the crowd is paid based on a point system that evaluates the frequency of participation, quality of ideas and influence on the outcome. Haber's project was treated as a test case, but Napkin Labs typically charges $10,000 and up for a project that involves both crowdsourcing and consulting. The process of crowdsourcing involves turning to resources outside your company. But instead of outsourcing a specific task or business function to a single company, crowdsourcing -- also known as expert-sourcing and open innovation -- makes a public, or semipublic, invitation to a community at large to provide input or work. Thousands of crowdsourcing providers have emerged offering things like product development, logo design, fundraising and sales-lead generation. What follows are suggestions based on the experiences of other small-business owners. DEFINE THE JOB For the Rosen Law Firm in Raleigh, N.C., the task was improving the pay-per-click text ads it uses to generate business online. The procaff, said Lee Rosen, president of the firm, which specializes in divorce cases. The company had been updating keyword campaigns based on how they performed, a time-consuming process with inconsistent results. 'We were on overload,' he said, 'and the bottom line is we didn't know how well it was working.' The firm tried automated keyword buying, but, Rosen said, found the computers failed to position the business and capture the market it wanted. Selecting keywords, Rosen concluded, is more art than science: 'We needed a human being.' Or, perhaps, many human beings. Then, Rosen heard a podcast by Niel Robertson, chief executive of Trada, a crowdsourcing firm based in Boulder that specializes in pay-per-click advertising. Trada's more than 500 pay-per-click experts compete for their advertising clients' business and take home the difference between what the advertisers are willing to pay for a click and what the experts actually spend to generate it. In consultation with Trada executives, Rosen broke his $6,000 monthly budget into a daily amount and determined a maximum rate he would spend on each click and where he wanted to advertise. Trada then posted the campaign to its crowd of experts, who set about creating ads and a list of keywords. If the campaigns come in under budget, the experts pocket the difference. Trada, which recently rec--?:eived a $5.75 million cash investment from Google, now handles the planning and spending for about 5,000 keyword campaigns for the Rosen Law Firm. Rosen's budget remains the same as it was before he retained Trada -- but his employees have been freed. 'Real,'..??e said, 'it's magical.' FIND A PARTNER IN THE CROWD To find prospective firms, combine a Web search for the task you want completed with the term 'crowdsourcing.' Once you have identified candidates, turn to Twitter. 'This is a place where social media can be superhelpful,' Robertson said. He suggested that business owners solicit feedback on crowdsourcing providers by asking for guidance on Twitter. Be sure to include the tag '.crowdsourcing' in your post. HONE YOUR GOAL Gibson, chief executive of Napkin Labs, said setting clear goals made all the difference. The best queries, he suggested, are exploratory in nature: 'What are people's thoughts on product A? How can we make it better? And what will it look like in five years?' Robertson, the Trada chief executive, said businesses needed to explain their project, their customers and their company in detail. 'It's not always easy from looking at a site to discern these subtleties,' he said. 'It really helps someone who's browsing a marketplace to understand who the customers are.' PAY ATTENTION Rosen, the divorce lawyer, also turned to crowdsourcing for a company logo. Through 99Designs, which is based in San Francisco and specializes in graphic and Web design, he put out a query that, he said, reached designers around the world. Throughout the process, Rosen's firm gave feedback to designers who had questions, explaining where the work was on track an??1?dre it was not. The process led to a logo that he thought reflected the company's mission. On Trada's pay-per-click platform, businesses can track the individuals working on their campaigns and how those individuals are performing, offering feedback and suggestions. Engagement is crucial, Robertson said: 'Don't look at crowdsourcing as set and forget.' PAY FOR WHAT YOU GET Crowdsourcing can lead to significant savings. Lukas Biewald, chief executive of CrowdFlower, based in San Francisco, likens the crowd to the 'cloud' in that you do not have to predict what your scale is going to be -- you can scale as you go, and pay as you go. InnoCentive, a crowdsourcing company based in Waltham, Mass., worked with Precyse Technologies, a wireless technology company based in Atlanta that wanted to conserve its own engineering resources, to develop a product that would activate a device remotely. InnoCentive helped Precyse draw up a detailed description of its goals, and the project was listed on InnoCentive's Marketplace. The price tag was listed as $50,000. Problem 'solvers,' as InnoCentive calls its work force, selected Precyse's project from among others in the queue. The result: hundreds of ideas for a technology that could activate a device remotely. 'They delivered not just a solution, but also the algorithm and calculations that proved the solution could be done,' said Rom Eizenberg, chief marketing officer at Precyse. But if a project does not work out, the money you paid often can be refunded. When PocketMac, a software developer in San Diego, hired 99Designs to create a shopping cart icon for its site, it was dissatisfied with the results; 99Designs returned the company's $200 upfront payment. 