In order to improve the stability of conventional erbium-doped superfluorescent fiber source, a superfluorescent fiber source based on erbium-doped photonic crystal fiber was proposed. A superfluorescent fiber source with a single-pass backward configuration was constructed and the output properties of the new fiber source were researched. The influences of fiber length and pump power on output power, spectral width and mean wavelength of fiber source were analyzed. By choosing the optimized fiber length of 28 m and pump power of 220 mW, the superfluorescent fiber source had an output power of 45.74 mW, an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 20.79 %, a spectral width of 31.5 nm and a mean wavelength of 1548.003 nm. This result would set the foundation to further investigate the stability of erbium-doped photonic crystal fiber superfluorescent source in the different environment.