Last week Jen and I attended the Search & Social Summit here in my backyard of Tampa Bay. This isn't your typical conference recap post, though. I wanted to focus on the action items that still stand out for me a week later, the things will make a difference in what I do or how I do it. Perhaps you'll rethink the way you do a thing or two as well.
Outsource, Seriously.
Kevin Henrikson is a low key guy, and one that I hadn’t met until the Search & Social Summit. You won’t see him spouting off on Twitter or elaborating on his accomplishments on LinkedIn. He beats even me in the blog neglect category. Personally, I wish he’d publish more. He has a strong business acumen and seems to find his comfort zone well outside the boundaries that most of us create in our own DIY vs. outsource struggles.
Kevin’s presentation was about outsourcing. I expected the standard cliché we’ve all heard 100 times, “Do what you do best. Outsource the rest.” Good advice, absolutely, but now what? Kevin's presentation was different. It outlined real, actionable strategies for outsourcing the things you’d expect - like copywriting and development - but he also spoke about his experience delegating some pretty unusual stuff like the hiring of a housekeeper for his parents out-of-state.
Kevin covered more than a dozen solid online sources for building your outsourced empire including craigslist (for local need), Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and the old standby Elance. None of those excited me like oDesk and 99designs.
oDesk describes themselves as a marketplace for online workstreams. Don’t have time to sift through your email to identify the important ones that require a response? Hire a personal assistant to do the drudge work for you. Need a new site design converted to work with your WordPress blog? You'll be surprised by the rates. I created my account while listening to Kevin’s presentation and can’t wait to get started.
99designs provides a platform and 192K strong community to facilitate your own ‘design contest’. Open an account, outline your project in seven simple fields, pay a few hundred dollars and within a week you’ll have dozens of designs to choose from that were created by the 99designs community. I did a hack job of my own blog logo design a few years ago. I figured there was no time like the present, so jumped onto 99designs and kicked off my own contest. For a few hundred dollars I’ve received around 200 logo designs. You can check out the contest entries and maybe even help me choose a winner from the frontrunners.
If you want more information on how to leverage the outsourcing vehicles like the ones mentioned above, check out Rand's recent post on the topic here.
Targeted Promotion on Niche Social News Sites
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If you're like me, when you think 'social news', examples like Digg and Reddit stand out. Though the traffic from these sites is astounding - IF you can get your story to the front page - obtaining traction is hit or miss and the competition is intense. Brent Csutoras is a wiz in the world of social marketing, and another speaker that presented some refreshing content at the Search & Social Summit last week.
Brent highlighted Kirtsy.com as a great place to post content that would appeal to a female audience, for example. This isn't the kind of place to post the latest puss video from PopThatZit (view at your own risk. eww) but if you take a look at the current list of most popular content on the Kirtsy homepage, you'll get the idea of what is possible there. I was surprised to see a few listings from small personal blogs on topics like crafts and parenting.
Despite being more than a year old, Brent says that this list of niche social media sites from Chris Winfield over at 10e20 is still the best out there. Think about the opportunities for sites you represent. No doubt a few more niche social news sites have cropped up since then. If you have another one that works for you, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
Get New Content Indexed Faster
Michael Gray recommends creating small sitemaps of <100 pages, in addition to your regular sitemap(s), to help get new content indexed faster.
Michael has found that for sites that add a lot of new pages, or want to get the pages they do add indexed quickly, using a dedicated sitemap for fresh content is the key. In his testing, deep pages on large sites that would sometimes take weeks or months to make it into the index took just 1-3 days with the dedicated fresh content XML sitemap. He suggests playing with the '100' number. That is what the need has been for his clients, but if you are working with a site that has a larger fresh content output you may achieve the same affect by including more.
I'll be testing this one out for sure! Let us know how it goes for you, too.
Action Items
- Are you making the most of your time? Think about the things that someone else could do for you and outsource it. Check out 99designs for graphics work and oDesk for nearly everything else.
- Look through Chris Winfield's list of niche social news sites. Maybe your content can 'make popular' on social news afte rall.
- Try creating a supplemental fresh content XML sitemap to see if it helps you get your content indexed faster.
Happy Optimizing!
Lindsay Wassell (aka @lindzie)
Yay! Thanks for calling out these great takeaways. One that I'd like to add from Brian Chappell was to create a custom Facebook page that only allows fans to see the page. You use FBML code to check to see if the user is a fan, if so you show them a promotion (or whatever) and if not, you ask them to become a fan (er "like" you) before they can see the promo. It's genius!
On another note, I really loved the fact that while the conference was completely laid back and relaxing, the speakers were quite amazing. Meaning you can have kick ass information and have a pina colada at the same time. :)
My trip to Tampa was a big win all around. :) I got to meet the Wassell twins, hang out with their mom and dad, and attend the excellent conference! I also got a chance to have some great one-on-one time with old and new friends.
Thanks for the reminder of these great tips!
You should put together a full post on how to implement Brian Chappell's FB recommendation.
I second this rec! Please, Jen?
Hiya Jen! This comment is totally off topic, but I'm goin' there anyway.
We missed you at the webinar yesterday!
awwww *sniff* thanks! Although I heard that Joanna & Dr. Pete kicked butt!
They totally did. So did Scott and Danny. But it was Joanna that was doin' the sniffin' I heard.
Hope you got a nice tan :)
Great tips... I will surely test the "fresh content sitemap" suggestion with a couple of clients, especially one that is struggling to see the new languages version pages of his web being totally indexed.
About outsourcing, I firmly believe it's also a business model must (apart than a personal life saver), especially for small SEO agency or one-man-agency as many of us here.
But, apart from outsourcing to freelance, I suggest also another method:
to build strategic alliances with web related companies that can fill the needs you have, offering yourself to fill theirs.
For instance: a service I offer consists in design/redesign SEO ready websites + all post launch SEO services/assessor. Well, I am not a developer and of the graphic side my 3 y/o son is better than me. Therefore I create strategic alliances with very good web design agencies that were lacking of any SEO side offer. In this way I can offer a service that give what it promises (great looking websites that are SEO ready) and they can have a great additional bullet (SEO services) in order to gain clients or retain old ones.
Thanks Lindsay for the takeaways and my compliments for being so able to deal with your twins and the job (an hurray for the SEOmoms).
"To build strategic alliances with web related companies that can fill the needs you have, offering yourself to fill theirs" -- I couldn't agree more. I would add: this is likely to work best if those companies and yours are in similar standing. And it's especially valuable and essential for startups (such as my own). Speaking of SEO companies, SEO is (strangely?) more expensive than design and development, so this gives us a special edge!
Given that SEO is usually more expensive than other web based services, I find the service trade model difficult. How do you trade hours with another business when the market value of those hours is not equal?
"Okay, I'll give you one hour of my time for every four that you spend working on my new site." Then duck! I'd expect to get punched in the nose.
I've found it easy to simply buy what I need and sell my services at market value. The margins are better that way and nobody gets punched.
How do you do it?
I personally use the White Label policy, therefore the Web Design is sold with brand even though is realized from one of the couple of web design agencies I have a deal with.
And the same is for the web design agencies for the SEO Services.
That means that the quotes are made on "two layers":
1st > between the companies (and relatively the SEO services they realistically preview the costs/margin I will have)
2nd > between companies and clients, that - especially for the web design agencies is more convenient as they can apply their margins without compromising the effectiveness of the service itself.
Personally, right now I do apply high margins to the web design costs on my side, also because I prefer to "be paid" with free services for my own websites/projects (I know exists a definition in english, but I cannot remember it right now :( ).
On a side note, this practice helps me in somehow "delegate" a big part of the commercial part (and costs) of the job, as it's done almost totally by the agencies. Actually, this method assure me a 30% of my revenues... and quite less headaches trying to catch clients.
I'm sorry I have to edit myself with a new comment (cannot edit anymore the previous one).
When I say:
"Personally, right now I do apply high margins..."
I was meaning:
"Personally, right now I NOT apply high margins..."
Lindsay: when it comes to trading services with partner companies I like to go the way of friendship. Somehow I don't convert my work into hours, we trade perceived value. Friends take care of each other, and both are happy. This greatly simplifies calculations! :) On the other hand, if more than a mutual exchange of work occurs, i.e. if one of the parties has to bear expenses, then I think expenses should be borne by the party on whoe behalf they are undertaken.
Thank you for sharing this! I am fascinated by Michael Gray's idea about small supplementary sitemaps. Will have to test it for sure, but his word counts for a lot. Lately I have been consulting several large websites regarding indexation and crawling issues. BTW, the most authoritative info about indexation and "crawl budget" is to be found in this Matt Cutts Interview with Eric Enge (a must read on the subject). I think the supplementary sitemaps idea is a gem in addition to all that, and makes complete sense!
Great takeaways.
Haven't tested in great detail, but agree with the idea of special sitemaps for new content.
Additionally, I often recommend segmenting with sitemaps to also tap into the reporting provided within Google Webmaster Tools...it may not be entirely accurate, but seeing the percentage of indexed can be another useful diagnostic metric.
Especially when you are seeing under 80-90% indexation, it prompts a little additonal digging.
A thought provoking response, identity. What reporting pieces in GMT do you use to analyze indexation by content type? And how actionable are your findings?
What is the maximum number of sitemap files you have uploaded for a single web property? I wonder if G starts to get irritated if there are too many unnecessarily. Is that your experience?
This stuff would make a great YOUmoz post.
LW
Good questions.
Of course the tools are somewhat limited, so to get the most out of the analysis, it all comes down to segmenting at the sitemap level.
It would really depend on the site and there could be different strategies, such as horizontal based on site depth, or vertical, such as by product categories for an ecommerce site.
Or to segment by freshness, perhaps new products/blog posts go into a separate one altogether until after a set period of time.
For more sophistication and with a talented dev team, perhaps once a crawl visit is recorded (for Google, or maybe 2-3 major engines have crawled) or the URL gets flagged as indexed, then it gets pushed out into the master file or appropriate sub file.
And if this is being done diagnostically, perhaps the approach changes to isolate the issues being measured. Obviously this may be a very manual process unless some very creative dev work is put in.
As for in use...I haven't seen it used as much to this extent as I would like or think it could be, but I'd say about the most I've seen is in the low double-digits.
I think one of the key issues is to make sure that URLs aren't duplicated across files, which throws off the metrics and that might be something the engines would frown upon...sends a low quality signal about the sitemaps.
Otherwise, I don't imagine Google would care that much, as long as it wasn't being abused. Ping them every day with sitemap files that haven't been updated in 6 months, and I guess they may not be happy, but will probably just lower their trust and scale back their actual calls to those files.
I like this post Lindsay - three quick, usable, useful takeaways can make an entire conference worthwhile (and the rest of us didn't even have to go!)
The small, separate XML Sitemaps is a really unique idea. I've gotta test that one. If anyone's had experience using it, I'd love to hear your results.
Thumbs up! Apparently moving to Florida and being a Mom hasn't dulled your SEO or blogging skills one bit :-) Say hi to the twins from all of us at SEOmoz - we still miss you.
Thanks, boss. Though I'm not sure I have enough of a blogging history to be dulled. ;)
Nice Recap!
But i seems to remember that Michael said "1 to 3 days before the usual"... yet i may have misunderstood, because of the A/C noise :)
I did get him to elaborate via email. However, this isn't an exact science. Test it out on your end and you'll likely find a forumla that works for you and results that you can pinpoint.
That's awesome :)
thanks!
Here is an excellent post written by Patrick Altoft on improving and analyzing indexation level of large sites. It talks about using multiple sitemaps. One sitemap for each product/content category.
https://www.blogstorm.co.uk/using-multiple-sitemaps-to-analyse-indexation-on-large-sites/
Good post - definitely going to check out all of the links. I did check out one...
I asked our creative director about 99 Designs and this is what he said:
I have seen it, it's the type of thing a startup might take advantage of if they have no budget and a bit clueless. The concept exploits designers by promoting spec work, which the industry/community is trying to eliminate - a bit controversial because I reinforces the notion that design is just making things pretty as opposed to sensible design which considers specific audiences and usability decisions. It also allows for anyone to be a designer which produces a fair amount of poor quality designs and poorly coded templates. It all comes back to "you get what you pay for"
--
Do you think that this concept exploits designers?
Hiya Lisa:
I don't see it as exploitation at all. No one is holding a gun to the 99designers forcing them to participate. They are there of their own volition. I dare say that for many of them they consider it a great opportunity to get their work out into the world.
Will they work through 99 forever? If they're good, they'll start to build enough business at much better margins and then they'll stop participating.
This clamor from the "mainstream" design society about "exploitation" is IMHO just a ruse to try to keep people from using them.
It's not like anyone is forcing the old school designers to have to work on spec. I think they are just scared of a new paradigm.
I agree with you, it's exploitation.
How so trax? If the participating designers want to be a part of it, how is that exploitation?
Really, I'm not being argumentative at all. You know I love 'ya man. But I don't understand this stance. Can you elaborate?
Haha, I know =P.
I understand what you mean, but personally I think it devalues a designers work, and in that way it is exploiting them. They see a flash of cash and a quick buck and think it's fantastic - but it's not. They could be earning much much more and they deserve much much more. :-(
Thanks for the clarification. One more question. What if the reason they are participating is not so much for the money, as much as for the exposure?
I'll give you an example. What if SEOmoz had a contest for brand spankin' new SEO's only. And they gave a site as an example, and asked all willing participants to send in their SEO recommendations as YOUmoz blog posts.
And whichever post got the most thumbs up, that entrants SEO advice would be followed. And there was no cash prize, only the notoriety that the new SEO would garner.
Wouldn't that be a good parallel? I imagine that quite a few people would participate just for the fame aspect. Would that be exploitation or opportunity for them?
Hrmm, your point about exposure is a good one but I think the exposure they get is negative exposure as opposed to positive exposure. It comes down to the same problem that companies like Kappa face. They sell a product that is good quality, but at a cheap price and they get a bad name. In my opinion, if I see someone jumping on the crowdsourcing bandwagon for a quick buck then my opinion of them drops.
I think there's a difference between what you're suggesting and what companies like 99designs are promoting because the individuals on there are trying to earn cash. People call it a competition, but that's just a mask to make it sound nicer than what it really is: people being underpaid and undervalued because THEY want some quick cash and don't care about the profession. Your example is different because SEOmoz isn't a company that bases itself around competitions, and that would just be a competition from a community that thrives on participating and talking about SEO.
The place where people fall flat when it comes to crowdsourcing is associating it with a competition when it's really not. Nowhere near a competition. It just makes all parties involved feel better. It's a designers equivalent to prostitution in my opinion and I would never in a million years take part OR recommend any designers that use it. I'm a great supporter of paying for what you get and paying the right price rather than paying an Indian dude 60p for twelve hours work. It's morally wrong.
Sorry if I'm digressing!!!
I respect your opinion and see how designers could be construed as being sc****d over but:
Call me a control freak if you like, but I see design99 as a starting point for the design process.
I don't make it to many if any conferences so thanks Lindsay for sharing this great information, love it with SEOmoz brings these great takebacks from confs.
I have a feeling Google will be receiving a surplus of sitemaps today =), that is a very interesting idea.
Nice to hear about the Search & Scoial, especially from you Lindsey.
I'm in agreement with those above. The heads up about the smaller sitemap is a big old fat nugget o' gold. Thanks for sharing it.
And as far as 99designs vs. full service designers debate goes, I say God bless capitalism. There's a place for small and cheap and there's a place for big and expensive.
The problem is when someone want to use the small & cheap method with the big & expensive...
Hey pal. Nice to see you yesterday at the webinar. I couldn't believe how much chat volume there was.
Anyway, there's a saying to deal with those pesky clients that goes something like this:
"Fast, cheap, and good. Pick any two."
lol i use that exact same triangle of service.
Thanks for the quote... I'll try to give it a meaningfull translation so to use it.
And about the chat... yes... almost too much. Honestly, as I'm not so multitasking, I usually close the chat window in order to stay concentrated in the webinar itself.
...thanks for "Action Items" concept too!
It would be soooo nice to have something redundant in each Blog Post, like this, so you can go over the information faster if needed.
As for your 99design contest Lindsay, please just don't take this one... One word: Ouch!
omg I about fell out of my chair! That is a logo you would definately remember... just probably not in a positive way =)
Thanks for the kudos re: Action Items. I use action items at the end of each section in my site audits. That is something we did while I managed the consulting team at SEOmoz too. Clients really seemed to appreciate it.
The horse logo cracks me up. I'm pretty sure there is no evidence anywhere online that I am a fan of wild haired horses. I should have left all of the logos up, but I'd already weeded out some that were 'no longer in consideration'. Some of those were pretty entertaining too. A couple people completely changed my business name. My business became simply "ology" in one design and "seo" in another.
LW
so the wild haired horse is still in contention?
quite like number 42
Nice post.
Outsourcing is a tough area for a lot of people in our field because of the negative connotations it has - not being able to handle the load. Realistically, even though this may be true it's not a bad thing at all. I know I'm stating the obvious, but it sometimes provides one with more choice and a better service than one could usually provide!! Particularly with things like 99designs. Whilst I disagree with the whole "design content" structure, I must admit that it's a great way to get a cheap logo with good choice.
That zit website is rank, I winced... Going to be on it for a good 10 minutes watching videos though!! :D
Really nice article, but I have a question regarding XML sitemaps. I have a problem with slow indexation of my sitemaps, but it's really hard to chunk them up in a small sitemaps (a you suggest small sitemaps of <100 pages), because my site have approx. 3.000.000 pages. Right now, my sitemaps have < 50.000 pages and still indexation is my biggest problem. What do you suggest for this situation, when we deal with a really large number of pages.
Thanx
Hey ghogilee. Perhaps this older YOUmoz post will be able to help you with your issue. It's about Google pagination.
Thank you very much. I will try.
Hi Lindsay,
Just wanted to say i love reading your posts, I'm in charge of the SEO activities at 99designs and i often read SEOmoz, I saw this comeup in my regular backlink analysis, we appreciate the nice words and are glad you were excited by our service! :)
Please let me know if you happen to run a contest and i can have the team give you some love.
Cheers,
Kristen
Wow! The sitemap idea is great, and something I've not heard much about until now. Thanks for sharing this info. The outsourcing idea is also getting such a buzz right now, John Reese and others are really promoting this concept all over the internet. My business partner and I are big fans of outsourcing and try to build it into our proposals to prospective clients. Thanks for sharing what you learning at the conference.
Great post and ideas re: outsourcing Lindsay! While many people are familiar with Elance or Odesk, there is a number of new freelance marketplace sites that are worth of exploring. One example that I had to deal with is www.hightechhire.com. What is unique about this site is that it allows to find freelancers from Eastern Europe.
I think the smaller sitemaps makes a lot of sense in some cases. One of my clients is a hospital system with a bunch of hospitals/services under its domain name.
I am planning on creating a master sitemap and breaking it down into sitemaps for each individual hospital. I'll make sure to share anything I discover from it.
I haven't seen that list of social media sites, there was a few I wasn't aware of, very useful. I have a client now that is selling artwork online and it is difficult to find a place to promote their goods without being marked as spam.
As for odesk I definitely back your recommendation, I use it and love it. They track time and take screenshots, afterwards giving the employer a chance to review the work and check activity levels. For me its the best way to work online right now, they have a leg up on the competition.
Cheaper isn't always better though, odesk is flooded with cheap labor claiming to be 'SEO experts' and the like when their only strategy is to submit your site to low quality, un-related directories, forums, etc.. For example the client mentioned above,when I checked their backlinks, had one of these 'link-builders' make a link for them by creating a profile on whitney houston's fan website. (Allman Brothers too) What the f*#$ does that have to do with artwork?? Here is another place they got a link: https://pump.hungvuong.net/ ... Not sure what it is (some kind of forum) but it is not relevant or useful. The exact same text and achor text was used for each of these profile links. Moral of the story: get to know these people (oDesk has an interview phase to weed out the baddies) who will be working for/with you.
This is a great post, Lindsay. Bravo! I cannot wait to experiment with Graywolf's sitemap for for fresh content idea, and I appreciate you wrapping up your post with a short list of actionable items that almost anyone can benefit from. Looking forward to many more posts from you throughout the blogosphere ; )
You make some great points. Your 99 designs contest is amazing. It really surprises me how much work people will do before they get a check. What a strange, yet effective model.
Nice post, and thanks for the quick synopsis of the conference.
On the topic of sitemaps. Would it make sense to have a sitemap for each of the major areas of a website separated out?
So for example you have a site that has three main sections such as BLUE WIDGETS, RED WIDGETS and ORANGE WIDGETS and each of these sections has several sub categories and products. Would it make sense to have a BLUE WIDGETS sitemap, etc?
Thanks for giving me something to ponder over my morning coffee.
I suspect that the reason small fresh content XML sitemaps work is because a small subset of content is being highlighted. Google wants to understand why... so they check it out on an excellerated timeline.
I doubt that breaking content out into topical sitemaps would have a similar effect, because instead of highlighting a small set of special content you would be creating several 'equal' sitemaps. Not to mention the fact that if you went overboard with this strategy, Google's processing time would be negatively impacted because they would have to parse through many individual files instead of one or two single files.
That is my two cents, anyway.
That was my thinking too. There seems to be a fine line between aiding in the indexation and overloading Google with too much and slowing down the process.
Thanks for the feedback.
With graphic design, you get what you pay for, so if your logo design is important and budget allows it, makes sense to go for a proper graphic agency.
Absolutely. I think there is a great deal of value in hiring a full service agency when requirements are complex and the budget allows. I don't see 99designs cutting into that marketplace too much. Instead, 99designs helps people like me who are not designers and are not at a place to invest in full blown graphic design to get something nicer in place.
Having said that, I've been impressed with the quality of many of the designs through 99designs. Many of the designers have made revisions based on my feedback, too.
other quick and easy methods to get a new page indexed faster:1) add a link on the homepage2) let everyone know on social networks with a link to the page3) comment on a high traffic blog relavant to the new page (don't exploite, it can piss a lot of people off)
nice post Lindsay!
Boo! Linsday..BOO!!!
99Designs is the devil:
https://www.no-spec.com/
https://www.markrushworth.com/aquent-design-industry/
Hey Mark, long time no see. I'm glad you have the same avitar. You do realize that it's been the main inspiration with Danny's fascination with moustaches.
I take it from your two links that you're dead set against 99designs? Why ever so? It's a free market and if there are places that need cheap graphics, then it only makes sense to supply them.
But it doesn't take away from more full service (and more expensive)design agencies. The customers that go to 99designs wouldn't likely be the same customers. If 99designs didn't exist, then it's most probable that the customer would just create a logo for themselves (Lindsey's a great example)
lol ive never gone far... i check back here around once a week as im getting a bit bored of the dullness of search blah lol plus been trying to resurrect my blog after the database got corrupted (yay for google cache) im dead set against anything that devalues the creative process... dont get me wrong ive done personal projects to help out friends but a site that uses the guise of a competition to encourage nospec work for your chance to win a fee just seems wrong to me. it really is taking money out of designer pockets and to be honest for the prise fee... its just not worth it. stick with elance at least thats about pitching for work and not a fake competition... or even better contact your local university and run it as a competition for students, it will give them valuable work experience and contact with a real customer.
and which danny? lol
Which Danny? Which Danny????!!!! There's only one Danny.
It's sorta like when you know how when they say Hillshire, we say Farms?
Well, when I say Danny, you say Dover.
PS - Apologies to those outside the advertising influence of Hillshire Farms Sausage.
PPS - Apologies to those vegetarians among us for mentioning sausages.
Oh boy, this one made me laugh!
Sorry to disappoint! I would like to make the following points in opposition to your view that 99designs is the Devil.
1. 99designs is helping to make the web a prettier place. Without this affordable service, I'd be sticking with my old hack job of a homemade logo. That isn't good for anybody.
2. Competition is good. 99designs will inspire great designers to be better and pricey agencies to provide more value for the dollar. Everybody could use a little healthy competition to inspire improvement.
3. 99designs is a great forum for up and coming designers to improve their skills at designing what the client will like. In fact, if I managed a team of logo designers, I'd probably encourage them to pop on to 99designs during down time for this experience precisely.
4. Without 99designs, we'd all have missed out on the entertainment factor that this one brings to the table.
Take that.
LW
POW lol
heres something from nospec...
You wouldn’t go to a restaurant, eat the food, and expect to pay only if you’re happy. And you’d never go to a mechanic, have them work on your car, letting them know you’ll only pay them if you think they did good work. So should the design industry be any different?
My guess is that it all boils don to supply and demand. If there were so many restaurants that they couldn't attract enough customers, they might start doing "food tastings" sorta like wine tastings.
And if there were more mechanics than broken cars, then an enterprising mechanic might make a good practice out of troubleshooting your car for free in the hopes that you'll then stay with him to get it repaired (I realize that ain't ever gonna happen but I'm just trying to keep the analogy in the same box)
I would imagine the bulk of 99 designers are new and looking to create a name and portfolio for themselves.
Look at it this way. A lot of those designers just spent thousands and thousands of dollars going to school to learn design. This would be a step in the right direction for them. They would be similar to Dr's doing residency.
The hours are absolutely insane, the pay is abysmal, but they are getting the experience they need.
Very timely post. Outsourcing has been on the top of my mind lately. I've tried, somewhat successfully, to outsource my link builidng. However I run into an issue that the people I would like to outsource to cost more than the fee I'm collecting from my client! Obviously I've got myself in a position where I'm not charging enough. Does anyone have ideas on where to outsource my link builidng? The freelance sites seem overrun with people in India who seem to be great at blog/forum commenting! Not exactly what I'm looking for though.
Thanks Lindsay! I like this a lot. I think this post was the "nail in the coffin" for 99designs.. I think I'm going to definitely move forward with it for my next project. It was always floating around but your recommendation definitely did the trick!
SHHH. Don't tell Mark Rushworth. ;) [see above]
In all seriousness, tweet me the link when your contest is live. I would love to watch another one progress. I've been tempted to make something up just so I can do it again, but that would be silly.
I think with graphic design, you get what you pay for, so if your logo design is important and budget allows it, makes sense to go for a professional grapher.
Of the approx 200 logo designs you received from 99designs, how many are you actually considering?
IMO there wasn't a lot of quality there, might be trading quality for quantity in the hope that you might end up with one or two decent designs.
Out of nearly 250 designs, I am seriously considering around 12. I'd say that around 30% of the designs submitted were 'mostly' unique. A lot of designers came up with a core concept, then presented color variations or other tweeks to that core concept as separate entries. That inflates the numbers a bit.
All of that said, I am thrilled to have 12 designs to choose from, all of which are great. Take a look at the short list.
https://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/company-called-what-43693?orderby=timesubmitted&filterby=highrating
Ooooh, I totally vote for the first one, #162 by Mattyice. It's distinctive, clear to read and it has the bonus smiley face.