An anonymous question is posted:
Could you tell us why you've had problems getting your designs done? Were you working in a different area where the designers would only accept an advance?
Thanks!
It's not a problem in getting my designs done, I am just looking for better than I can do myself, which is what I have been doing since 1992. There are notable exceptions, where people have helped me out in trade with things simple for them, but escape me, and on rare occasion I actually fork over money. So what I am interested in today is forking over money, only to find there are no takers. Or if there are, I cannot find them.
I work google and craigslist for local sources, and even tracked sources in India and Hong Kong. No luck. Everybody wants a big job.
Here I think, is the problem: any heavy duty code writing has been done by the ASPs upon which I rely for the integrity of my websites. Yahoo and google and others have spent billions writing code, and I'd rather pay the $75 a month for 99% of my code than hire someone to reinvent the wheel.
What website "designers" that can be found offer to do many wonderful things, at what turns out to be about the same price anywhere on earth. Now the problem is, I do not want 99% of what they offer. I only want some simple things that just about any website designer can do. I suspect among people whose businesses are not subsidized in some way, are like me, and do not want all of that. Govt agencies, NGOs, subsidized businesses, they could care less, and they pay whatever, because who cares, it's not their money.
Every website also promises to be the very best at SEO. Two problems with SEO: the cost of getting a ranking that would make a difference would outweigh any benefit. Chevrolet can pay to be a top hit on google because every Chevrolet sold is an act of bailout for General Motors (and then Chevrolet goes slow pay on the ad agency!) Next, the promise all web designers make that all websites show up on the first page of google search is prima facie nonsense, too. That's a pretty crowded first page.
So web designers want me to pay for things that I do not want, and in practice are pointless. Of course, if you have a well equipped design studio, loaded with expensive software, even if you are working out of your home, you have some serious overhead to cover. Load on top of that the $80,000 in design school student loans at 5.5%, and we have some serious overhead. So many designers are overhead driven businesses. I understand their need to charge what amounts to several hundred dollars an hour.
I would gladly pay $25 an hour for what any high school kid could do. I have on my desk the card of a recent design school graduate. I've emailed her a couple of times, since she works for $25 an hour. I am positive she could handle all of my website needs in less than 8 hours. She has not replied. She is too wiped out after working odd hours but full time as a waitress (at about $10 an hour) to pay her loans and rent, that she cannot work on my project. I suspect that is common. (Apparently she is so tired she missed a typo on her website.) And I only heard about her from a friend of a friend. As any website designer knows, the web is no place to promote oneself or one's service. The web merely lowered the cost and widened access to research, but loaded up researchers with the task of processing massive data. Google puts the best data forward, but getting up there is cost-prohibitive, unless the world has already decided you are number one.
So given all that, let's go where the designers are: hundreds are going to websites where they will compete to please customers. How come, with all of the web opportunity to to promote oneself, a designer will go to a project clearing house like 99designs.com? My guess is any other means failed.
But I would much rather sit with a designer in front of my computer and direct them to achieve my small results, than crowdsource, but it that is all that is available, then crowdsourcing may be the way for me.
If I were a designer facing this challenge, I would start a website design agency called "make-up" or some such. $25 an hour, 4 hour minimum, you pick from a stable of designers whose websites examples are available online. I would look at what each person knows how to do, and then say, "yes that is what I am looking for." These should be Penn and Teller type sites, where the designer shows a function, like those websites that have a person pop up and welcome you... and the designer explains how they do it and how many hours it would take. Or just how to install a survey form or a stat counter on a site.
I know what website designers will say:
1. Visual design is important and bad design hurts business. Yes, true, but what makes you think you can deliver superior design? Raw self-confidence? Mustn't make that claim unless you can demonstrate who made more money than before, and how much, with your sites, and show the before and after income statements of the successful businesses. Otherwise, don't bother. Money talks, BS walks.
2. The price "all depends..." Well, it all depends if you are undisciplined. Mechanics could claim it all depends, and the poor ones do. The good ones know what the problem is and what it will cost. Tell me it all depends, and then I need to move on to someone else.
There is a problem, and a tremendous business opportunity. Those who were smart enough to stay out of the "art school" trap can work for less and are doing so, at a website wherein someone solved a problem of matching willing sellers with willing buyers, in a way that each agrees to. But it is still not quite what I want. I want local help. There is an opportunity waiting, I think.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Unemployed Website Designers
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6 comments:
Overall I have had good experiences with hiring designers on Elance to do simple projects. One thing I've found useful in narrowing down the list of potential bidders on Elance is to write up a 2-page PDF file with explicit instructions on every detail. In the middle of that, I ask a question that is important to how the project will be done and I instruct the bidder to explicitly address this question in their bid. This eliminates 80% of bidders automatically because few of them bother to read the PDF file. In this way I've been able to find the providers who are most detail oriented.
But for logo design, I'd like to try 99designs since this seems to be the better way to go for logos and other projects in which the aesthetic sensibility of the design is paramount.
As a web developer by day, aspiring importer/exporter by night and weekend, I would look at it a little differently..
Web designers come in two flavors, those who just do visual design, and those who also code (usually just html, no databases or server side code usually.. or maybe they can install plugins in wordpress). Then there are purely technical people.. web developers. Generally someone has either been trained in computers or art. The designer with the art school background learns how to code, but you pay a lot more for that especially if they are good. Their coding abilities are not in the same league as a developer. They could never code, say, a chat room from scratch.
The usual workflow is to have a designer design it then a developer implement it. If your concept is simple then maybe the designer with coding skills can do the whole thing. But very rare to find people who are top draw in both skills.
So the "same price" issue, when someone has spent enough to rise in the search engines to catch my (and otherwise widespread) notice, are they all these rare birds that can do art and code? Or, have they forked over so much money that their overhead demands the fees, and they merely claim to do all.
But you see my problem, I don't want someone who can build a chatroom from scratch. That was done 18 years ago. I just want someone who can do the front end and hook up some plug-ins, and I suspect the vast majority of the market is there. Apparently the 99design guy is a millionaire arriving at the same conclusion.
Yes, I understand a visual art schooler needs to pay his overhead too, and my criticism is against the art schools charging too much, not the student saddled with overhead.
I work in web development (programmer, not designer) and have worked in sales also for a web
design/development company with 10 people. When I worked at the company, we generally
wouldn't touch a job less then 4k. For most companies, it just doesn't make economic sense to take small jobs.
Sounds like what you want is a designer with medium to low 'aesthetic skills' who is fairly technically savvy, at
least technically savvy enough to install Wordpress and the Wordpress plugins. You don't need the prettiest
design on the web b/c in truth there is not a huge ROI from that. That's the platform you should use as it has
all the plugins (software) you need. You would almost never have to write software from scratch or any
software at all with Wordpress.
For independent designers of the caliber you are seeking, many who would work for $25/hour (some would
work at $15/hour if they could work on design only for 40 hours per week) IF the work is steady and they are
guaranteed to get paid. The problem is that finding work is very time consuming and clients with small jobs
are very inefficient because they
a) they are more likely to not pay
b) are more likely to change the requirements
c) it takes time to find each client, do the sales pitch, find out their requirements, etc
Point C is the by far hardest, finding the customer is the hardest part. He who has
customers is king, right?
Maybe what you need is sort of a 'website garage', where designers are on staff (like mechanics
or technicians are on staff at JiffyLube). They have many general items on the menu (most sites use
many of the same plugins) and charge an hourly rate for custom work. The customer pays the
company $25/hour for four hour increments like you said or per 'item' on the menu. The company
then pays the designers about $17/hour. As far as I know they don't have 'website garage'
something like this, perhaps it's a business opportunity? How would you validatethat it's an opportunity?
I do think it is a business opportunity... (not for me of course) to test the hypothesis I would try to buy what you describe from those websites that show up in a search. Those websites are likely to reject my project for the terms both of us lay out here.
Then you would know the solution to the problem did not exist.
Next, I would go back to those who were found as likely companies to do the work, but declined, and ask how often they get offers for which they decline?
Would they be will to refer such refusals to your site for a referral fee? (Easy enough to do...)
Such "elder brother" referrals are quite common in biz, and from there you could see if a worthwhile biz started...
John
As the previous poster mentioned, rentacoder.com and elance.com gives you tons of designers/programmers based abroad, who will do easy/moderate difficulty stuff well.... I once worked as an employee of a company for 2 months (from home) and outsourced almost all of my development work to India for $500. I found that the more prescriptive you are in the initial requirements or specification document if you do one, and the better the provider's feedback, the better it turns out.
On the other point, under what circumstances should we pay for designs?
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