A Perfect Dichotomy

It's the same in all creative industries. I have a hard time making potential clients understand why they I charge $150 for something a writer they found on eLance will do for $7. But if you're running an Internet business you know is only ever going to make a few thousand dollars a year because it's a tight niche market, it's just never going to be worth your money to spend $20K on a logo, or an equivalent amount on a good communications strategy. Yet these websites are worth launching. So what to do about a logo and design (and copy, and communications)?

Okay, let's look adopt the designer's viewpoint for the businessperson:

Chris, I need a social media campaign. I would like you to write up a strategy, set up some social media accounts, build each of them out to about 5,000 people, and then let me see your work. If I like your strategy, and if I like the people you added to the accounts, I'll pay you $400. If I don't, well, too bad.

You'll be competing against other social media strategists, like Jason Falls, Tara Strong, and Scott Stratten. The winning bid will get $400, while the losing bids will go away empty handed, with nothing to show except some social networks they spent 7 – 10 hours to create and grow.

Interested?

How about this? I need a speaker for an upcoming event. I would like to see a written text of your speech, your PowerPoint slides, and a video of the speech you're going to give. I'm going to choose between you and the other three social media pros I mentioned earlier. Winning bidder gets $700. The other three, well, they'll get to share their slides and the video on SlideShare and YouTube, and get some valuable exposure, which may get them seen by someone else who wants to hire them.

Bullshit.

I'm a business owner, but I'm also a creative type. When I write something, I get paid for it. I don't have the time to do anything on spec, because I've grown beyond the need for possibilities of payment and “exposure.” The time I spend writing on spec is the same time I could be using to write for pay.

I think asking designers to submit themselves to this kind of creative minimum wage is heinous, because we would never ask a businessperson to do it. You would never write a full-blown campaign and start executing it for the possibility of $400. You would never do all the work for a talk only for the possibility of landing it, and you would especially never do it for a fraction of what you're actually worth.

Yet, this is what 99Designs does.

You know, I'm so proud of this comment, I'm beefing it up and posting it to my own blog. Thanks, Chris! (If you publish this comment, do I get $300?)

I had read this article, it is rally very informative. A Perfect Dichotomy is very important and great information given on it. This Dichotomy is very vast subject to discuss and very nicely described.
This process seems really very easy. For write up a strategy or set up some social media accounts, this will really helpful. Low cost does not mean low quality- i totally agree with this sentence.

I thought about this a lot last summer when Anderson's “FREE” came out. Interestingly enough, Ellen Ruppel Shell’s “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” came out the same month. My thoughts are still cloudy – not distilled – but it seems to me that we are going to go through a stretch of time when what most people offer to others in exchange for that roof and food is going to be pretty much worthless.

In business we talk about how there's always someone else willing to go broke faster. Now everyone who wants to make a living in most fields that are not licensed, fields with no bar to entry, has to deal with the vast majority of the bytes, words, or columns of information they'd like to charge for, being offered by someone else for free. The way one competes, it seems, is to offer better and better stuff for free – out-free your competition. The hope is that doing so builds the “know, like, trust, try, buy” stream to end with a few dollars in your pocket. What I’m seeing, however, is that instead of buying, potential customers, driven by their own lack of income, and ever growing amounts of time spent on the web, simply more on to other sources of “free” information and services. The effect really is similar to the traditional downward pull of the underground economy.

99designs works because thousands of people are willing to treat their jobs as if they were taking a trip to the casino. They'll throw hours of their most precious resource, their existence, onto the craps table of life, in hopes they will be chosen. If one extrapolates that backwards, one sees that they have nothing to do with their time that is more valuable, i.e. not working on a design for someone who can afford to pay $20,000 for a logo.

So, we will have a few people at the top of the design field, just like there are a few people at the top of the blog field, who have worked their way up, who make the big bucks. In the meantime the vast majority of humanity is fighting over scraps in the bottom. I'm not sure what the ultimate outcome will be but I do know that it's just getting started and I have a feeling it's going to get quite ugly. I don't see it as good, or bad, it just is. We are, at our base level, not much different than the animals on the Savannah when the water starts drying up. This little issue you brought up is a tiny microcosm of a global issue that has yet to settle.

I was pondering the other night, to take this to a very dark place, exactly how much does stand between life, as we know it, and another “dark age.” I know I've taken this topic way beyond anything necessary or called for when you asked for comments but since I started pondering the concept of infinity as a pre-schooler, it's hard for me to do less. It does seem that great periods of darkness punctuate great periods of light and advancement in our history. The ruins tell us so. Human nature and financial constraints drive people to services like 99designs and I appreciate that. However, I can’t help but wonder exactly how it fits into the greater scheme of things.

For me it was very important that my designer “got it”. She probably spent 3 hours with me (informal diner meetings etc) mind dumping before we got started.

I started with the logo (me, my brand) and from there built other digital assets. I didn't spend $20,000, but it was more than $363. For the price I got concepts, hired artist and many visual assets to go with the logo.

I am so thrilled with my designer. Her guidance was invaluable. She absolutely took my stick figures and made them come to life.

First, I knew my brand was everything and visually it had to be great. I was in it for the long haul and everything it would do stemmed from it. I didn't have $20,000, but I did make healthy investment. I do not regret it.

She is my designer. We will work together again.

BTW: I didn't spend as much on my first business logo, but then again that business I was not very passionate about.