Archive for November, 2009

November 26, 2009 Posted Under: Tips   Read More

Get your new business noticed! Get a great web design!

If you want your business to be noticed, then a professional graphic design is your best bet. But the main problems that a startup has in creating a great web design or logo design by a great professional is financial budget. The solution to this is hiring freelance graphics designers some of whom are really good and are much cheaper. But then again not all the freelance graphic designers are equally good. Some are hugely experienced in designing while some are straight out of design college. Now the problem becomes whom you should hire? How do you know which designer is great and who is not? What if there could be an option like this : Many designers would work for your project and you will choose the work you like. In this case you never need to worry about how good a graphic designer is! You pay for the work you like and not commit to any one designer in particular! Sounds great isn’t it?  But where will you find so many designers and such a forum that will help you to do this?

With an aim to make this happen, and to provide a forum where freelance graphic designers and startup owners or someone in need of any graphic design job, can work together, ShopForDesigns, an online crowdsourcing website that creates a forum for designers to showcase their work and win new clients was made. The Omaha, United States based crowdsourcing website was built.

The best part about ShopForDesigns is its abundance of choices or options. The concept is wonderful since it eliminates risk for both the parties. Many argue that the crowdsourcing model is killing the design industry since designers not always get paid for their work. At ShopForDesigns this risk is eliminated. All the contests are prepaid. We hold the money. After the contest is over the winning entry gets paid.

One might argue that there is no surety that my design will win. Well yes there is no guarantee that you design will win. But let us just compare this system to the conventional system of graphic design project. Suppose you want to bid for a graphic design job for some company. You have to supply them with a portfolio of your designs to convince them about your designing capabilities. Graphic designers then have to write a proposal for the job at hand. They have to prepare graphic design concepts also called mock-ups and if the client is a local one then designers might even require to visit their offices for the final negotiation. Sometimes even several times. All these cost you time and money my friend. At shopfordesigns you just make up a concept and submit. If you get a good rating you negotiate with the buyer and proceed accordingly. And if the client really likes your concept you win. It has been seen that many designers use this website as a lead generation website. More than 80% of works done on shopfordesigns lead to consequent work for the graphic designers.

The design process begins when some startup or a business owner / entrepreneur wants a graphic design job to be done and posts it on shopfordesigns forum for submissions. As soon as the listing comes alive, top graphics designers from around the glob read it and start drawing up concepts for submissions. The startup owner can expect to receive concepts in about 6 hours or so. Then designs start flowing in steadily.

It is very important that during the lifetime of the contest the startup owner converses with the designers to tell them what he likes in the submitted design concepts and what he doesn’t. This will help him to get what he is looking for in his designs. There is a message board on site to do just this. Another nice feature is the star rating system. Business owners looking for designs, need to rate the submitted design concepts in a scale of 5 stars. This helps the graphic designers to understand if they are moving in the right direction or not.

In this way we have a winner in about 7days. His design concept gets paid. It has been noticed that once the startup business owner chooses a winner, he generally hires that same designer to do his business card, his website etc. So designers win additional work. So shopfordesigns work also as a graphic design lead generation site.

Works at shopfordesigns generally come from small businesses and startups. They have low budgets and are looking for good designers to do their corporate brand. Until recently this was a catch 22 situation but not anymore. ShopForDesigns helps you launch your contest in a jiffy and you get quality concept designs within hours from ace designers from around the globe.

Hence shopfordesigns is the one stop solution for new entrepreneurs or startups with low budget looking for quality graphic design or web design work in low budget.

November 5, 2009 Posted Under: News   Read More

Promote Costs Reduced almost to nothing!

ShopForDesigns has always been open to comments and suggestions from its users (both the project posters and graphic designers) who think it’s a great place to buy quality logo design, website design, or for making their corporate images even more appealing, attractive and persuasive. Moreover brand building is immensely important if you want to build your credibility in the corporate world. Startups with low budgets always come to us and praise the graphic designers on board for their excellent skills and fast turnaround time. What they like about our graphic designers is not only their patience in building a logo or a website template but also their exceptional skill and eye for detail. With their ‘requirement analysis’ skill and professional eye for detail they turn a seemingly boring company logo into a lively, vibrant, appealing work of art that even the best of professional graphic design houses envy… and that too at the most affordable price under the sun! Well enough of beating the drums of our designers… we believe good things don’t need to be highlighted.

What I am here to talk about is that we have already started a free listing of contests and we already have done a blog posting about it. Now what we are here to say is that we have reduced the promote costs of the graphic design projects.

It is a proven fact that a graphic design project draws more entries if it is highlighted. A logo design project of the same value draws more entries if it is listed in Blue colour and is bolded. If you look at the statistics of any freelancing / auction graphic design website you can find this simple fact out. But to avail of this benefit buyers have to shell out a little bit more from their wallets. Previously they had to shell out a bit more but nothing extraordinary. But now, under the new pricing structure, we have made things very cheap and affordable so that lots of startups who are coming to us with their logo design or website template design projects can avail of this feature. Let us elaborate… Our previous pricing structure was like this :

Design Project listed in BOLD : 10USD

Design Project listed in Blue : 20USD

Design Project listed in Blue Bold : 30USD

Design Project listed in Blue and Bold and Highlighted : 40USD

Well we thought that we would give our buyers even a more compelling offer keeping in mind the festive times just ahead of us. Yes we are talking about the Christmas and the New Year that are just round the corner. Keeping in mind the festivities and as a gesture of gratitude to our loyal buyers we have reduced the cost of promoting the projects to an all time low. Promoting your graphics design project has not become even more affordable. The new pricing structure is as follows :-

Design Project listed in BOLD : 5USD

Design Project listed in Blue : 7USD

Design Project listed in Blue Bold : 10USD

Design Project listed in Blue and Bold and Highlighted : 15USD

So now there is nothing to hold you back from promoting your logo design project or website design project. Make your graphic design projects stand out of the crowd in just a fraction of the previous cost! Try posting a design project now!

November 1, 2009 Posted Under: News   Read More

FREE listing of graphics projects — limited period offer

www.shopfordesigns.com opened its doors in September 2009 to the public and is slowly gaining popularity amongst the crowdsourcing community. It has all the features that a normal crowdsourcing website has to offer and more.

It has all normal categories like :-

  • Logo design
  • Website Design,
  • Corporate Identity Design
  • T-shirt Design
  • Twitter background design
  • WordPress theme design

It has thousands of talented graphic designers on board who are passionate to their task from the core. These designers use the message board on ShopForDesigns to converse with the buyer and give them exactly what they want. In one word what they produce is marvelous.

ShopForDesigns.com is already getting lots of hits and has created a buzz in the graphic design outsourcing world. Some of its loyal users are really happy with the output and quality of delivery of the top notch designers that are on board…

We are also seeing the number of people registering on this website by the hour. We have also seen a sharp climb in our alexa rank in this month and it is really giving us a kick.

ShopForDesigns.com also boasts of lowest promote value and it really fetches a lot of design submissions. Ask AK KIDS our contest poster and he will vouch for the leverage that we get by submitting a logo design project which is in Blue and Bold. It immediately catches the attention of the best graphic designers and draws amazing submissions. The difference is very noticeable when you see same priced projects getting different submissions. You immediately understand that it is due to the only reason for the project being highlighted.

Upcoming Attractions : Shopfordesigns.com CEO says : “We are coming up with customized christmas card design category very soon. This is a result of a survey we carried out amongst our buyers who are looking for customized Christmas and new years card design. It is a very good novelty product for corporates. It gives businesses a personalized touch and helps develop a warm bondage with its clients.”

To wrap up ShopForDesigns.com is all geared up for a graphical Christmas and New Years bash with all its users!