The Pricing Wormhole

[blueocto]

Whilst browsing graphicpush.com I came across this article, and it had a very good point...

The client comes to you as the expert in design, just as they go to a lawyer for knowledge in copyright laws, or an accountant for expertise in business taxes. You are a service professional, so bill like one. Resorting to drastic price cuts, exorbitant promises and flashy references are the tactics of a desperate salesperson. And if that’s the position you’ve been put in as a designer, perhaps its time to reevaluate your career.

An experienced designer or design group that resorts to cutthroat schemes is as bad as a designer out of school that doesn’t know what to charge for freelance work. It cheapens the industry as a whole. It tarnishes the professional image, and no other service industry allows for such nonsense.

So stick that in your pipe and smoke it lol

[Toon]

Agree 100% but designers won't stick together to enforce this. Example somebody signs up to the forum offering low paid work 80% of people will tell them where to go, 10% of people will reply offering help and 10% of people will pm the person offering so nobody else knows they're a sell out!

[blueocto]

Exactly! Its so stupid... the article mentioned the job sites Elance and ContractedWork, so I had a look on to see what the crack was.... there was a client asking for a website make to look like the clone of pringoo.com and had a budget less than $500 / £250.
i was going to signup just to give stick, but the idiot designers pay an annual fee just to bid on projects that pay them pennies anyway.
Nutters, all of them!

[Cwilk]

Originally Posted by blueocto

Exactly! Its so stupid... the article mentioned the job sites Elance and ContractedWork, so I had a look on to see what the crack was.... there was a client asking for a website make to look like the clone of pringoo.com and had a budget less than $500 / £250.
i was going to signup just to give stick, but the idiot designers pay an annual fee just to bid on projects that pay them pennies anyway.
Nutters, all of them!

Blue....I was one of the nutters who was a member of Elance for about 3 years. I left Elance about 4 years ago and I have several great clients from it that I still do regular work for. Not all of the clients want to pay nothing for junk. There are several who want professionals and are willing to pay.

[Lee CGI]

I like to work with clients by presenting previews multiple idea sketches and research what the client does and then hand over a drawn from scratch design that they can own the copyright on. So theirs no way I can design as cheap as these online places offering logos for £30 delivered in half a day.

So you got companies that do logos with clipart or a copied design within one hour.

Then you got the business owner that comes to these forums offering a design competition to improve his business marketing & proffits for free. Sometimes your lucky and he will ofer £10 or chocolate.

Then you got good designers competing with the cheap online clipart logo sites which drives down the value of design for all designers.

Best solution is to educate business owners they just dont understand how long original design takes to think up and then create. They don't understand that the use of clipart in design means they cant own the copyright on what they pay for. They need to realise that £30 for a design means only one our will be spent on their design and that copied design will cost them more in the longterm when they have to bin all their print due to copyright laws.

[Cwilk]

I hate when clipart is used. The client won't know that they can't copyright their logo and they lose out.

....oh, and Lee CGI.....do you have a subscription to HDRI 3D magazine? Just curious.

[DownFallX]

Agree 100%. It a cheap and low blow way to try to get more clients.