How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
thomvest.com
How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
1–10 of 62 posts
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#2TL;DR: they used spec work design sites.
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#3Not sure where to even start on this one. Spec work sucks, it wastes designer's time and the end product often doesn't turn out great because they have an incentive to spend as little time as possible.
But I have to say, this is even worse. Looking at point #4, they actively went out and tried to get as many designers as possible to do free work for them. From their post:
"The response rate was staggering, with around 85% responding and almost an equal amount actually submitting designs. The most time effective way to do this is to download an auto-text completer which allows you to save a message and quickly populate any document with it by selecting a shortcut."
Congratulations, you just figured out how to minimize your time spent while maximizing the hours wasted by the 'losing' designers. Or, in their own words... "For a minimal amount you are able to tap the creative abilities and talents of a multitude of people across the world. Why pay one designer 10 times more for a product you may not like?"
Edit: Not looking to get into a back in forth here, so I would recommend this to anyone who thinks design contests are a good idea: http://www.no-spec.com/faq
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#4I was aware of crowdsourcing design, but I like how the article outlined each step of their process. Looking forward to the next one about figuring out the message to convey with a site's design.
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#5The article is informative, but I don't find this approach really "ethical".
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#6That's a pretty shady approach for a VC firm. Do they deal with startups in this way too?
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#7Not sure where to even start on this one. Spec work sucks, it wastes designer's time and the end product often doesn't turn out great because they have an incentive to spend as little time as possible. But I have to say, this is even worse. Looking at point #4, they actively went out and tried to get as many designers as possible to do free work for them. From their post: "The response rate was staggering, with aroun…
Hi tbgvi,
Thought the article made it clear, but we specifically went out and got designers we thought were good, especially from competing platforms. In total I believe that it ended up being around 10-15 messages that we sent out. I thought the auto-text completer was a useful tool for things I would be repeating anyway.
Also in the post you will note that we tried to stress giving feedback, if you don't like something you don't waste a designers time and you move on or they will come back with something else.
I understand designer's frustration with crowdsourcing, but this post was for other startup folks who don't/can't spend a great deal on a designer.
Finally, this wasn't a minimal time process. I spent a few hours every day for a few weeks responding, giving feedback, and iterating. It would have been much more simple to offload this to a designer who took care of everything, but at the end of the day I was happy with the result.
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#8Not sure where to even start on this one. Spec work sucks, it wastes designer's time and the end product often doesn't turn out great because they have an incentive to spend as little time as possible. But I have to say, this is even worse. Looking at point #4, they actively went out and tried to get as many designers as possible to do free work for them. From their post: "The response rate was staggering, with aroun…
Whose fault is it if a designer chooses to engage in a contest and they end up spending their time in a losing effort?
We all have to compete but rather than disparage a business owner for being a good steward of their money could you instead present a valid argument for using a designer as opposed to a contest? Some good reasons why a designer, that might hypothetically cost 10x more than a contest, would be better money spent in the long run, would offer a lot of value to this conversation. I feel like the last quote in your post is valid. Why would someone want to pay a lot and possibly get nothing for it? Is that not a waste of the business owner's time and money?
I'm not trolling. As a business owner on a limited budget and with clients in the same boat, I'm genuinely interested in the answer.
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#9The article is informative, but I don't find this approach really "ethical".
I'd second that. It's not about saving $22K, it's about getting people to give things away and devalue themselves as professionals.
Re: How we made a $25,000 website for $3,000
#10Eh, all is fair in war and business. They didn't break any laws, so let's throw fair and ethical out the window.
First off, who is to say this site is a 25K site? Web developer rates are all over the map, you can pretty much pull any number out of your ass in declaring how much your site could have cost to build. I bet I could have found someone who would have charged 50K. ;)
This site was done in only three weeks. That includes the time taken to figure out all this stuff and gather submissions. They also essentially took the design and coded the site themselves, that's going to take a chunk out of the cost. This site wasn't very complex to take that long.
So, you did a lot of the work yourself. That's going to take a big chunk out of the cost. A lot of people aren't willing to do this. Some people just want to deal with one person who is a professional in this industry. People doing work for free aren't industry professionals, they are doing this on the side (or they are bored.)
So... why did it cost you so much then? I bet I could have done it for $1500, but not for someone else. ;)