Show HN: A better elance just for designers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A better elance just for designers

pixelfold.com

30 pointsjoaobatalha32 comments

My biggest problem with hiring designers like this is that it encourages designing for other designers, rather than for the customer. I want a designer that prioritizes something that's easy to use and obvious, rather than something that screenshots well for Dribbble. Sometimes those two goals can align, but not always.

I think you can solve that by taking into account customer feedback when curating the designers. That would for sure allign interests.

That suggests that our clients know smart and usable design when they see it. I actually think they're half of the problem.

Maybe what your clients want isn't high design, but good design delivered on time, within budget, and incorporating the feedback they were given.

The way I see it, a site like this can help you get an initial selection of 10-20 "good for Dribbble" designers. It's then your job to pick the one that's also capable of making something that's easy to use, or rather that works well for your own needs.

In other words, these services may not be able to magically find the perfect match for you, but they can at least get you halfway there.

If you are reading this and would actually like to hire a proven designer today, take a look at https://scoutzie.com.

We have a fabulous curated group of designers, many of whom are ready to start today. You can can browse through their portfolio work and past client reviews.

Send messages to as many matching designers are you like; work with the one that matches you best. More on how Scoutzie works here - https://scoutzie.com/how-scoutzie-works/for-clients

Cheers!

ps. I am the founder, so feel free to ask me any questions.

How do you feel about http://99designs.com, in particular the competition model in regards to design?

I've personally used them a few times with vary levels of success. It is particular useful for lightweight projects such as logo designs.

I used 99designs to get a book cover designed and I was very happy with the results. My designer was responsive, friendly, and made a wonderful design that went above and beyond what I was expecting.

However, I was unhappy with how little the designer actually received. I paid $799 to run the competition, and the winning designer only got $387! Charging >50% commission seems highly exploitative, especially when all the designers who don't get selected receive nothing at all despite spending spending time creating designs.

See my comment to the person above, /re why competitions are soul-sucking experiences for designers.

Also, to your point about charging 50%+. Word is, 99Designs used to do very well, up until the point when the founder took on a huge VC investment and left the company. I guess since their business model is pretty much tapped out, they figured that raising margins would fix the slow growth.

I both despise and admire 99designs. Let me tell you why.

From the point of view of being a business, they did a very good job. They went for the lowest end of the market, where at a typical price point on 99d, clients don't require a lot of hand-holding. Instead, the illusion of value is delivered to clients by the fact that many designers compete to create something for you. They have captured the cheap-and-fast market well.

From the point of creating value, however, I am really not a big fan of 99d. I do know some people who had some level of success there, but I know a lot more who spent money only to get back some very crappy results.

The mechanics of a cheap marketplace simply don't allow for value. Designers have no incentive to spend time working for you, because the odds of them getting paid are really low. They are, in fact, incentivized to produce the bare minimum at the fastest speed possible.

At the end of the day, you may feel like 20 people worked for you and one was the winner, but in reality, you only got the minimum attention and effort.

I wrote a little more on this topic before, in case you're interested: https://medium.com/startup-shenanigans/66896bbf21da

I showed it to my wife who is a account manager at a branding / design firm. She is someone who would be a potential user of the site as someone looking for a designer.

Her impression was that the site made her sign up and then provided no value. She showed me a very plain looking page that just said "I am looking for a designer." Now she is worried that the site is going to spam her forever.

Hope that feedback helps.

They have a waiting list right now for people looking to hire designers. I know the team and I can assure you they have no intentions of spamming you.

I don't mean to offend but your sites theme looks like something I could pickup for $10 on Themeforest. Consider making it easier for users to see the way the system works, examples and use cases, as well as success stories (I recognize you are currently new).

Additionally, consider changing your front page video to someone actually designing something.

Also use margin-bottom: 0 on your about page to eliminate evil whitespace!

Dear Pixelfold team, the graph icon above "2. The community votes" on the site looks like someone's showing a middle finger! You may want to change it, considering the impression you want to create as a community of top designers.

And the pencil icon above #3 "Great projects find you" looks like a penis. Sorry, but I looked over the page and definitely saw a graph and a piece of paper/pencil. I think there are a LOT of icons and illustrations that we can look at and see something unintended (not always a bad thing!)but just because this happens doesn't mean the design in question is bad.

Sounds like a good idea. We used to spend lot of time on dribbble and other websites and its really difficult to figure out which designers are good without wasting weeks... How does the community curates?

I am not the creator, I posted this because we spent way too much time looking for a designer on dribbble, behance, and elance. Users look at the applications and then vote on whether the designer should be admitted

I would recommend www.folyo.me. I posted a job there recently and got 20 high quality leads.

> "Posting a project on Folyo costs $99." Is a bit of a turn-off for small projects where design cost will likely only be $400-500.

That's actually on purpose. We try to encourage larger projects with a higher budget, because we don't want to compete with 99designs and other similar sites at the lower end of the market.

That could probably work for developers.

All the freelance sites I use have the option to link to github, stackoverflow and others, but not do anything with that.

Can you also make a better elance/odesk just for programmers? Seriously; elance isn't it and the average hourly rate on there is about $10.

Is this possible? I get the impression that any such websites will always simply draw such rates, because that's what the market is willing to pay. I'm not talking about the market in general. I'm talking about the market that would be attracted to browse such websites. Anyone who's willing to pay more, they do things like browse github profiles. No?

I don't know any better than you. But my guess is that if you set a minimum hourly rate and also had peer reviewed contractors, that you would attract clientele willing to pay more.

The self-curation is a great idea. It's something we want to implement on our own find-a-designer site (Folyo) down the road.

Thanks for Folyo. It was my first time hiring a designer and I am very happy with the results.

Thanks, glad to hear that!

How would you go about preventing elitism from creeping in, given its self-curating nature?

I think that the self-curating aspect is probably better at preventing elitism than an invite based system. That way it is not so much about who you know but more about how good you are.

Potentially true, though I would imagine it depends on the size of the initial pool. Otherwise, if its small, I think you'll see bias in the selection of the early members which will carry forward.

What's wrong with elitism? Isn't that exactly what you'd want for such a site?

Does it work for individual designers only or design firms can apply as well?

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