I know there are some folks out there who don’t like sites like 99designs, where you are able to put up a contest to have someone design a logo or home page for you and then you get to pick from the best and award the prize.
But for the 4th time out of 5 trys I’m blown away at how well it works for me.
A year ago when we went to launch WizeHive I put out a $300 bid for a logo and got 69 entries, and had at least 5 that I thought would have been acceptable. A month later I put out a $400 bid for a new DreamIt logo and got 122 submissions of which probably 3 to 5 were also great.
A bit later last year we put a bid up for a new DreamIt homepage and offered $850 and only got 33 submissions. A few were really good and we selected one. But it also reinforced a bias that you got many less submissions for a web page then for a logo because quite naturally it takes longer for people to mock up a home page and they are not sure they will win. (I had formed thatbias from when I only got 5 responses to another web site design a year earlier).
So we are currently working on some specialty applications for WizeHive that will be launching soon and have been using a home grown landing page for the last month or so. I decided that despite my bias that 99designs was not great for a home page I thought I’d give it a shot since the risk is < $50 to submit a project. I studied some of the other contests and saw another one where someone indicated “Simple Home Page” layout and had a good response decided since we already had the elements we wanted I’d try to position the project as being a simple one page design.
I picked a middle ground of about $500 for this; more than logos but less than some other web pages; but did not guarantee it; meaning if I didn’t like the designs I did not have to pick a winner. Within a few days I not only had about 15 designs; but more than 1 that I thought was better than our current site. So I went in and guaranteed the contest. This provides more incentive for folks to submit designs because they know someone is going to win…and in turn this took me to a final tally of 127 choices!
I also spent considerable time giving feedback on them until the last day or two; even offering specific suggestions to some of them where I liked the design but wanted some things flipped around.
Anyway, I have not yet picked a final design and may actually run a small contest asking WizeHive followers to help us pick after I narrow it down. But from my perspective the 99designs crowd sourcing concept is a hugely positive value proposition.
