Do Elance, Guru and Crowdspring kill the market for freelance designers?
Jeremy Tuber of Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks has written a great review based on a recent article in Forbes magazine telling business owners how to cut their design costs using sites like Crowdspring, Elance and Guru.
The article was written in Forbes on February 16th called, “The Creativity of Crowds,” by Christopher Steiner.
Jeremy says that the problem is not that these sites exist - they have been around for years, but that they are creating a cult of “amateur design is acceptable”. Add to this the need for all businesses to save money and professional designers start to feel the squeeze on rates and income.
However, Jeremy counters this by saying that ultimately good design wins because it gets a better result for the client.
Our view is that professional design beats amateur design hands down purely from a business perspective. The way for professional designers to maintain their competitive edge is to be hyper-efficient. Use good systems and processes to produce great design in less time. This means that they can choose to increase their margins, reduce their charge rates or spend more time finding and winning new business.
Good designers who are INEFFICIENT designers lose twice. They make less money and they don’t serve their clients well.