What a freaking waste of time.
I needed a logo for my Maria’s Guides website and line of books. I wanted something simple, something that communicated the brand as well as the fact that the “guides” were in print, video, and ebook formats.
I have no design skills. None. I know what I like when I see it and I can often modify something that’s close to what I like to make it more in line with what I need. (That’s basically how I “design” my websites: I start with a theme and modify it.)
At first, I put a request on Twitter for a book cover design. That was a mistake. I got a bunch of responses from strangers linking to their portfolios or just promising they could do the job. (I created it myself based on a few other book cover designs I found online; it’s okay for now.)
Trying Elance
I decided I’d need a pro for the logo design. My budget was under $500, preferably under $300. I remembered hearing about Elance and decided to give it a try.
Elance is a Web site that connects freelancers with people needing freelance work done. It seems like a good idea and I know there are plenty of designers there. So I set up an account and used the “logo” template to submit a request for proposals.
I should have realized that something was wrong when I got six bids within about fifteen minutes. Although I’d set up my budget for less than $500, the bids ranged from $60 to $149. Four bids were from (supposedly) U.S. based companies, one was from India, and one was from Argentina. Most of them linked to logos or business packages they’d (supposedly) designed for other clients. Most were obviously canned responses that showed no indication that they’d read my request for proposals. LIke this:
Hello,
Thanks for reviewing our proposal.
We understand your requirement for creation of logo design. Plz check our portfolio attached.Also view our elance portfolio :
[URL redacted]
or this (supposedly from a U.S. based company):
Hi and Thank you to review our bid!!
This Bid includes:
1) 7 Initial concepts of logo. (Designed by 6 different designers)
2) A complementary Stationery concept (includes Business Card, Letter Head, and Envelope)
3) EMAIL SIGNATURE without any extra cost. (100% NO COST)
4) Unlimited Color schemes of selected design.
5) Original Copy right files. (All rights reserved by you)
It should be noted that all I asked for was a logo.
I decided to give it a try by picking one of the (supposedly) U.S. based companies that submitted a proposal that didn’t seem canned. Their samples were in line with what I was looking for. The price was very good — only $65 — so I figured I wouldn’t lose much if they completely sucked.
On accepting the bid, the first thing they did was send me a list of information they needed. This was the same exact information I had already provided using the Elance template for a logo request.
So apparently, they hadn’t read my request either.
With my response, I added:
PLEASE do not respond to me with canned communications. I have extremely low tolerance for people who waste my time by asking for information they already have. I realize there’s not much money in this, but that’s not MY fault. If you can’t treat me like a REAL client, let’s end this relationship now.
We got past that and they started submitting designs. The first batch had five. (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to show them; I haven’t paid for this yet and, chances are, they’ll use these same designs again for another sucker.) I liked one of them — it featured a graphic representation of a book emerging from a square — and made some suggestions:
…is there a way that the graphic part can indicate both books and electronic media? Maybe a 3-part icon that includes a representation of a book, an ebook (or tablet computer with writing on it), and a movie? For the movie, the old-fashioned filmstrip kind of thing might work.
“Designing” with Clipart
They submitted two more designs. They were dramatically different and very complex. But worst of all: they looked like they had been assembled by copying and pasting clipart. Clipart drawn from different perspectives and in different styles. I started to get a bad feeling.
I wrote back, telling them it looked like clipart. The response:
These are victor file, but if you don’t like them we will send you more revision.
Ah, yes. I know the U.S. education system is pretty crappy right now, but that’s not the kind of English I expect to get from a native speaker. I began wondering where the company was really based.
The next logo design was closer to what I could use. It included the three icons representing books, video, and ebooks. But the style of each icon was dramatically different. I had to look at the video representation under magnification to figure out what it was. And the ebook representation was just plopped on top of its frame with no attempt to make it look as if it were emerging. And, of course, all three icons appeared to be drawn from a different perspective, so they just didn’t go well together. More clipart.
Among my comments to try to fix this one up, I said:
The second panel doesn’t look like film. Consult this link http://www.jeffjonesillustration.com/[redacted] for something closer to what I envisioned. A reel of film with a strip of film coming out.
I should note here that the image I linked to as an example is one of many copyrighted images by illustrator Jeff Jones. Mr. Jones sells the rights to his artwork for use as stock images. I did not buy this image; I was just using it as an example.
Apparently, the “designers” I’d hired thought that they could use this copyrighted image in my logo. In the next revision, that exact image, scaled to fit, was part of the logo. They’d also managed to completely misunderstand my instructions for the ebook reader image in the third panel of the logo.
It was pretty clear that:
- They had no real design skills.
- They had no artistic ability.
- They heavily relied on clipart to create logos.
- They likely didn’t understand English enough to follow instructions.
Yes, I Know that You Get What You Pay For
Now I know what you’re saying: You get what you pay for. But understand that I was willing to pay more. This isn’t the first logo I’ve had designed — the others cost more. I picked this “design” company based not on the fee but on their proposal and samples. I don’t know where the samples came from, but it’s pretty clear to me that the people I hired did not design them.
By this point, I was fed up. This had been going on for a week and I was at the point where I dreaded opening my next email from them. I wrote:
I’m trying to understand why this is so difficult for you folks. Do the people working on this project read and speak English?
First of all, you CANNOT use the film clipart I linked to as AN EXAMPLE because it is copyrighted. If I use that in my logo, I will get sued. You should KNOW this.
Second, when I said that the tablet computer representation should have writing on it like an ebook, I didn’t mean to put the word “ebook” on it. I meant using lines of fake writing so that it looked as if it were showing an ebook. Also, laying a rectangle on top of a square does not match the design elements of the first frame “book” which is emerging from the frame.
Clearly this is NOT working out. I cannot understand how you folks have gotten good reviews unless the people you worked for were satisfied by your use of clipart to create “custom” logos. I don’t need to pay someone to do that. I can do that myself.
I cannot use what you’ve created and I’m tired of going back and forth with you on this. What an incredible waste of my time. I will contact Elance directly on how to resolve this issue.
And I got online with Elance and sent them a request for help:
I put in a request for a logo design. I got a bunch of very low bids, most of them from organizations that obviously did not read what I was looking for. I picked one I thought knew what I wanted.
For the past week we have been going back and forth on this. I’m supposed to be getting a custom design and what I’m getting is cut and paste clipart. When I offered a link to a sample image on the Web, the “designer” used THAT copyrighted image — if I included that in my logo, I could get sued!
These people are obviously amateurs, have no talent, and cannot follow instructions. I want to end my contract. I am willing to pay 50% of the agreed upon fee to cover the work done. I cannot use the logo as is and will have to pay a REAL designer to come up with something I can use. Please help me resolve this so I can move on and get the logo I need.
I’m still waiting to hear back from them. Believe me, 50% is generous for the aggravation I’ve been dealing with. What I’m willing to pay for is the idea, which I helped them develop.
[Update: They've agreed to the 50%. I guess people like this will take any money they can get.]
Apparently Freelancers Know Better
Now when all this started going south, I tweeted:
If this Elance experience is indicative of what it’s like to work with all Elance service providers, this will be my LAST time using Elance.
A Twitter friend tweeted back:
I tried providing service on elance, but would always get undercut by clueless people from india.
So that’s what it’s all about? A web-based service that leads you to believe you’re helping out local designers who are trying to build a client base. Instead, you’re sending business overseas to “design factories” manned by clipart manipulation experts.
What do you think? Do you have any experience — good or bad — with Elance? I’d like to hear a story with a happy ending.
Hi Maria –
Unfortunately, I think your experience is all too common with sites like this.
I feel like sites like elance take true skills like web design and turn them into a commodity, competing only on price.
Those that do well on elance respond via automated methods, don’t care about the client, and must turn work over rapidly to make money at the low prices they offer.
Since clients don’t necessarily know better, they assume that they’re getting bids from people who are qualified, speak the client’s language (English or otherwise), and who want to do a good job.
Sites like elance are based on a model that seems to work in other industries. For example, you can go to BankRate and compare interest rates on CDs or mortgages. As a customer, you win, since you can choose the product that works best for you with the best rate. However, in order to be listed in BankRate, you have to be… well, a bank or another financial institution with a certain accreditation.
This is the piece that’s missing from elance. Anyone can wake up in the morning and decide they’re a designer, because they figured out how to move clipart around in Corel Draw. What separates them from people who went to art school or have years of professional experience as a graphic designer? Nothing, except price. And since clients want the lowest price, only the lowest priced providers can thrive in this environment. That means those with talent are unfortunately looking elsewhere, where they can differentiate on something other than price and “A+++++++++ OUTSTANDING DESIGNER” reviews.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Jen
Thanks for helping me understand a few things, mainly:
This is common on Elance.
I was one of the clients who “didn’t know any better” (but I do now).
I wasn’t being the client from hell. (I did start to wonder if I was being unreasonable.)
You’re right: Elance does need someone to review and approve freelancers before listing them. They also need to check the samples these people are posting. In all honesty, they fooled me. There’s no way they could have created the samples they claimed they’d designed. Those were original, fresh designs. What I got was juggled clipart. I feel conned.
I’m glad there wasn’t a lot of money on the line. It’s just such a pain in the butt to have to wait to see how this turns out and whether I need to start from scratch.
Live and learn, huh?
I’ve had a few positive experiences with Elance, especially with hiring a cartoonist for several personal projects. What I found was that I had to review his portfolio on his website; that gave me a good idea of the type of work he did.
Of course I got bids from people overseas. I only looked seriously at bids that had websites with a portfolio of work that met my requirements.
I wanted to award the contract to a U.S. based company. I wanted the work to go to an American, since we’re having so much trouble with our economy here. I figured that every little bit could help. Silly me. Believing the little icon that claimed the company was U.S. based.
I did look at what was supposed to be their portfolio and I liked what I saw. But at this point, I don’t think it really represented THEIR work. As I mentioned elsewhere, I feel conned.
Glad you had a better experience, though.
Elance like other sites of its type works on the basis of user based reputation. https://www.elance.com/q/hire-talent/find-contractors-freelancers
Did you check out the reputation scores and reviews of the person you employed
Yes, I checked their portfolio and client reviews.
It’s always hard to tell what you are going to end up with with services like that. sometimes things go wrong :(
Very wrong.
I assume the company that did the Flying M logo is over your budget. (By the way, great logo). Do you remember how you found that company? Also, it might be worth asking some small businesses, that have a nice logo, who they used. Small businesses usually have a small budget for things like this, and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind giving you that information.
A friend of mine did the Flying M logo. AND the Wickenburg Airport logo. In each case, we knew exactly what we wanted and he just drew it. In this case, I had no ideas at all and hoped a professional designer would be handling it. But what the hell do I expect for $65?
I went with Elance to save time. It was a learning experience that, fortunately, didn’t cost an arm and a leg.
I have to say I agree and disagree with some of the views here.
I am a regular Elance service provider and have been for about a year or so now. I have been a part time freelance developer / trainer for many years and recently gone full time so currently about 20-30% of my income is actually from Elance.
I have very good ratings, I have good reviews and generally get on well with clients. My experience brings me to the conclusion that Elance can’t sustain my income thats a fact I know, I have multiple income sources and generally the work I do on Elance each month ends up being more of a bonus. I have a good reputation and clients seem to like that when they get my proposals, I never do stock proposals as that’s not what I would want if it where me asking for work to be done.
I think my current rate of return on proposals is something like 1 in 15 jobs I apply for I get. I have some recurring clients which is great for my profile.
My biggest issue is price. I get undercut all the time and 9/10 I just can’t compete therefore I don’t apply if the average bid is crazy low for the project. Recent one for instance 5 customer Joomla templates needed within 48 hours average bid was like $80. I can’t compete. Often when I do get through to clients who have the need to ask me “why are you so much higher than this guy from Asian or this guy from China” etc etc my response is always – come back to me when your project goes under and they can’t provide the work and quality you want for that low price.
Elance is a double edged blade, great for people who don’t have connections or confidence to get in-touch with a designer / developer via their site without 3rd party reviews to get a true gauge of how good the supplier is. And the other side, the developers who are high quality, western Europe and US / Canada competing with just as high quality suppliers from other countries where the price they bid reflects a decent income for them.
End of the day Elance is great for some people not for others, such is life. Rant over :)
I think what you’re saying is probably very true and very fair. I seem to have gone in with different expectations. I was shocked by how low ALL the bids were. I guess if I’d put in a higher dollar amount, I might have found better quality providers. But how could I be sure? Elance obviously doesn’t screen their providers. What’s to stop a bad provider from bidding high, showing off someone else’s work as his, and suckering people like me into working with them?
I’ve learned my lesson.
Someone else suggested 99designs.com. That site uses a sort of “contest” method so you pick the design instead of the designer. I’ll try that next time.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.
In a way Elance leave it for you to screen your choosing of a service provider.
Elance require all providers to take an entry exam, they also provide the largest testing system for providers to take tests in order to prove themselves.
For instance I took several Joomla tests each about 40 minutes long 40-50 multiplechoice questions and these are complicated questions mind you.
Once I pass I can show and prove my knowledge on my profile.
Granted Elance also allows you to “self assess” so you can choose how you rate your self but the difference between self and actual tested ratings is shown.
So its partly down to the user who is going to hand over cash to check out the providers profile to the fullest, even ask for external references if possible to.
I think on the whole its a great way to get work done but yes as with everything there is top end and bottom end of quality just a shame you got a bad experience.
I really find it difficult to believe that the people I worked with were tested by Elance or anyone else. Maybe they just test programmers or people that can be tested with machine-gradeable tests?
But what’s to stop someone from taking and passing a test and then hiring cheap labor to do all the real work?
People should try their local college.
I’ve tried that twice. No luck. I was not willing to wait weeks or months for a student to get around to working on it.
Hi Maria,
I am working as a freelance Joomla web site developer and I offer my services through the Freelancer.com web site. I am working through Freelancer web site for almost 5 years now and during that time I have to admit I’ve been in the situation many times that my bid was rejected because of companies from India and their insanely low bids.
It is true that such companies place very low bids but in the same time they offer very lousy final results. I had and still have many long term clients that started by accepting services from companies from India. After long struggle and very bad experience they contacted me in the end and stayed with me as a longterm clients.
My point here is that there are many and I mean really many companies and freelancers that just try to rip off potential service buyers but in the same time there are also some bright examples of freelancers that are honest and will do all to provide good if not the best service to their clients.
I know that this sounds like bragging and that I maybe have too high opinion about my self as a service provider but I am more than certain that my long term clients would tell you the same about me :-)
My final suggestion is to try to give opportunity to some other company, avoid companies from India (no matter how cheap they are) because you will get what you paid for and don’t ever agree on paying even smallest amount until you are completely satisfied with the final result. Oh and be sure not to pay anything in advance, use escrow payments and dispute freelancers’ work if you are not satisfied with it.
Regards,
Igor
I’m sure you’re right about this. I just seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot with these folks. But I’ve learned my lesson. This type of hiring is not for me.
Good luck to you!
Unfortunately your experience is extremely common on these types of websites. I am a freelance web designer and always looking for work. I decided to check out http://www.odesk.com and http://www.freelancer.com to see if I could bid on a few projects and gain some business. It was impossible to compete against the rates from the smaller third world countries so I gave up. I’m struggling to pay my bills while there are tons of opportunities handed over to people that have no clue what you’re asking them to do and basically act like robots. It’s an absolute shame and many Contractors like yourself think you’re going to help out one of the little local guys, but end up feeding the economy of some other country. Glad to know that you backed out of it when you realized your ideas weren’t becoming a reality. Kudos to you and I hope you helped out a REAL designer in need.
And ditto to what Igor said. There are freelancers out there providing outstanding service. I’m not one to brag either, but I believe service is the #1 priority with my clients and my testimonials speak for themselves. I just wish I was a bit more successful like Igor when it came to those particular websites.
I’ve spoken with more than a handful of clients who hired ‘someone’ from some unknown country to ‘design’ a website and code it for them recently. (One, a rather large company I might add) Somehow the process gets to the ‘almost there’ point and then the ‘designer’ skips. Money in hand, gone. Bad Code, awful art, .psd files full of junk and the client is left holding the bag. Scams exist almost everywhere in this world sadly. And I’m sure I don’t need repeat, the phrase, Buyer BEWARE. I’m sorry you were taken to the ‘cleaners’ so to speak. I’ve lots of great graphic artists who work with me. I am American, I speak english and mostly I totally understand client needs.. If there’s ever anything you need, feel free to contact me. If its not something I can handle, I’m more than happy to direct you to those great folks I work with. Or just give you a clue where to find what you need. That’s how I do business.. for the good or bad of it.. there’s just no need in taking people down the merry path.. best of luck…
October 4 Update: I’m noting this update here so folks who have subscribed to the comments will see it.
I was called by the folks at Elance. They told me that my entire bid had been refunded. They also agreed that the provider in question was not following Elance guidelines and had its account suspended. The caller wanted to talk to me at length about it, but I cut him short. I told him that there was nothing he could say that would make me take back what I’d written here and that I would never use Elance again. Period. I also told him that to prolong the conversation would waste his time and mine. Then I thanked him for calling, wished him a nice day, and hung up. Seriously: Haven’t they wasted enough of my time?
So no, this experiment didn’t cost me a dime. It did, however, cost something more valuable: time. Lesson learned.
I hope this post will continue to attract Elance users — both clients and providers — to share their real life stories. While I’ve been assured that Elance CAN work for people, I remain unconvinced. Perhaps other people’s experiences can make a difference here.
Thanks for reading and commenting here.
My experiences are pretty much similar to what other posted already; and as a freelancer I am still trying to work my way up in elance.
However I was wondering how can you tell when bids are placed for a listing aren’t ones the provider himself posts by having multiple accounts just to lower the cost of the work. That’s in addition to the competitive offers due to the living cost differences (east and west).
There is something else with respect to the skills of the freelancers. Elance has multiple-choice tests for various framework and web related disciplines. Although they’re basic they’re better than nothing. Now I would typically target a couple of frameworks when I bid there and to my surprise, almost all of the bidders don’t even list these frameworks as part of their past experience. I don’t know if the providers bother to check profiles or if they even know about them.
I feel that I was misled by the bidders. I’ll never go back and never recommend Elance to anyone I know. I think any freelancer would be better looking for work the usual way: advertising, building a client base, word of mouth. The designer I got to redo the job was recommended by a friend.
I do some work at Elance and all I can add is that those fake workers hurt not only contractors but also the honest workers. Mind also the fake contractors, often from India too, that are commonly the fake workers posting cheap jobs to resell or to try to get answers to some job they won and can’t do.