My First Crowdspring Entry and Experience

So far my experience with Crowdspring has been pretty bland. The site seems to work as advertised until you decide to actually put work on it. Uploading the work wasn't a problem at all and everything went as advertised. But the project that I entered has gotten absolutly no feedback at all. The project closes in four days from today, so I guess I'll know then if the buyer decided he likes mine or not for sure. Of course this is just one of their standard projects and not a 'pro' project, but still, I would have thought I would have gotten better feedback from the potential customer. The project has gotten 81 entries from various different sources. I personally think mine is one of the best enteries and deserves some consideration. So this is the downfall of something like Crowdspring; you really have no clue as to how the clients are going to work with you and commuinicate.

So whether or not my experience with this website will ultimately be a good experience or not depends on a lot of variables. I will continue to update my blog as I go along as I will also consider other online freelance opportunities and blog about those as well. My next step with Crowdspring is to try one of their 'pro' projects and see how that turns out. Right now I'm not really optimistic that there will be anything really outstanding coming out of this site, and I'll continue to look for other sites that allow designers to get work without a ton of hassle. It is my opinion that finding work in a field such as graphic design shouldn't be similar to dentistry or another profession isn which pulling teeth is a major source of income.

Why Crowdspring is beneficial to some designers

There have been several harsh criticisms of the crowdspring.com business model as a way for designers to get work. Weather these concerns are at all legitimate is subjective as each of those who have come out against Crowdspring from what I can tell are designers themselves so they are by no means objective in their analysis of the topic about which they speak. Of course for them, since they are so strongly opposed to \"spec work\" as they call it, I would say that they should not engage in it.

However they strongly advise other designers to stay far away from this type of work. And that is where we part ways. To tell Crowdspring that they should be ashamed of their business model doesn't make sense. Afterall, there are those for whom the Crowdspring business model is ideal. For example, you may have a designer that just graduated from college and is now working at McDonalds but defiintly hasn't given up their dreams to be a designer. Crowdspring allows such a person to work on a portfolio and at the same time learn how to interact with potential clients and possibly even make some money at the same time.