8 ms·

Assuming it takes you at least 1-2 hours per design (and even with mad photoshop skillz it's unlikely it'd be much shorter than that), you're probably better of

• steveklabnik 16y ago
  Or portfolio building.
  • earnubs 16y ago
    Please don't build a portfolio based on work you spent 2 hours or less on.
    • steveklabnik 16y ago
      Who says he's spending two hours or less? Normally, you'd spend hours on a portfolio for free. Now he's making a small amount.
      • earnubs 16y ago
        True, but given his advertising and rate I would imagine he'd be busy enough. And yes, you spend hours on a portfolio for free, free from the pressure to do inane, boring corporate work for example. I mean, at the end of the day it's just advice, but I don't imagine there are many designers would agree this is a good thing. Entrepreneurs, maybe; designers, no.
      • byoung2 16y ago
        Who says he's spending two hours or less? If he spends 1-2 hours on a design, that's $7.50-$15 per hour. Any longer and he wouldn't be making enough to be worth his time, even in the Philippines or India. For a true portfolio, you'd want better designs than 1-2 hour quickies
        • steveklabnik 16y ago
          If he's trying to build up a portfolio of work, he'd normally be doing it for free, why would he be trying to make market rates? You're assuming that this is someone building a living from this.
          • byoung2 16y ago
            But if he spends more time on the early projects (say, 10 hours each to showcase his best work), eventually he will have to cut down the time per project or increase the price to make it profitable. In that case, he would Need complete rebranding, which would be tough, since people would know him as the cheap design guy. If he were just after the portfolio, he should design 10 designs on spec and put them on a site that pitches high end design from the start.
            • steveklabnik 16y ago
              It's not that tough. Does this site say who he is? Or what he's doing? He could drop this next week and nobody'd know the difference. You're assuming that he's going to keep this domain and brand to build a later business. This doesn't have to be forever.
          • anigbrowl 16y ago
            No, it's not done for free. It's an investment of time designed to earn a return. The value of that time is supposed to be included in the price charged to the client. 'Doing it for free' is about giving value, not the inability to get paid.
        • araneae 16y ago
          It's possible that maybe he's only spending an hour a piece on these, but he might go back to them later and build on them more for a portfolio. It's good to make a bunch of quick and diverse designs just to see what happens.
    • symptic 16y ago
      His portfolio should be relative to what he wants to do in the future. If he intends to do full-scale designing, then of course he should focus on getting that into his portfolio. But if he intends on doing quick, small design deals, this is perfect. Time invested is not a measure of quality.
    • rokhayakebe 16y ago
      Interesting. Can you look at any logo or webpage and tell how long the designer spent on the mockup?
• siong1987 16y ago
  I don't know where this guy comes from. But, USD15/hour is a very high rate in many countries. Or, he is just trying to build up his portfolio and get his name out there. This seems like a very good approach to attract people attention.
  • jefflinwood 16y ago
    Looks like he's in Brazil from his paypal page. Not sure about the cost of living there, but that's probably a decent wage for a lot of people there.
    • marcofloriano 16y ago
      I´m from Brazil and i already have stablished contact with him. You see here, $15 per hour is a good deal for a beginner designer. If he works 8 hours per day, he can make $120 bucks. In 20 days (avarage working month here), It´s a $2.400 or R$4.000,00. For somebody starting his professional life, around 24 ou 25 years old or even less, IT`S A KICK ASS MONEY !
    • golfga 16y ago
      This is actually a decent wage in Brazil. When I lived there (15 years ago) minimum wage was equivalent to $100 a month.
      • andersonfreitas 16y ago
        But it's completely different if the person works in the IT industry. I do live in Brazil (Sao Paulo), and I can't hire a GOOD web designer for my company paying less than $3.000 USD/month (R$ 5K). Here, an experienced designer can easily ask $5K USD/month for working fulltime.
        • ericb 16y ago
          Out of curiousity, are people with these jobs considered high status in Brazil? Is the profession held in high esteem in the sense that being a Doctor in the US is? That seems like a lot of money compared to the median salary, and I'm trying to imagine what impact salary discrepancies like that would cause.
• jacquesm 16y ago
  In Brazil a $ goes a bit further than in the US.
  • notyourwork 16y ago
    Can we quantify "a bit"? How much further?
    • elomar 16y ago
      Price of a Big Mac in USA: $3.73 Brazil: $5.19 (Big Mac index, http://www.oanda.com/currency/big-mac-index http://www.oanda.com/currency/big-mac-index) Jokes aside, in Brazil you need ~$1000/month to live* in a big city, ~$700 in a smaller one, ~$500 as a broken college student. (live* as in small apartment, internet, public transportation, entertainment but no luxury).
    • Aqua_Geek 16y ago
      I spent 2 years in the greater São Paulo area ('05-'07). The exchange rate went from about 2.7 Reais : 1 USD when I got there to about 2.1 when I left. I lived in an apartment off the beach in Praia Grande for a few months. Rent was about R$650 (~$300 US) for a little 2 bedroom. I met a number of people who lived on less than R$300/mo (granted, that was in some of the poorer areas). Lunch in the financial district (where I spent about a year) was ~R$10 (for a pretty good lunch - chicken, rice, vegetables, and a drink). Most American fast food restaurants, however, had prices comparable to the US (McDonald's dollar menu items were about R$2.50, it was R$30 for a pizza at Pizza Hut, etc).
• rgoddard 16y ago
  Although given that this seems to be run as an experiment, so far it seems to be rather successful. Granted, in the long term it might not be sustainable, but for the short term it can provide a number of benefits. First of all the designer will be getting lots of practice and making a number of contacts while building up a good portfolio of examples. Also the low price makes it a low risk for anyone trying it out, so it is the type of experiment they can be tried with little cost and quickly. I would find it interesting to see what the designer ends up doing as a result of this experiment.
• tlrobinson 16y ago
  I'd rather do something I enjoy for slightly less money than get an office job or flip burgers.
  • anigbrowl 16y ago
    You must have very cheap rent. If you don't ask for money for what you do, then you are saying that what you do is worthless. You probably don't actually believe that, and the only reason to sell your work for less than the most basic labor is because you don't know how to get paid properly. But customers see your pricing and conclude that designers do not need to be paid even the normal minimum for other kinds of work. If you keep working like this, you will find yourself unable to ever get a design job that pays well. Everyone who calls you will do so because you are cheap. When you go to visit clients who have money to spend, they will not want to hire you. Not because their is anything wrong with your design; but because they are not designers, and so they will try to estimate the quality of your work by the visibility of your financial success. If they notice nothing that suggests you can make money, then they will assume that you can't, and they will assume that the reason you can't is because your designs are no good, and hire someone else. Later, when you want to get married or have a family or just enjoy a better standard of living, but you can not afford to do so because you undervalued your work, you will realize that you designed yourself into poverty. It's true that some very rich/successful people dress or act like they don't care about money. This is because they have so much money that they don't have to care about what clients think. They have agents who take care of all that annoying business stuff for them. Agents only work for people whose work can be sold for high prices, because agents only get 15%, on average. A lot of creative people fall into this trap, I have made this mistake on some occasions. It is a bad pattern, for you and also for your colleagues in the same profession. Also, it's insulting to people who work in offices or flip burgers. Maybe they would like to work at something creative, but when you price your work so low you are demonstrating that creativity is worthless, and that skill and hard work do not deserve a reward. Here's my advice: it's OK to do some work for free for your friends and family, but when you work for money your minimum should be 5 x the minimum for a 'boring' job. Some people will refuse to pay so much, and then you must refuse to work even if your bank account and your stomach are empty. Many will agree. You should use your price to drive bad clients away. Good clients will either pay or negotiate. If you do not make them work in negotiation, they will understand this to mean that you are not going to work on their commission, and hire someone else. If you cannot make a living this way, then get a job flipping burgers. First you will learn some humility, second you will get free food every day, third you will have some more financial security and fourth you will be very tired when you go home every day. Now, do a few hours of design work every week too. Of course, it will be much more difficult now because you are exhausted by working in a hot kitchen before you draw a single line. Now you will start to understand the value of time, and charge accordingly.
• DavidBishop 16y ago
  I like the idea, and I believe you have a market, but your prices are too low. More importantly it won't scale with inflation. In 10 years, that $15 will be worth around $10 but you will have all SEO links pointing to a domain that is most likely in need of change (You are stuck with a particular price with the domain name you have now). $15 is way too low. I don't know where you are located, but you need to do some market research to figure out what you want to make per hour, how long the average project will take you, how many projects you can do a week, and what your overhead is per week (to figure overhead per project). Once you have those numbers, you will have a better price point. Also, keep have a plan for what you want to do if there is more demand than you can support. Do you hire others? If so, will others work for that price and if so, how much do you need to make to pay them appropriately? I hope above all you do not find my post discouraging. Instead, I hope you continue on with what you are doing, tweaking it to make is sustainable for as long as you wish to do it!
  • ericd 16y ago
    He can always do a 301 redirect to another page and send the google juice that way. He's getting a lot of advertising from this outlandishly low price.