Croutsourcing Design

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with crowdSPRING cofounders Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson – click to listen or right click and Save As to download

I know, I know – another goofy made-up word, but hey, it’s Friday so outsourcing design to the crowd became croutsourcing.

The point is that the web has certainly made it much easier to find great design from around the world and on the flip side created an unlimited market for those wishing to sell their design services.

Some smart folks have built businesses around corralling and managing the introduction and design process and made buying and selling graphic design a snap. As with most innovations, these services have their detractors. The most vocal being some in the design community that feel this drives the price of quality design down and cheapens the value of great design. Whether this is true or not, the web has impacted most industries in a similar fashion. The ultimate answer usually comes from the market’s assessment of the greatest value.

The process in croutsourced design is that you describe a project (in the greatest, brand oriented way you can) and designers in your chosen platform’s community compete for your project. In some cases the designers bid on your work, in others they submit designs in an effort to win a set award. Usually, you, the client, get multiple designs and alterations to work with on the way to a finished project.

The true strength, and possibly longevity, of these organizations lies in the professionalism of their design community. The one that keeps the designers the happiest wins.

The latest innovation in the industry is that your design competition can be open to public view if you choose. Some high profile brands have started to look to this model to get a design done in public view as a PR opportunity. Here’s an example of a public logo contest at 99 Designs and here’s a competition at crowdSPRING for a Tony Robbins web site design.

Here’s a run down of some of the croutsourcing design players that I’ve worked with:

LogoWorks – Actually LogoWorks, an HP company, wouldn’t really qualify as crowd driven in the same manner as these other three as they do offer your design project out for a bit of competition, but it’s a closed process with a fixed price.

99Designs – This was one of the first compete for an award players and has done a nice job putting designers and clients together at very affordable prices.

Elance – The first and biggest of the crowd sourcing community. Elance’s model is a bid for project model and certainly not just focused on design.

crowdSPRING – This is one of the newest players, but they seem to be capturing a lot of buzz and some pretty high profile projects. (I interviewed crowdSPRING cofounders Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson for an episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast – click to listen or right click and Save As to download.)

Image credit: maraie

The typical post topics covered here involve topics related to social media marketing or blogging. One way to increase traffic to your site is to use an attractive design that will draw a lot of attention. Web design galleries and showcase blog posts like this one send considerable amounts of visitors to sites that display exemplary design.

Here we will take a look at 30 blogs that make a big impact with their design. These blogs have been featured at my gallery site Blog Design Heroes, which you can visit if you are looking for more examples of great blog design.

Mr. Henry

Mark Forrester

Sarah Rhoads

Eco Simply

The Swish Life

WorkAwesome

Internet Dreams

DC3 Forever

Andrea Mann

Cut & Taste

Designfeedr

Blik

Tidy Songs

Second & Park

Hey Indy

BigBadCollab

West Coast Poppin

What Katie Does

The Photo Argus

Officeal

Helium Workx

The Greg Brady Project

Devot:ee

Laura Marchbanks

T.J. Mapes

Carbon Sugar

Colorburned

Outlaw Design Blog

Hey Josh

Ecoki 30.jpg

Dashed

Single column, gravatar ready theme with a gravatar based author avatar image

XHTML Am

Widget ready, two column blue, white and grey theme

Brownie

Three-column WordPress theme in soft brown colors and two widget ready sidebars. Has Google adsense support and 125×125 ad management.

Daring Inspiration

Two column, left sidebar WordPress theme

Are you a theme author? Submit your theme to us to get it listed in our release posts.

WordPress themes are enhance the look and feel of the blog and kudos to all those theme developers who spend time to dish out those wonderful themes.

However not all Photoshop designers are developers and they eventually require help to convert a PSD file to an actual WordPress theme.

Divine PSD to WordPress Themes is a excellent plugin for Photoshop users that will help you convert your PSD file to a theme without any development efforts.

So what are you waiting for? Now it is more than easy to release your themes to the world, and don’t forget to add you themes to the Theme News section on WLTC so that we can feature it in our theme releases.

Download Divine Plugin for Photoshop

One of the greatest new trends I have seen on the web as of late in the concept of personal branding. Basically, personal branding is just as it sounds: building a brand name for yourself. It involves you establishing yourself as the foremost expert in a particular niche, whatever that may be.

There are a number of ways to go about personal branding but the most popular platform seems to be blogging and then creating a brand to go along with that blog. A blog allows you to share your knowledge and expertise so it is the perfect way to establish yourself as a credible resource. From the blog you can expand to using social networking sites, social media sites, Twitter, and the likes to further share what you know and attract new followers. These followers can then be redirected to the blog.

Hence, the blog acts as the central hub of a personal branding strategy and other outlets are used to attract attention and draw visitors to the blog. I think that now more than ever, personal branding is of chief importance. After all, with less than 20% of college graduates landing jobs at the time of gradation, opportunities are scarce and any point of differentiation is of utmost importance.

Having a personal brand showcasing yourself as a credible expert in a field is the perfect way to do just that. That is what I am doing with AMBeat.com. The point of this website isn’t to make money, but rather to build up a community of entrepreneurs and establish myself as a credible resource in the niche.

Hence, that is why I have been submitting guest posts on dozens of blogs from around the web; to build a name for myself in the niche. It is the reason why I spend time everyday working in PR, not to gain exposure for my companies, but rather to gain exposure for myself.

This is the first time in history when almost anyone and everyone has the opportunity to share what they know and build a personal brand for themselves which extends beyond just work experience and education. I suggest that we all take advantage of this opportunity.

There are a few great personal branding blogs out there which I recommend you read to get started. One of the best ones is Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog. It is filled with great unique insights on how you can build a name for yourself.

Personal and online branding has always been one of the main goals of online marketing. While the web has the added benefit that it is a marketing platform on which sales can be made, it is essentially a great interactive way for companies and individuals to share and spread their brand images.

Unfortunately, a lot of marketers and bloggers are wasting their online branding efforst through making a few crucial mistakes. I have outlined some of these mistakes in a recent guest post on John Chow’s blog. An excerpt from the post is below.

“I have put together the following list of ways you can keep your brand identity consistent in any online marketing campaign using social networking and communication websites, social media websites, blogs, e-mail addresses, IM clients, and beyond.

Always Keep a Consistent Username

No matter what service you sign up for, keep the same username and stick with it. You should use the same name over every instant messaging client you use (Skype, AIM, Windows live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, etc.), on any social networking sites where you create profiles or groups or fan pages (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Bebo, etc.), and on any social media websites you use (Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, del.icio.us, etc.). In addition, this name should also be the e-mail address you use when communicating with others and should be apparent on all company documents and marketing materials.

Pick a name and stick to it. Spell and structure it the same way every time (capitalization and spacing, ie. For my blog I use AM Beat , not ambeat or AMBeat, or Ambeat) and do your best to ensure that others do it the same way (without being pushy).

Always Keep a Consistent Image

Whenever you create an account on a web service, chances are you have the ability to upload a profile picture. Always make sure to use the same picture with every service you use. If you are branding your company, use your logo. If you are branding yourself, then use the same profile picture across all web services.

For a company, there are two main logos you can use, the actual logo itself and the symbol portion of your logo (or a certain smaller element which clearly resembles the full logo). This smaller portion should serve as your website’s favicon and can be used as profile pictures if the service only allows room for smaller pictures (Instant Messaging clients for example) where the full logo would not fit.”

You can read the full post over at John Chow.

The traditional business card is boring. A simple graphic, contact information, name, and title, it has become predictable. None of them stand out from the hundreds you receive a day, except these ones.

Neil Patel has compiled a list of 51 amazing business cards from around the globe. A few of my favorites are below.

One of the most common questions I’m asked by readers starting out with blogging is around blog design and how they can get an affordable but unique blog design.

The irony of this is that I’m a self confessed dud when it comes to blog design. These days I hire others to do custom designs for my blog – but of course this doesn’t come cheap.

A recent survey here on ProBlogger showed that 79% of readers here use free themes or design their blogs themselves – but what if you want something more unique and/or don’t have the ability to design a blog or tweak a free theme?

I had all these questions buzzing around in my head recently when I paid a visit to local design marketplace site 99designs. I didn’t expect anything to come out of the conversation but what did come out of it excited me because it could meet a need that I see many of our readers having.

What 99designs have put together is a way to run a competition to have a new WordPress blog design created for your blog for as little as $369.

Now before I go any further – $369 is out of many bloggers leagues – but it is certainly a cheaper option than hiring a designer for $2000-$3000 to do a custom job for you. It’s not going to be for everyone but is sure to be an attractive option for those looking for a mid priced design.

The process to run a competition is simple. Here’s how 99designs describe it:

1. Set your budget and requirements

Tell us your budget and what you want designed, and we will post it on 99designs.com

2. Designers will create designs just for you

Designers from around the world will compete to create the best looking design just for you. Most projects get over 20 different design concepts to choose from. Rate the designers you like, eliminate the ones you don’t like.

3. Choose your favorite design

Pick your favorite design as the winner. Show it off to your friends! The winning design is yours to keep forever.

4. We code and install your theme (optional extra)

Through our partner, Thinktank Media, we’ll have your new WordPress theme up and running on your blog in 5 working days. Our themes are coded on the Sandbox theme, so they’re compatible with both WordPress.org and WordPress.com blogs!

They also have a 100% money back guarantee if you run a competition and don’t find a design that you like.

Keep in mind that what you’re running the competition for is the ‘design’ – to have it coded and/or installed you either need to choose to pay extra for these options or do that part yourself.

I hope those of you looking to find a new design for your WordPress blog find this useful! Check it out here.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Run a Competition to Find Your Next WordPress Blog Design

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For some reason I always had Yahoo! as my home page. Although I hardly ever used Yahoo! search and had stopped using my Yahoo! mail accounts, I loved opening up the browser and seeing Yahoo.com. There was so much content to read, all updated daily. Recently, I had to reinstall Firefox, which automatically set the Firefox version of Google as my default homepage.

I planned on getting to resetting my homepage to Yahoo! but never ended up getting around to it. This is one of the best things that happened to me when it comes to improving my productivity online. The longer I kept the default Firefox homepage, the more clearly I saw how much time I had been wasting before.

Yahoo! has a lot of fresh content, which is great, but also very distracting. I may have logged on to check or work on a certain task, but before I knew it I was reading a Yahoo! featured article which naturally took me to a number of different websites and I ended up reading a story about the ten greatest vacation destinations for the recently retired. Interesting sure, but not really relevant and a waste on half an hour. Google forces you to stay focused and make decisions. There is nothing to get distracted by (unless off course it is some sort of holiday and there is a new great Google logo) and thus you can get to the work you need to do.

Congratualtions to Chiwun Smith (no website listed) for winning the “design my business card” challenge sponsored by Overnight Prints business cards.

This design was the overwhelming crowd favorite among my top pics. I would like to thank the over 450 people who sent in designs. You guys came up with some truly amazing concepts!

Congrats again to the winner!

For winning Chiwun will recieve free business cards from overnight prints for the rest of his life!! Congrats!!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Congratulatons Chiwun Smith!! Overnight Prints Business Card Challenge Winner!