On Internet Business

CrowdSPRING: choice-driven creative marketplace?

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources

There are many sites that allow creatives to bid for work, so what makes crowdSPRING different to say, Guru?

Two things:

1. Rather that offering evidence of past project work, creatives can actually engage with the brief and submit their design, meaning the buyer gets more relevant results to choose from – this is better for the employer as it shortens the time-frame and weeds out those who aren’t in tune with the brief, but it also benefits the bidder in terms of allowing those who don’t have a great portfolio to still submit work.

2. Intellectual property rights are protected, to a reasonable extent, through the upload process. This means projects are protected under a legal contract and the seller retains all rights until payment is received, which is no more than you’d expect of a company where one of the partners was an international lawyer, but it’s a confidence booster for creatives who’ve been burned in bid processes in the past.

The big difference is that with crowdSPRING the buyer indicates how much they are willing to spend and there’s no down-bidding until the cheapest bid wins – instead designs and concepts are uploaded and can be debated in the community area until the project closes when the buyer chooses a winner, and pays for it.

There are potential downsides to crowdSPRING – some users have said that they received work of low quality: the ‘guarantee’ of seeing 25 designs (or your money back!) appears to have ended up, in some cases, as producing as few as three designs, but shown in different colourways. There have also been concerns that bidders might not get paid, but this early teething problem seems to have been overcome by the buyer having to forward a percentage of the bid amount to crowdSPRING in advance of the project being aired. This means that if the buyer drops out or doesn’t choose any of the concepts that have been presented, they default the money they’ve already forwarded which will then be shared between bidders.

For buyers, the ideal route is to spend some time on the site, looking at what results from each brief, as this is likely to give them a good sense of how to achieve what they want from the process.

For bidders, the community area is a great place to hone skills and engage in discussion of the posted designs, which can lead to a better understanding of this kind of marketplace and what makes a winning brand design.

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