Ok, I need to get this off my chest because it bugs the hell out of me.
I follow quite a few detailing forums and Facebook groups where Fiverr comes up every once in a while and logos come up more often in daily conversation. I don't detail full time, in fact, my weekdays are filled to the brim as a Creative Director for a marketing & communications agency. By trade, I'm a graphic designer, and have been for almost 25 years. As someone who is deeply ingrained in the creative industry, I have a somewhat more expert viewpoint on services like Fiverr for logo design and other magic bullet marketing "offerings."
I watch conversations about detailing rates here and elsewhere closely, as I am in the early stages of my side business. I see people looking for help with pricing for their services.
"What should I charge?"
"Am I charging enough?"
"How much do you guys get for..."
And on, and on and on. Inevitably, the experienced detailers among us will chime in and offer rate advice, and it's inevitably followed with something like, "you have to charge more because it hurts us all when you undercut our prices like that. Get your true value because they are hiring a pro—you should be paid like a pro."
And there's the rub.
A professional designer or marketing agency costs more than $5 to perform and give you all of their experience to help their customers. What does a real logo design cost at my agency? Start at $1000 and go up from there. Do you want to know what my hourly rate is? It's not $5, I can tell you that. We just finished up an $18,000 branding project that took 6 months to complete.
No, you don't need an $18k brand, but you don't need a $5 one, either.
When you court services that offer $5 logos for your business, you're doing the very same thing that you would scream about if another detailer gave their work away for next to nothing. It's insulting to my profession that these sites and services even exist. I'm sure you feel the same way about the $20 "full details" too.
Look, you need to to what's best for your business, whatever that is. But there are freelance designers out there working for $20-30 an hour that will work with you to develop a brand that not only suits you and your business, but will be a direct reflection of who you what to show to your customers, instead of a clip art magic trick that took 5 minutes to puke out by someone in India who couldn't care less what your business does.
Pay a professional for professional work, and you will get professional results. Why should it be different for a professional designer than it would be for a professional detailer?
doug
