Before you begin reading this post I am having a grumpy old man moment and pointing out all the things that I have found to be quite irritating whilst using Twitter for my first year and I imagine must annoy others. I share my moaning moments with you in the hope that you won’t make the mistakes and instead make your Twitter account a highly influential social media account that will work for you and your business.

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Moaning Negative Statements – In day to day life no one likes a moaner or someone who puts others down and when on Twitter its the same ball game so avoid sharing your negative thinking on your social media platform at all costs otherwise you may find people start unfollowing you.

Political messages – likewise, everyone has their own idea of how the world should be run and what is right and wrong. It is best to have followers that agree with your way of thinking but to avoid upsetting anyone its best not to put any of your extreme political views on Twitter unless of course you are a politician! Its a risky tweet to tweet.

Validate you are a REAL Twitter user – Ever so often I get a DM ( direct message ) that says, please validate you are not a robot by following this link . It may only take around 20 to 30 seconds to validate but can I really be bothered and is there really a problem if a fake account follows you that happens to be a bot? Not really, you simply just dont follow them back. Its definitely a roll of the eyes moment.

The Egg – The first thing you should do when you start using Twitter is to create a profile and if possible design a good twitter background and profile picture in a clever and imaginative way that expresses your personality. If you remain an egg you are looked at as untrustworthy and not really worthy of following. If you have trouble designing a good profile then contact me and I will help you design a profile that reflects your personality or brand.

Hashtag junkie – #today #i #went #the #supermaket #and # bought #a #cabbage. When nearly every single word in a tweet is hash tagged it is seen by other users as spam. Hashtags do help get your content seen by more users but limit it to just a maximum of three hashtags.

Selfishness – me me meeeeeee! Yes we all want to be noticed and we all want to do more deals but to create relationships you need to help each other. Don’t just promote your own thoughts and products but be actively RT ( retweeting ) the tweets of others, the ones you find interesting and if you have used twitter lists maybe diversify how you share your tweets. For instance, monday could be ‘graphics’ day, tuesday could be ‘marketing’ and so fourth.

One good form of practice that is recommended by Twitter experts is for every one of your own pieces of content share 5 of others.

Tweeting like its going out of fashion – spending every waking moment on Twitter is not healthy and neither is tweeting 10 times in one minute. If people see your profile picture directly after each other in their feed they are likely to get fed up and unfollow you. Instead spread out your tweets throughout the day and put your most influential ones on your account when Twitter is at its most active ( around 2PM GMT).

Having few tweets compared to number of followers – 100,000 followers? Well done! That must have taken some time to build that kind of recognition especially with only 300 tweets, tell me how much you paid for that following. Twitter users aren’t stupid and if you are trying to deceive people into following you then its not a good start in building trust is it?

Tweets that add no value – informing the world you had cornflakes and orange juice for breakfast is not going to add value to your followers. What information do they really want? What do they want to feed on? Think a little before you tweet and try to provide things that you know others will benefit from.

Was it something I said? – people who follow you only to unfollow you a couple of weeks later to try and build their following/follower ratio will irritate the heck out of the users. Why add someone to your network only to unfollow them later? Doesn’t really make sense does it? If you want to keep track of who is unfollowing you use justunfollow.com.

Thanks for following! @myunclebob @davidthegnome @catsgroup  – When you follow tweeps some users thank you for it. and tag you in a tweet with several other users. I understand its a form of trying to build a larger network but it doesn’t add anything to the majority of followers and will become irritating to see ‘thankyous’ regularly in your feed. The best way to say thank you is in a direct message in private rather than on the main feed.

In the next post I will discuss 11 ways to build appreciation for your tweets on Twitter.

What do you know about some of the most famous paintings in history?

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From Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper to Pablo Picasso’s The Dream, each work of art has its own backstory and legacy that not everyone is familiar with. As you learn more about the paintings that you see on display in galleries, you may decide to purchase reprints to hang in your own home. It can be tough to find just the right painting, but when you see something you like that speaks to you it is that much harder to say no. The top ten most popular fine art reprints that people purchase include The Mona Lisa, Starry Night, and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe. You can learn more about each as well as the rest of the paintings on the list by reading through the infographic below. This way you can get a glimpse of pieces that you can add to your personal collection.

Created by Coastal Printworks, provider of provides Museum Quality T-Shirt Screen-Printing, Digital T-Shirt Printing and embroidery.

Everyone who is anyone dreams of winning the lottery, what must it be like to have millions of pounds at your disposal, removing your money worries from your life forever but what if money was no object? What if it didn’t exist and you didn’t need it to live? What would you really want to do with your life?

We all say in our mind ‘ I want to do what I want to do with my life ‘

We all say this in our mind and a few of us are lucky enough to fulfill our dreams and pursue a career that we actually want to be doing. It is in my belief that the reason people don’t do what they want is that they let their situation and surroundings stop them.

Be determined, be focused, be present

You have to stay determined in your efforts to pursue a ‘dream career’ whilst not hurting anyone along the way. You have to be focused on your idea and imagine what it is like to have the job you want to drive you to make hard decisions and sometimes life changes ( such as relocating or leaving unproductive relationships) and finally you need to be present in the moment, another words don’t let the experience of others influence your own thoughts. People will tell you are a disillusioned dreamer and some people will see you as stupid but stupid people make change happen and normal people…well…they are just normal.

Nothing wrong with normal, its perfect for some, its comfortable, but what if money was no object?

If Money was no object

I came across a video by a man called Alan Watts, its quite an inspirational video where he discusses if you had unlimited money what would you really be doing with your life? Would you be doing your job or would you be pursuing something different? What is it your desire from life?

Before we know it we will hit 80 years old and we can look back on life and say I had a fulfilling life and I tried my hardest to make my dreams a reality or we can look back on life and regret we didn’t do more.

Family also important

I think what we must remember when watching the video below is that career is only one part of our human life and we also must not regret not doing more for those we love as much as creating a career we love. So next time you think I want to do what I want with my life ask yourself what if money was no object then plan to make your dream a reality.

The last blog post I wrote was all about three steps to increase your website traffic and it is clear that blogging is of huge importance to any online marketing.

Make your blog titles count!

Something that is very important is the title of the post and also the keyword selection you use within.

Incase you are unaware what a keyword is it is a word that you are targeting the search engines to look for in your page to give it more relevance to a users search.

For instance, my keyword might be ‘twitter profile’ then the website must include this keyword throughout the article without making it look ‘faked’.

Go forth and populate my keyword minions!

You need it in your title, your page url, your heading tags, your paragraphs and even in your alt tags for images! Don’t stress though, search engines are clever, they will look at the rest of your content and see how relevant your content  is to your keyword without actually being your keyword!

So now you have an idea about keywords you might realise why what you title your blogs is so important! If you are still a bit stifled for ideas then here are 9 ideas to help you start those creative cogs turning!

1. What does (fill in service/product) do?

2. An insight into a (your job)’s role

3. 3 things you should always consider when choosing (service/product)

4. What to expect from your (service/product here)

5. Should I buy a (your service/product)

6. Opposing service/product vs your service/product ( start with positive points about the opposing service and where that competition might actually be the answer to the readers problem).

7.  5 problems with your service/product (then turn it around to help people make decisions)

8. Best price for a (your product/service) –  ( make comparisons with others and why you are cheaper or more expensive than the competition or alternatively what you think is important in your/product service.

9. Should I buy product A or product B.

Notice that these headers are all asking questions , questions that your potential customer might have! By blogging about these topics you are educating your customers and that is great way to build trust with your possible customers as it empowers them to be able to make decisions and shows that you care about giving good service and advice to those that need your business.

A great tip I read from the http://www.thesaleslion.com/ is that to take time to consider questions that your customers ask you. Usually they are about pricing or time but there may be some other questions that are not price related, these are fantastic things to blog about and will help you generate new content for your business blog!

Best of luck writing your blogs and remember this is meant to be fun and not a chore!

If you have any tips how to generate new ideas for blog posts please comment in the box below! Or should you need help with a specific topic and want me to help you generate some ideas please get in touch and i will see what i can do 🙂

The majority of potential customers and clients are now online and that is great news for any business owner, it means reaching in to your target market is a lot easier than it once was. The problem is, do you use this online way of living to your advantage and not only to your advantage but to the advantage of your customers.

The internet has made shopping around easier and personalization of service of huge importance and if your business isn’t using its digital marketing tools properly then the company is likely to fail. In this post I will discuss three ways that I GUARRANTEE will help you generate ‘the right traffic’ and leads for your business.

1. Blogging, but the right content

What, you don’t know how to blog? Do you have an opinion? Well then my friend, you CAN blog and I believe that EVERYONE should be blogging! Blogging is actually a really fun way to get your thoughts out of your head and shared with anyone who is interested and willing to read the content you provide. It is so important that your business ( or as individual ) are blogging and for quite a few reasons.

Firstly it breaks down perceived barriers between being a professional corporation to an approachable professional that cares about its customers and becoming seen as an educator not just an informer. Secondly blogging helps boost organic search results and thirdly if you write the right content then you are being a little bit psychic and answering questions that customers have before they even make enquiries empowering your customers! In this era customer truly is king and being a caring compassionate business that really wants to make a difference to people it does business with are the businesses that are going to thrive in the 21st century and beyond.

Write the right content

People get confused about what blogging is. Blogging is not really a tool for spreading gossip and news or discussing the latest news events ( unless it is really appropriate for your business ), the reason you shouldn’t blog about major events and twist it on to your business is because the person who views the content is interested in the ‘news event’ not your services or product! Comprende!?

Instead take just 10 minutes of your time and ask yourself what is the last 20 questions a potential customer or lead asked? Usually cost is top for most businesses but what else is an issue? When you have the questions you have the greatest content creation tools at your disposal and if  you ignore the customers needs you will always be seen as a corporation that are not very approachable.

Remember, its time to be personal and friendly with the customers NOT just provide a service or product. Show the consumers why you are the company to do business with.

2. Getting your employees to blog

If you are small to large-sized employer then this applies to you otherwise one man bands, im sorry ignore this section!

Your employees are the ones who are your point of contact with most of your clients, particularly the sales team so get those guys knowledge and get them putting pen to paper ( or finger to digital ), they are perfect people to try blog content because they know not only the questions that consumers have but usually the answers to their problem too!

Not only the fact they have all the questions and answers of your market but they will also free up your valuable time! A blog post can take anything from 30 minutes to half a day ( should you be interested in creating a good infographic or something else of such liking), if you have 30 sales staff and each one writes just one blog post a week that is 30 pieces of new content for the search engines to feed on and you didn’t have to divert some of your time to writing a post!

Guest blogging both home and away

So your blogging, your workforce is blogging and now your content is mounting but you can add even more content to the fabulous informative blog you are creating for your market! Inviting others in your industry to blog on your website will not only benefit you but it will also benefit the guest by increasing awareness of their ability and creating back links to their own content.

It may not seem a very clever idea, isn’t it like inviting the wolf to the lamb’s dinner? It depends on your viewpoint, personally I believe by building relationships with fellow industry experts you can build mutual respect, share business when your workload is high and also help promote each other; surprisingly you may even learn a few things from the new post too!

Social

Lastly, if you are not on social media then where the heck have you been!?! EVERY and i mean EVERY business has to be on social media, social media is becoming a much more powerful tool for generating traffic than the organic search. I guess the most obvious reason for this is that you will connect to people who you really do have an interest in, particularly on Twitter so getting your message out to the right person is instantly easier.

Every time you create a new piece of content ( not just blog posts, images, infographics, podcasts too) then share it on all social platforms. A lot of marketers might tell you to just use LinkedIn if you are a B2B, others will say to target a few social platforms, I am going to tell you to target as many social media platforms as physically possible! Create networks everywhere, the more you connect to people from every country and continent on the world the easier it is to reach the right people with your product or service but don’t spend all your time on social media and neglect the importance of actually running your business.

How do you drive traffic to your website? What do you feel works best? Please comment in the box below.

Its Movember again and this year, for the very first time I have agreed to take part! I have never had facial hair of much level before to deem it a manly growth but with the scheme aiming to raise awareness of both testitical cancer and mental health I felt I wanted to show my support as much as possible having been effected by both.

Why I’m doing it

If you have read any of my early blog posts you will realise that I did suffer with mental health problems from 2008 – 2012, a period of time that was particularly difficult for me. Last year my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and I also discovered my old school friend’s uncle passed away due to testicle cancer.

The power of both mental health difficulties and contracting cancer are terrible forms of illness, both for the ill person and those who care about them seeing you suffer.

When you have mental health difficulties you look normal or people judge those who are undiagnosed with difficulties as crazy/different/strange/stupid or worse, to be wary of when really what they truly need is a helping hand of compassion.

Similarly when someone contracts cancer it is important to discover the disease as early as possible in order to be able to fight it.

By raising awareness of these two forms of disease we can make a difference, we can tell people to have the balls to check the balls and to get help for mental problems when things are hard rather than ‘be a man’ and fight the good fight. It is not a weakness to admit you have a problem, it is a strength.

My attempt at a mo

Yep, I’m growing it!

Maybe not a moustache but a full on facial feast of hair instead! Who knows, maybe I will like the extra warm to the face this winter, who needs a scarf when you have a beard eh!?

Are you growing a mo for Movember? What are you doing to try and help raise cancer and mental health awareness? Feel free to comment in the box below and if you are feeling extra generous then please donate to the great cause that is movembor here.

Its no secret that over the last 5 years financially speaking it has been one of the toughest, if not the toughest periods in world economic history. It is for reasons such as this that makes people stop believing in their dreams and striving for the ‘perfect life’, this blog post discusses why you should keep believing in your dream and what you may encounter along your path.

1. You question if you are a dreamer, but you aren’t the only one

Everyone who is anyone has dreams. Whether it is becoming a musician or artist, running a successful enterprise or winning the lottery. Many people will try for a little while, maybe not do quite the right things to make a success of their chosen goal and so feel it is out of reach. The problem with most people who reach for the stars, including myself, want things now! As human beings we are not patient and

2. If you stop following your highest ideal what is the point?

When I reached the bottom of my barrel in life I was quite literally hanging by a thread…should I stay or should I go? Vast amounts of debt, no opportunity, lack luster relationship and a world that seemed very unjust.

I was so close to ending it all but was pulled back from the brink of the grim bloke’s hand by the love of my family. Being so close to death removed my fear of dying and reduced my fear of what others opinions of myself are. This gave me the drive and determination to become a professional creative, albeit inhouse but I was turning my life around.

The message here is what is the point of life if you give up on your dreams? One day WE WILL die, one day money, experience and the people around you WILL go. Will you look back on life and say you did all you could to follow the path of your dream whilst not hurting others as you go or will you look back and regret that you should have done more whilst you were young?

If I was 20 again I would tell my young self NOT to go to university and waste 30k on an over priced government educational scheme and instead teach myself web coding at a much young age, but hindt sight is a wonderful thing!

3. Others tell you that you can’t do it, do you believe them?

When you discuss your ideas with others they will laugh at you, they will tease you and torment you. They can’t see your vision and they are scared as hell to do anything that involves risking their livelihood, respect and to be quite honest, most people don’t know where to start or to find the time so see any venture as ‘unrealistic’.

You need to stop giving a shit (pardon my french ) what other people think about you and your ideas if you are to give your dream a go. If you listen to people’s opinions and value the wrong ones because your ego has been emotionally hurt then you are giving up on life! Yes as human beings we naturally want to be accepted but get used to being rejected because following your dream people WILL try to pull you back for fear of feeling you will do better than them.

4. People tell you that you are deluded

Once, I worked as a general builder, painting and decorating, labouring and apprentice plumbing. I was working for my father under his small business and I had a jolly good time and a lot of banter with the painters in particular! One of them was very very intelligent, read a lot of books and had so much knowledge should have probably been a lecturer, another was a couple of years older than me and a kind soul and the last one was Mr Pessimism , actually he probably would have won Mr Pessimism World had there been such a competition. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great guy and very kind but had given up on his dreams long ago and here I was dreaming!

He would tell me things such as ‘this may be the best time of your life you are having right now’ & ‘you won’t ever be rich John’ & ‘wake up!’ but I would always knock the comments back and let them go over my head, I won’t stop dreaming until they day my heart stops.

5. But I have no finances

This is the major stumbling block on people’s dreams.

If like me you have no finances because a) all your money was plowed into a very clever marketing ploy by government to get more money off its young citizens by telling them to get a degree ‘because thats what everyone does to get a better life’ ( what a lot of cow poop!) or b) a partner expected you to give everything you had to be able to live even though you had very little or c) you had a bit of a ‘oh im young! I want to live now’ attitude or d) all of the above, you feel as broke as a pauper, how can you fund your dream?

There are ways such as angel investors or even borrowing money from friends/family. Or if your dream isn’t business related and is to become a model or actor then look for modelling agencies, find the ones that don’t take a fee for taking your photographs, join starnow.co.uk and find those auditions. Unless YOU put yourself forward you may never be known about.

Plus, now that social media is around it makes it a lot to easier to network and link to people around the world who are in the industry you want to join or do business with! Start tweeting, google plussing, liking and generally having online conversations, you don’t know where they will lead!

6. Dreams drive you to gain a better life

Like I have already mentioned when you hit rock bottom when all hope is gone the dream can save you and drive you to attempt to reach the goal that seems so unreachable to all others. I nearly tried to talk a family member out of a dream she had because I didn’t think the business model was real, I felt it was a corporation exploiting people. Then I thought…who the hell am I to tell someone they can’t do something!? If they believe it and have studied the business idea in detail then go for it, one day we will be dead so at least lets try and live the life we want to have.

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Am I living my dream? In some ways, yes! I have managed to land a job where I am using my creative talents, I have learnt such a great deal from my current position, my MD has given me a lot of new information I never knew and I am ever so grateful to being given the opportunity by someone and for someone to see something in me after 5 years of struggling.

I met the most wonderful woman who became my wife whom I would never had met if it wasn’t for my employer.

My employment restored my belief that I had something to offer, that the world is mainly made up of good people and that my dream to achieve a ‘comfortable lifestyle’ can be achieved so for this alone I am always indebted to my employer, MigSolv the data centre experts. The things is, if I had given up on my dream and said ‘oh well, I couldn’t become an architect in my hometown I’ll just do anything’ in may 2008 then would I be a branding designer right now? Probably not.

Don’t stop believing!

When the British coalition government decided it was going to make cuts to the services of  towns and cities across the country a library located in Woolton Village, Liverpool was one of the things marked to be closed. A devastating choice for a village that has a high level of elderly and families living in the locality who relied on the service.

But with Woolton, having such a fantastic community a few of the people living in the village got together to keep this much loved and much needed facility open to the public and is still open today with the help of volunteers and independent funding of the local community. Being born and raised in the village I felt a duty to help in any way I could so offered my logo services to the people of Woolton free of charge. Here is the meaning behind the WCRC Ticket to Read logo.

The new name of the library

With the ending of publicly funded library came an opportunity to rebrand and expand the services of the library. No longer would the library be simply for books but many activities would take place in the library, for this reason they rebranded themselves as a resource centre with a strapline “ticket to read” a play on the Beatles hit “Ticket to ride”.

As the Woolton community are quite a diverse society and the new resource centre would also be a hub of activity it was felt that it was important to make the logo as universal as possible without references of age, gender, sexuality, race or service.

Recording the library heritage in the design

As explained earlier the facility had always been a family library and the main purpose to store and borrow books for the local community. For this reason I wanted to represent that in the logo. The typeface used reflects the san-serif fonts that are usually found within printed reading books.

Communicating symbolism within the WCRC Logo

After observing the activities that take place at the WCRC it became evident that the WCRC allow its users to communicate in different ways. Community building, poetry reading, acting, art, group debates and even reading a book is a form of communication thus the use of speech marks was considered suitable for the design as it also removed gender/sex specific notions.

Strong community represented in logo shape

The Woolton Community are a strong people and this was something I wanted to represent in their design.

Considering shape the circle is considered an unbreakable shape. A shape that has no bends, no kinks, no corners and usually can represents ‘the whole’, in this case the whole community.

By selecting the circle to represent Woolton people it displays that nothing breaks the spirit of the community and they have a unity, friendship and helpfulness to each other that is difficult to find in general.

Colour of communication

Finally the colour that was selected was blue to represent the communication. Blue is the colour of the throat chakra within the human aura and it is believed that blue conveys the ability to communicate well.

Although a simple logo in design the concept and theory behind its appearance is not as simple, similar to the character of this village in Liverpool. Maybe simple in appearance to the onlooking visitor but underneath the surface there is a lot more than meets the eye.

It was a pleasure to work for my boyhood village. Woolton is a place that will always be dear to my heart, I had many fond memories reading books in the library and growing up in this neighbourhood.

It is a very pleasant place that is worth a visit should you ever be visiting the city. It was the home of John Lennon ( which can still be seen on menlove avenue), the place where the Beatles first performed at a school concert ( Bishop Martin School ), the location where the song Strawberry fields was inspired from.

Now the home of a few premiership footballers such as Brazilian Lucas Leiva and also to prehistoric standing stones that are older than those in Stone Henge!

Are you from Woolton or is your community feeling the effects of  the government cuts? What do you think helps build a strong community? Please feel free to leave any comments below.

As human beings of a social world we like to be social and celebrate our events and others as well. These can be events like birthdays, baby showers, weddings and even house warming events. So a good party present can help make the event even better, and you can ensure that your gift stands out from the crowd. So make sure you are not left with gifting the same run of the mill gifts or even recycling the old school gift options.

Sometimes you may also be stuck with having to buy a gift for someone who is too picky. So you may have to come up with something that is truly special that they can appreciate. So what can you do – a nutella box with pears and flowers, a bouquet made with carrots or s’mores on the stick? Well the aim is to not just customising the gift but to take it a step forward and make them truly unique.

Any of these gifts we mentioned are customised but they are also a little bit more as they are a joke between friends, a romantic gift and a joke between colleagues. What is great is that these are gifts which offer a little more than just being customised.

Creating a gourmet gift basket

With this you can go beyond and above than the usual customised gift services. You can take a regular gourmet basket and add items to it, or customize the basket entirely. You can also gift them a basket which does not have any food inside it at all. Instead put together other luxury items or items that the person you are gifting to would like to receive. This is completely up to you, and you can be as thoughtful, quirky or creative as you want.

Creating a DIY gift for the recipient

There are number of items you can create yourself to provide an extra meaning to your gift. Creating drink bucket with their favourite drinks, an album of all their favourite moments, or putting together a tour package with all the favourite haunts in the city they love. You can even bring a store bought gift and add to it, in terms of packaging for that can make it stand out. For e.g. a wine bottle with a personalised message written with a paint pen can add a little extra touch. Take a lantern and add a bunch of small gifts inside the lantern to give it to the recipient. You can even create their favourite drink Popsicle and give them a batch of them frozen to have when they want.

It is more rewarding to gift to someone you loves something that you have especially created for them. The value of the gift far exceeds the sum of the parts as the meaning gets embedded far more than what a mass produced item has vs. what you create for them specifically. It goes beyond customisation as it adds a certain depth of story and meaning to the gift that cannot be added to something merely bought.

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Karen Denver is the author of this delightful post. She is a professional blogger and a romantic at heart who believes in happily ever after. She feels even simple things likes ordering gift hampers online can bring back the romance in your otherwise dull life.

You may be aware of a website called fiver where various people offer their skills and services for a measly $5.00!

For the business owner it may seem like a great way to save some money and if you manage to find the right deal you are saving a great deal of money. As a designer Fiver is a website that could potentially destroy the livelihood of any Western creative but if used correctly could be a good way to gather new leads.

In this post I will discuss the benefits and problems with Fiver from both a business owners point of view and the creative’s livelihood and then will conclude with what to think about when choosing to hire a fiver creative or a freelance creative/designer.

Why Fiver is great for business owners

From logos to websites to posters or video promotions Fiver offers services for all your marketing needs and not at a price that will break your business budget but at such low cut prices it is almost criminal!  $5.00 for a new corporate logo that would usually cost a hundred times more if dealing with a professional designer is something that most business people will be rubbing their hands together in glee with.

Or maybe you need a small video intro or a ‘customer testimonial’ or do you ( but please don’t! ) even try and boost your social media accounts by adding thousands of fake followers and likes? The list of things you can buy for such a small amount of money is limitless ( but also not always worth it )!

Not always amateurs

The people you find on fiver may not always be amateurs with no artistic training or experience, a lot of the guys you will be hiring may have many years experience and knowledge that can do the job you require and do it quite well.

If you are happy with the work that the person created for you and they seem a genuine good guy/girl then it could be the start of a beautiful business relationship. Should you need further services you may return to the person you found on Fiver as you know they will do the job you want and do it well plus they know your brand so it will be easier to communicate ideas with them.

If you do go back to them, please…consider doing business outside of fiver, designers need to make a living too you know! 🙂

The problem with Fiver for business owners

If you can get around the feeling of guilt that you are effectively hiring a designer as slave labour paying them 99% less than what their skills are worth.

If you don’t value others, they won’ value you

When you hire someone for little money you don’t always get the best service. Naturally, all people need and want to feel valued and if you are valuing someone’s talent and ability that they have spent a lot of time learning and honing at $5 then they won’t necessarily be interested in putting a lot of thought and effort into the piece.

Different countries, different economies

For our eastern counterparts in India where $5 has more value than in the west it may not be a problem, they will probably do all they can for you but as a westerner you can’t possibly make the kind of money to have a suitable standard of living through doing deals on fiver, it just isn’t viable.

You may be helping western designers boost their portfolio but it won’t boost their bank balance to make a living and that is what we really want.

Are you a business with ethics to try and help others make a living or are you all about the top line?

Limited service, the logo design example

Designing a logo , a good logo, takes time. When I design a logo I recommend around 2 weeks of research, designs, concepts & constant iterations with slight adjustments to one design so the final concept speaks about your business in a symbolic nature. A logo can be designed very quickly but its not likely to be the best version of itself.

Once the logo design is complete the designer has to save the logo in various formats so they can be used for different platforms and uses. Jpgs, transparent pngs, eps, photoshop, illustrator files etc.

Finally some designers will also create you a style guide on how to use the logo so that it is consistent throughout your business marketing material.

As you can imagine that service isn’t complete in an hour unless you are billy whizz!

If you hire someone on fiver they are probably going to use a logo template and not put as much thinking into the conceptual design as a professional designer would be wanting to.

Risking your time and money on fiver.com

If you don’t get the work you expected from hiring a fiver service then you have wasted your time and money when if you had gone to a professional in the first place you would have got a bespoke luxury and personal service that you will, in the end be extremely content with and you will also be able to sleep easy at night knowing you gave a fellow human being worth.

As a business owner you can choose to go for the cheap option but it will reflect on your business badly, investing your money and time into an experienced, qualified and professional designer will give you the best results.

What do you think is more important? Making an initial design saving or investing in a professional design that adds value, recognition and quality to your company? Please comment in the box below.