UPDATED: March 17, 2010.
People often ask questions about our community and marketplace. Here, we share our answers to the most common questions.
1. How many projects have been completed on crowdSPRING and how does crowdSPRING know this?
Answer: crowdSPRING launched in May 2008. Since that time, over 9,647 projects have been completed on crowdSPRING. We know this because we require the buyer and winning creative(s) to complete their project on our site in order to protect both parties. From the moment we launched, we’ve offered full project management tools, including file transfer, to make this easy for both parties.
2. crowdSPRING guarantees that the buyer will be 100% satisfied with the results of their project. Can you please explain the guarantee?
Answer: We’re proud to offer an unconditional money back guarantee. We want our buyers to be absolutely, positively happy with their project and, if they’re not, then we’ll refund all their awards and even our own project fee. We offer this guarantee because we’re confident that buyers will find an entry that they’ll be thrilled with. And we’re so sure that we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is. If a buyer isn’t happy with their project, not only do they get to walk with a refund but we’ll also pay one of the creatives in the project up to $250 out of our own pockets – just to keep our promise that every single project will have a winner, no matter what.
At the end of the day, the creatives will generally give you exactly what you ask for. And, better yet, you’ll get out of the process exactly what you put in. If you take the time to write a good creative brief, we’ve proven that you’ll have a better project than if you don’t. And, if you take the time to give comments and feedback on your entries, we’ve found that you’ll have 5 TIMES as many creatives work on your project! To help along the way, our community has put together a helpful guide for managing design projects.
And after doing thousands and thousands of projects this way, our rate of refund is under 5% – so your chances of being unhappy are extraordinarily slim.
3. How many projects has crowdSPRING refunded since launch in May 2008?
Answer: From May 2008 to the present, crowdSPRING has refunded approximately 320 projects.
4. Why did crowdSPRING issue refunds in those projects?
Answer: Approximately three (3) percent of the projects were refunded because in those projects, buyers had fewer than 25 entries to choose from and they did not like any of the entries that had been submitted (prior to our current 100% guarantee, we offered buyers a 25 entry guarantee). The majority of the remaining projects were refunded because shortly after they were posted but before creatives submitted work to the projects, we determined that the scope of the project was either too large given the amounts offered as awards, or the scope of the project was not well suited for our community.
When we find that the scope of a project isn’t well suited to our community, we do our best to recommend individual designers, agencies, other marketplaces, and even our competitors. (more…)
