nice idea.
but a better idea would it be to award the second and 3th place.

Cool idea!

As a creative who worked my butt off on a complex project, got good reviews, the project was cancelled anyway, I think this is a great step. Perhaps the $39 will motivate buyers to be more invested in giving feedback so that they can actually find “the one”.

glam

Let’s think about this;
You’re in a contest for $1000, 1000 entrys and the buyer leave no feedback. At the end he left and one guy receive $250. The buyer looses $39 and wins 1000 ideas and based on them he will hire someone to do the logo.
I’m not happy with this.

TheNutz – Why would a buyer spend $39 and then hire a different designer? As a buyer it wouldn’t cross my mind. The time and energy to find another designer who is cheaper and run the risk of infringing copyright …. I think the number trying to rip the system will be minuscule

Well, Nutz, that’s a good point.

But IMO it’s better to have the possibility of getting any award on a refunded/cancelled project than to receive nothing at all.

I worked my butt off, and I am sure many others did too, on a web design project that actually did have the 25 minimum. But they cancelled anyway and I assume $$$ was refunded. No creative received anything – $250 is better than that, at least.

I know, but at the same time, buyers will take no risk in this business. Now they can tempt us with higher prizes to have more entries and at the end they can leave with a great brainstorming session for $39.
They don’t have to hire someone else, they can contact the designer that create one of those designs and offer him a lower price.

With this we go from guaranteed contest to $250 guaranteed contests.

awesome!!! it’s like Christmas sale!
“Get $2000 design for only $39!”

don’t be naive!
for web sites designs, i can’t see why buyer won’t copy any JPG image he like and the run away with the award? the JPG is all he need. the way from JPG to CSS very short.

not all buyer are like that but some are.

and what about $200 logo project? will you get $200 or just $50 when the buyer get refund?

Re: Ferg, hundreds of ideas for $39 is not a bad deal at all!

And who is going to decide the winner when the buyer leaves, on what basis?

One of the best features of cS for me used to be guaranteed contests.

@TheNutz – One step at a time. We’ve given a lot of thought to this and have been investigating and researching this issue – including talking to many buyers – for MANY months. We think this will work nicely for both buyers and creatives, but as with everything else, are prepared to make further adjustments if we’re wrong.

Keep in mind too that we do see many repeat buyers and they have a reputation to protect also. If we see abuses, we’ll react appropriately.

@glamaz0n – We hope too that the effect is to create more motivated buyers. And we agree that on balance – big plus for our creative community. “Kill fees” are very common in offline work and we’re the first and only marketplace to match what can typically happen in a project offline.

@Ferg – we think so too…

@haim – for $200 logo project, the kill fee would be $200 (not $50).

@SamFox – A panel at crowdSPRING will decide the winner (like we’ve been doing for the past 22 months, using the same criteria we’ve always been using). The projects are all guaranteed and in fact, with this change, projects that previously didn’t result in any payment to a creative now will result in a “kill fee” payment, as we discussed in the post. We think that’s a step in the right direction…

I’m sorry Ross but the way I see things is that you’re protecting the buyers and disrespect the creatives. As SamFox said, one of the best features of cS for me used to be guaranteed contests (even if I did not won so much contests).
Just like you said for MANY months you were talking to the buyers, only. You decided what’s best for them and now you’re trying to tell us that this is good for us too.
For me is not, and I think I’m not the only one.

@TheNutz – I mentioned talking to buyers because I was responding to a specific comment. We’ve also talked with many creatives in the process of researching this change, and independently researched long established practices in the industry.

We understand that anytime we make a change, some people will be happy and others might be unhappy. That’s natural. We ask only that you keep an open mind and let’s watch how this unfolds. As you’ve seen us do many times, we watch closely and adjust when necessary to make sure that the goals of our changes are properly met. We believe this is a good step…but like you, are not certain until we have some experience behind us.

Uhhh…I think I misspoke.

Are we talking about refunding the under-25-entry projects and there is no award? Because in this case the $250 is better than nothing.

Or are we talking about a project that has reached or surpassed the minimum but the buyer is still not satisfied and asks for a refund?

Because I now recall a policy which used to be in place – where the buyer would get refunded and the cS-awarded creative would still get paid. It was a crowdSpring guarantee to creatives.

I had forgotten about that latter situation.

So, up until now, if the buyer wanted a refund, just because, he/she would get hundreds of ideas for nothing. But now it costs $39?

As things stand now, with a cS account it’s possible to have access to images from any project, except the Pro projects. A case of this was actually documented in the Forum message board a while back. Although – cS has made a lot of progress in that regard by only permitting larger images to be viewed by the creative and the buyer.

I just can’t see the advantage of downloading images from cS or any other similar site – what do you get??? An unusable low res jpeg with very limited application.

Okay, so with this new thing, any and all cancelled contests get a $250 kill fee awarded to a cS-selected creative. Whereas, before, the creative would be guaranteed the fee – could be $300, $500 could be $1000 – even if the buyer requested a refund.

All I can say, I guess, is wait and see.

I don’t know the stats of cancelled vs completed projects, so maybe this is an uncommon situation, maybe not.

“for $200 logo project, the kill fee would be $200 (not $50).”

“The kill fee will be capped at $250 and the person who is paid the fee will retain all of the rights to their entry”

What happens with a large scale project? An extra 50 bucks?

I’m a buyer who happens to be a creative too – a painter. I just suck at Photoshop. I’ve created multiple designs with a graphic designer essentially handling the publishing suites from Adobe – on sight with me. So I know the time involved in Photoshop if the user is pro-efficient: it can be very fast. The time-consuming part stems from the aesthetic talent of the designer.

If the designer doesn’t get the concept, what the buyer is asking for and lacks talent, why should a buyer be locked into taking the design and loose the investment? Ad agencies spend hundred of thousands of dollars with teams of creatives to win an account with no guaranty of closing the account.

A lot of your customers are from small businesses and start-ups. They simply cannot afford to be locked into a 25 entry model. Where you all have a point is that buyers should be held accountable IF they do not provide feedback and stop the creative. But that’s for a buyer who knows what s/he wants and also has a visual sense and those are rare. And a lot of those buyers don’t know that in reality to get a design right, you have to communicate frequently.

The last thing is that communicating visual ideas with text is very difficult. I hope CS will consider implementing a chat function or a call the designer by phone.

@glamaz0n – The policy applies to all projects. In the past, when we refunded projects that received fewer than 25 entries, the creative was not paid. We refunded the awards (and our fee) in full. Going forward, as we explain above, a creative will be paid the “kill fee”. That does mean that we may see some projects that previously would not have been refunded, be refunded. In those projects, a creative would receive less than they might have received in the past. On the other hand, they would keep all of their intellectual property rights to the design and would not need to do any further work. We think that the balance tips in favor of our policy change, but like you, we’re keeping an open mind and will make any adjustments we think will be necessary to make sure this change is reasonable and fair.

@dlacky. Projects > $250, the kill fee is $250. There is no further work required in such projects and the designer keeps their intellectual property.

@A view from the buyer – thanks for sharing another (important) perspective.

By the way, is this new rule in addition to the 25 minimum rule?
Or will it replace it? So now, even if a project got five entries, it would still be awarded?

All things considered, I think this is a bold and generous move on Crowdspring’s behalf. It’s the kind of thing that Crowdspring can now offer in part, because it has been so successful. (Like Kellogg’s, for instance… a guarantee on their cereal that if you’re not happy you’ll get your money back!) And, like Ross has said, this will be implemented, and then wait and see how it pans out. For instance, if now, a contest gets say, 450 entries, and the contest holder says “I’m not happy with any of the entries, I want my refund” isn’t that pretty much suspicious, right there? I’ve been a very active creative here for nearly a year, and even a contest that gets as few as 50 entries ALWAYS has numerous brilliant designs. It’s really hard to conceive of situations with ample entries where a contest holder wouldn’t be totally happy.
One question: if a buyer asks for a refund, how will that be announced in that particular contest when the award is given out?

Uh — NO.

As a buyer, I am NOT thrilled at the prospect of having to pay ANOTHER fee. This is just another cost we HAVE to pass along to our customers (oh wait – I dont HAVE to absorb this new fee, I ‘could’ go elsewhere)

@cS – This fee should not be applied across the board for buyers (is it their fault the min of 25 entries didnt happen?). I firmly believe that if a buyer cancels, withdraws, or does not get 25 entries for a contest THEN the buyer should be responsible for the fee. (and cS SHOULD withhold their fee as per, put some of it in the ‘kill pool’??)

After reading this, we are, at my company, meeting to discuss our options. I had a lots of hopes for cS for 2010, but this new fee announcement is a game changer.

Watching this closely now.

@DigitalBeckley… wait a second… an additional $39 is a GAME CHANGER (deal breaker)??? If you can’t afford another $40 in order to see -on average- hundreds of designs for a project, then, yeah, I’d say go elsewhere. LOL!

@davebowman – yeap – if we post 1 project a month, thats like almost $500 extra on the year of overhead and its lost money – to me thats like throwing away $500 for nothing. it in no way protects me nor does it provide any additional assurances.

our expected growth for this year is that we could potentially be posting 2-3 (or more) projects per month, so just why should we pay $1500+ for ‘insurance’ for some one else’s failures?

its not that we cant afford the fee, its what the fee is for. we’ve maintained a 100% rating across the board, now I am being asked to fund other buyer’s failures.

what if: every check you wrote had a $10 fee attached to it to fund other people’s overdraft protection? (hey thats a GREAT analogy!), wouldn’t you think twice about writing that check?

also your on average is a bit off, over the 7 projects we’ve posted – our return is about 30-60 submissions per project, not quite the stampede of creatives to our projects.

Hello!
i have 3 point to discuss:

1/ I think it’s a good INITIATIVE from the part of CS as well as a good faith and I hope that later Cs take further initiatives to protect completely the rights of the buyer and the Creative…

2/ I’m agree with TheNutz that i hope cS award the second and 3th place.

3/ TO ROSS, (but out of this subject and i’m sorry)…, i have a question for the project of LG, Why americains only can participate in this project? i don’t want think to words “Racial discrimination”,… i think that the politic of crowdspring is to give chance for the best and to serious creative who worked hardly. i can be the best, he can be the best, she can be the best…but we are not all americain.
(sorry for my poor english)

Hi Ross , i got the same question like hangar already asked… it s not fair to make nationality criteria for a big competetion like LG mobile phone desgning… Cs is a place of equal opportunity for all…i don knw if u hav decided tht only americans are eligible to participate or it s decided by LG … but whtsoever… it s not fair. you are discriminating creatives…. please rethink about it . thnks.

This is yet another half baked attempt to find a way to make the Cs model workable. Many of the failed projects result from poorly written creative briefs with little or no reference material and no clear goal & direction. Too often I see a buyer say they don’t want to stifle the creatives creativity so they deliberately don’t provide input. In another case I saw a buyer completely change the creative direction after a dozen posts had been made only to say: “Sorry this is want I really meant.” Often compounding the poor creative brief is the amount of work verses the small rewards. Project scope often has unrealistic expectations.

On a side note, a very frustrating problem is the buyer who is not an active participant in the creative process. Too often I see buyers who just want to post their fly paper and come back at closing to see if anything stuck. This is the main reason I stopped participating.

To remedy these issues:
1. I would recommend Cs institute a project inspection process to determine if the project has validity.

2. Perhaps a training cycle and a set of rules that requires the buyer to post feedback as well as have an understanding of the nature of the business.

3. I would not charge the fee to any who have never asked for a refund. Once any buyer asks for a refund then they would be the ones to subsidize the kill fees. The more refunds they receive the higher their fee.

Anyone who thinks a buyer is going to rip them off doesn’t understand reality.
The last think i want is to waste any more of my time finding and dealing with another designer.
I just want a design i can use, pay for it, and get it over with as quickly as possible.
End of story.

You guys are concentrating on the negatives too much.

I’ve been working on a small project in my off-time. I had considered posting a contest. I’d happily pay a grand for a great design that I liked. But taking a chance on paying that much and not getting something I liked or not getting something I could use was preventing me from posting. I can’t afford to do a contest, fail, and then find a more traditional design route.

Now, I can post. If it doesn’t work out, I lose $39 instead of $1000.

This is one contest that wouldn’t have existed without this policy.

DigitalBeckley

…”yeap – if we post 1 project a month, thats like almost $500 extra on the year of overhead and its lost money – to me thats like throwing away $500 for nothing. it in no way protects me nor does it provide any additional assurances.”

It looks to me though that your ‘assurances’ would come from the fact that you can say no to a project and not pay the full thing wheras before, you had to pay no matter what.

That means if you say no to even 1 project (if it’s large enough), your extra fees are pretty well covered and you get better work overall. You’d have to use it right though…….. If the work you buy here is 100% all the time anyway it would seem a shame to complain about a few fees that might let the wonderful people that work for you so brilliantly have a bit of insurance too.

Not sure about it though…. just thinking.

I think when something is new, i have ideas about how will work, but at same time i have to wait and see if this work right, then i can say in base at how works, the opinion about it. for know i can say im open mind.

@hangar79
3/ i think the same.

Solution: CS sets up an insurance account where .25% is taken out of the 15% fee they receive from each client – maybe the actual % is less than that – whatever – this is hypothetical. CS now receives only a 14.75% fee on each project. Considering that very few projects are not awarded, the insurance fund should grow to be quite substantial. This would of course be kept in an interest baring account that CS would make income from in the form of earned interest. In case of client default on a project, the creatives are awarded 75% maybe 100% of the stipulated award from the insurance fund. The client is given a refund. Win, win, except the client still leaves without a solution to their creative dilemma. I would make a suggestion to the clients – give more feedback – and give it far in advance of 2 hours before the project closes.

That’s just great. A buyer can see hundreds of designs and still back out and pay a whopping $39! A creative who was maybe shooting for $1K gets $250., plus the “honor” of owning a concept that is probably good for nothing else. There are never guarantees buying creative work.You are destroying the graphics arts business whether you can see it or not or don’t want to admit it. There is NOTHING stopping a buyer from spending $39. (a laughable amount)getting all the work from Cs and asking for something like this one, this one and this one from a designer they know and pay THAT designer a reasonable fee.
Someone made reference to agencies that spend thousands on spec. creative. This is done for million dollar accounts! Get real. Besides, the agencies get all the placement fees for any media buys. They can pretty much do the creative work for free and still make a profit with the media money alone, anyway.
It was a ridiculous analogy.
Let’s keep making all this stuff cheaper and cheaper until the creatives can’t afford to buy lunch for their efforts.
Both buyers and creatives take risks. The buyer may not get what he wants. The creative may not sell an idea. You’ve just taken all the risk away from the buyers. (I don’t consider $39. a risk)If you want to even it up, award the creative the original amount even if the buyer backs out. It’s your decision to let them do that. They should hire Cs because they like the quality of the work and are willing to take the chance that they get that “perfect” (HA!) design. That’s how the rest of the world does it…

@Micard: See solution just above your comment. Not bad, I think.

@SamFox – the new policy replaces the 25 entry guarantee policy.

@davebowman – much thanks for those words of support. I wish we were as successful as Kellogg’s…

But you’re absolutely right that we see great work in nearly all projects. We too think this is a bold move because it further differentiates us from other marketplaces and puts our money where our mouth is.

To answer your question – we will post a project comment announcing the award to the specific creative who receives it.

@DigitalBeckley – I do appreciate your point of view. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing this policy, including how some buyers like yourself might react to it. The added cost is meaningful to a buyer posting many projects, but we think that the added assurance to our community will allow us to build a stronger and more capable community. We want buyers to leverage crowdSPRING not because they can get at least 25 entries, but because we have the best creative community on the planet. As we work to further evolve and refine our business model, we must continue to find ways to support that community and to offer buyers a great product and a great community.

@hangar79 – we will look at these changes and make any adjustments that are necessary. As you know, we do our best to innovate and we’ll continue to find other ways that we can protect both parties.

We’re not yet in a position to award creatives beyond the first in multiple award projects. However, this is something we’ve discussed and something we’ll certainly keep an eye on and possibly introduce in the future.

To answer your question about LG – they made this decision to include only US citizens and residents. We did our best to persuade them to open this competition to everyone in the world. We’re amazed by the great talent on crowdSPRING and elsewhere in the world – but they declined to do so and kept it US focused.

@SUBHADIP – We’ll keep encouraging LG to open up future competitions to the whole world. We’d love to see ALL of you have an opportunity to participate.

@tygraphics – There’s much truth in your comment. Many of the failed projects do in fact result from poorly written briefs and lack of feedback. We’ve seen briefs improve considerably over the past year, and we’re seeing feedback moving too.

The suggestion to inspect projects is a good one. In fact, Audress has been reviewing every project and where we see inadequate briefs or too much scope for the amount of the awards, we act promptly to remedy that issue.

As for your suggestion to vary fees – it’s tough for us to operate a service where some but not others are charged a fee. I understand why you’ve made the suggestion, and it’s an interesting concept, but not easily executable at this moment.

@mike – Thanks for your perspective. It’s a valuable point and I hope that the designers and writers following this discussion consider it…

@Marc Hughes – Thanks for your comment. It’s very valuable to hear from buyers and potential buyers because it helps our creatives to better understand how buyers evaluate our policies (including the guarantee) and fees.

@Otte – Good points all around, as you’ve recognized.

@branding – well said.

@alancreative – We’ve considered this suggestion and ultimately, the economics were too difficult. Have you seen the interest rates that savings receive these days? But as with everything, we’ll keep a close eye and always consider ways to improve …

@micard – Thanks for adding your thoughts. There is a risk balance and you might be right that $39 is a low barrier. Ultimately, we think that projects on crowdSPRING should be about quality and want all buyers to be very happy with the quality of the work here. I tend to believe that people are generally good and that we’ll see few abuses of this new policy. However, if you’re right and it is abused more than we anticipate, we will not hesitate to make adjustments.

Does this new policy affect already opened contests? When exactly it is going live?

I just used CS for the first time this week as a buyer and was very impressed. I have to say that I don’t like the new suggested policy at all though.

As a buyer, I’m not keen on the idea of subsidizing people who don’t know how to engage on CS in order get the right results. It’s clear to me that a wealth of talent can be found on this site. If you don’t get the result you’re looking for, you probably either have unrealistic expectations, or you don’t know how to engage. CS should not be seeking those kinds of buyers, and I’d rather not subsidize their mistakes either. Better to put those extra funds towards the price of the prize.

I also think that the guarantee to the designers is actually a pretty shoddy guarantee. To do it right, the guarantee should match the price of the prize. If that’s what a designer sign up for, then that should be what they get – no if ands or buts. Otherwise CS is simply pushing the risk onto the designer. If CS was to take that risk on instead (by making good on the commitment of the full prize), then they’d be more apt to take measures to ensure that a failure doesn’t happen.

My overall impression is that this is just a new service fee for CS wrapped up in the guise of a “guarantee”. You are now in the “project insurance” business, but at very high margins.

Focus on improving the efficiency of the system instead (rather than trying to take a bigger bite out of each transaction as this guarantee attempts to do), and I bet you will find that the higher volumes in the better market will be a more sustainable path to profit.

After thinking about this for a few weeks I’ve had a few questionable thoughts…..

If the contest holders can always get their money back, then the incentive to participate (ie, feedback ect.) diminishes. Lack of participation by the CH results in poorer quality submissions, increasing the risk of withdrawal, and it might snowball……

CS might end up paying big time for this, with little or no real improvement.

I might be thinking about this wrong, but I had always figured the thought that the contest holder wasn’t going to get his money back was what kept the contests here healthy and active.

I know, somebody has probably already said it, but I’m starting to think they might be right if they did. You can’t help but wonder about it when considering whether or not to enter a particular contest and watching it. The chance of a small reward should something go wrong might be great for me as a designer, but the lessening of the risk for the CH might backfire with CHs getting increasingly lazy knowing they can just dump it for $39.

@Alan – Thanks for sharing your thoughts. While I can appreciate why you see the posting fee as a subsidy, it’s not. We must constantly find ways to balance our community (both the buyer and creative communities) and we’ve learned over the past few years that doing so is easier said than done. For example, we’re the only marketplace in the world that pays the “kill fee”. On all other marketplaces – designers get zero dollars. But we’re a small business ourselves, and it would be impractical and impossible for us to to bear the full risk of refunds (which are very low, incidentally). By sharing some of the risk, we’re able to provide a stronger guarantee to buyers, a real benefit to designers, and at the same time, make sure that we stay in business long term to be able to continue to improve our service and community. We work very hard to ensure that failure doesn’t happen – we’ve done that from day one, even before we began paying a kill fee.

@Otte – Our refund rates are historically low. The vast majority of buyers are very happy with the quality of the work and the service, but since this was a relatively new change, we don’t yet have sufficient data to be able to assess how this policy will impact feedback, quality, etc. You are of course right that we might end up paying “big time” for this without much improvement. If true – we’re always ready to make adjustments to make sure that our policies are sensible, reasonable, and practical.

Let’s see what actually happens in the projects and if we’re seeing buyers abuse the guarantee, we’ll make the necessary adjustments. We believe, however, that the vast majority of buyers will continue to be thrilled with the work and that the issues you’ve articulated are not very likely to occur.