Archive for April, 2011

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Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Watchdog Breathalyzers

Monday, April 11th, 2011

As children, we’re often told to learn from our mistakes.  Some of us take this to heart more than others. After a humbling DUI conviction over ten years ago, G.R. Rush wanted to be proactive and help others help themselves.  This is why he started Watchdog Breathalyzers.  The company provides personal breathalyzer devices, ranging from $49 – $149 apiece.  It can be difficult– if not downright impossible– to know for sure what a person’s blood alcohol content is without an accurate way to measure.  A handheld device not only answers the unknown, it also is a powerful way to achieve personal responsibility.

G.R. took some time to answer a few questions I had:

 

1.  How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING?  (or, if this is your first project, what other options were you considering?)

I’ve had different businesses before Watchdog and I always used an ad agency for my design needs. I heard good things about crowdSPRING and wanted to try it out before I went back to the ad agency route.

 

2.  Why in the world did you decide to use crowdSPRING?!

I browsed the website and saw a substantial amount of high quality creative output. I was truly surprised at how much diversity most of the jobs received. I was also excited to know that I would be able to personally comment on the designs and have a dialect with the individual designers to fine tune the concepts.

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Posted in business, Interviews, start-up tips | No Comments »

Who are we? And where do we come from? (2011 edition)

Monday, April 11th, 2011

It is almost 3 years since we opened the doors to crowdSPRING and in that time we have grown dramatically. In May of 2008, we started out with fewer than 600 registered users. By May of 2009 we had grown to just under 30,000, and by May 2010 we were 79,000 strong; today we have nearly 125,000 registered users and are growing by 1,100 per week! And they are active: after one year in business, Creatives had collectively submitted over 275,000 entries to projects; by May 2010 the entry count was over 900,000 and as of today the number has more than doubled with over 1.8 million individual entries submitted to projects on the site!

Traffic to the site has also increased dramatically; When we launched on May 6th, 2008 we had already received over 19,000 visits during our beta-testing period. By the same date in 2009 we had received 551,000 visits; a year later we were well over 1.3 million. Our growth continues to accelerate; to date we have welcomed more than 2.3 million visitors!

The international flavor of our community has not ceased to amaze us and our footprint has continued to spread since we launched – after our first year in business visitors came from 204 countries and spoke 136 languages. By May of 2010 they came from 219 countries and spoke 199 languages; according to Google Analytics, there are only 5 countries from which we have not had a single visit: Chad, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Guinea, and The Central African Republic. But, not to worry – as I write this, our marketing geniuses are actively targeting those 5 nations and we expect to welcome them to our community in 2011!

Interestingly, we have become more international with each year – after one year in business, US visitors accounted for 73% of the traffic to the site; in the last year US visits accounted for only 61%! What were the 10 visiting countries in the past 3 years, you ask? Take a look here to see how the Top 10 have changed in each year over year:

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Posted in business, community, inspiration, Site Updates | 10 Comments »

Twitter Link Roundup #81 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

Friday, April 8th, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The image to the left is the cover for the comic book Cat Woman, designed by Adam Hughes.You’ll find more cool comic book covers in the Random Fun section below.


How To Find Your First Customers And Grow Your Business – http://bit.ly/eJ4zyb

crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week – Thumbtack Press – http://bit.ly/i9GQt2

How To Find Your First Customers And Grow Your Business – http://bit.ly/eJ4zyb

11 Candid Truths About Entrepreneurship From VC Mark Suster – http://read.bi/hgEB4O

Top 5 Myths about Distributed Teams – http://bit.ly/erzjdT

Product design at GitHub http://awe.sm/5Hm8r

Lean Marketing: Don’t Believe Your Own Press Releases – http://bit.ly/ih5ckP

Why I Run a Flat Company – http://bit.ly/g7Dwxv

The need for ad industry to evolve & stop complaining – http://bit.ly/giKZGF

How to Create Compeling Advertising – http://bit.ly/gryhN3

100 Guerrilla Marketing Advertisements for your Inspiration – http://bit.ly/e5t7d7

Good post by @benkunz in BusWeek about Facebook’s potential to dominate banking – http://buswk.co/g39PBN

CPC & conversion rates are abysmal. Why would people “save” ads to review later? – http://bit.ly/hlU7tJ

Specialist agencies to help w/ Facebook ads, but not atrocious conversion rates – http://on.wsj.com/hAhgrX

Interesting perspective from @malbonster about Instagram – http://bit.ly/g07ryJ

Are you listening? – http://bit.ly/gReXAz

You need to be HUMAN, not amateur, when building communities. Good advice but wrong perspective – http://bit.ly/gY78G6

Hulu On Track To Generate $500 Million In Revenue This Year – http://read.bi/ex1g5N

How To Find Your First Customers And Grow Your Business – http://bit.ly/eJ4zyb

30 Very Funny Print Ads – http://bit.ly/gGGWdn

Print Design Tips for Web Designers – http://bit.ly/i7hBdf

Mobile Form Design Strategies – http://bit.ly/eMaudF

30 Best Creative and Professional Free Fonts For Designers – http://bit.ly/fN3lCi

34 Spectacular Beer Bottle Labels and Designs – http://bit.ly/fAX9Fo

(more…)

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Posted in Awesomeness, business, community, crowdsourcing, design, How To, inspiration, Interviews, marketing, Reviews, social media, start-up tips, Strategy, Technology, writing | 1 Comment »

12 Questions: Meet Troy Tessalone (USA)

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

In our 12 Questions blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community – in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly – activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we’ll take notice.

We’re very proud to feature Troy Tessalone (crowdSPRING username: TroyTess) today.Troy lives and works in Redondo Beach, CA.

1. Please tell us about yourself.
Hello world!  Troy Tessalone here.  I’m a creative who participates in Writing projects on crowdSPRING, or in other words I primarily name stuff.  As a 24 year old, I’m nearing my quarter century age crisis.  I was born and raised in the South Bay area of Southern California, which is also where I currently live and work.  The South Bay is a group of beach cities about 30 minutes to an hour (depending on traffic) southwest of downtown Los Angeles.  In May 2008, I earned my B.S. in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing from the University of Southern California (USC), where I also took some Information Technology courses like how to build a website.  Needless to say, I’m a USC Trojan, tried and true.  By day, I work for an online advertising company, where I’m a Web Production Analyst.  That’s geek speak for saying I work on the technical side of the business interfacing with systems and dealing with a lot of data.  I consider myself a social media junkie and someone who keeps up with technology.  I’d rather be busy than bored, so I’m always looking for ways to be immersed in the world around me and enjoy what life has to offer.  I believe everyone is a product of their environment and I’m certainly no exception.  “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” is the motto I live my life by.  I came across that quote while reading the graduation speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005.  That quote immediately struck a cord with me and I’ve strived to live my life based upon it ever since.

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Posted in Awesomeness, community, crowdsourcing, inspiration, Interviews | 2 Comments »

How To Find Your First Customers And Grow Your Business

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Entrepreneurs frequently ask me for advice on finding early customers for a product or service, and how to leverage those customers to market to a larger community of potential customers.

This is not easy to do, but there are a few things you can do that can help. In this video, I offer five tips, based on my experience with crowdSPRING.

Do you have other tips or questions? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below?

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Posted in business, community, How To, marketing, social media, start-up tips, Strategy | 6 Comments »

Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Thumbtack Press

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Most of us have probably taken a gander in an art museum or two. We are able to recognize da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and recite Vincent van Gogh’s ear-choppingly bizarre biography from grade school art classes.  However, art did not stop developing with Andy Warhol in the 1960’s and it can be a struggle to know where to find modern, working artists and artwork.

That’s where Thumbtack Press comes in. Operating as both a search engine and a market place, the website offers a meeting place for contemporary artists and illustrators and those interested in buying their work at affordable prices.  And with an artwork  “Randomizer” feature, even the most amateur of buyers have a place to get started on learning about what’s currently out there.

Barry Friedland recently acquired the five-year old company and took time to answer some questions I had:

 

1.  How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING?  (or, if this is your first project, what other options were you considering?)

This is my first project with crowdSPRING.  Thumbtack Press is a company I acquired late last year.  I loved the direction they were heading conceptually – affordable and high quality art from contemporary artists (mostly illustrators), but I knew that ultimately so much would have to change for me to be able to 1) relate to it and be passionate about it and 2) be successful at it.

So the decision to re-brand was an easy one.  However, the decision as to who to use, and how to even find that person, and hope that their vision matched yours, felt like such a long shot.

 

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Posted in business, design, Interviews | No Comments »

Google Summer of Code 2011

Friday, April 1st, 2011

Since 2005, Google has led a wonderful open source program called Summer of Code. The goal of that program is to promote open source software development.

Google invites open source organizations to propose ideas that could benefit the world, and asks the organizations to mentor students to develop these ideas and released them as FOSS (free and open source software).

When a student is selected for the program, they work during their summer vacation and receive $5000, a t-shirt, swag and a participation certificate from Google.

Google has run this program every year since 2005, and the results are stunning. Many projects are now used around the world, and  some projects have themselves become open source organizations.

To give you a better perspective about this wonderful effort, here’s an introductory video from one of the participating mentoring organizations for this year’s program:

And here’s a video from Chris DiBona, the manager for the program at Google, on the history and the impact Google’s Summer of Code has had on the open source community.

If you have any questions about the program, please feel free to ask in the comments below.

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Posted in Awesomeness, community, crowdsourcing, Technology | No Comments »

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