Today I was turned down by freelancer designer
I am working my sideproject: https://coolboard.io
Last week I reached out to a designer who I wanted to hire to do some work for me.
Today I talked with him over zoom and he started asking questions about my the project: how my project is better than this or that similar product, how will I monetize, have I checked out the competition etc.
The he told me that he don't think that I need a design. (I needed for validation purposes, so that I can show my idea to people and see the reaction). When I explained this, he told me that he still didn't think I need design. And the small items I needed are too small for him, and even if he accepted this work it would be over my budget (I did not give any number to him) and then basically told me that my project is not good/big enough and he is not interested in working on it.
Is this a common thing? Or is this guy so popular that he can turn down and lecture clients?
While getting that kind of reaction can be frustrating at times, I would rather a freelancer say no up front than tell me they will do it then put other projects they have above it and have the process drag out.
From the freelancer side though, once you reach a certain skill level, taking on small small jobs can actually negatively impact your revenue.
Small jobs almost always end up netting you less income per hour because there is less room to work with for communication and delayed responses can lead to additional time required to refocus on the project once you do get a response.
Also, If you are working on small jobs, you are constantly having to find more and more of them to maintain your income level and you may miss out on larger and/or long-term projects if you are constantly focusing on small and/or short-term projects.
The great thing is there are a lot of freelancers available so even if one, two or ten turn you down, there will be more to contact.
That said, it is quite possible that with everything going on in the world and more people working or trying to work from home to offset lost revenue, the normally higher-tier freelancers are likely dipping down into the smaller job markets for supplemental work to offset their reduced income from higher tier projects.
Above all, do not let a freelancer ever negatively influence your confidence in your project.
Everyone is an expert and everyone has an opinion, but the one that matters most is your own, so do not let anyone take that away from you.
I think overall my project wasn't small. Just I wanted to start small, because I would like to check if the designer can work: deliver on time, does a good job etc, before spending multiple thousands of dollars.
Anyways, he managed to rule himself out even without spending money, so that is great!
Ha sort of caught me off guard because I wasn't prepared for pitching my idea even if I hire someone for freelance work. So he made me think over the project again, and I realized that I am much more confident right now then I was before.
I think it's good to rule himself out, now can get someone better suited and who would enjoy it
Agree!
There are designers who can charge by hours.
What work do you need to get done on your site? The site, at least the home page, looks fine.
The thing is sort of twofold: I need someone to help me with designing the UI of the application that my website promotes, based on those UI design I want someone to create a few videos/gifs for me so that I can show the cool things and then update redesign the website using those gifs/videos and make it aligned with the application UI. So I think it is not a small project at all, however I wanted to start small so that I can assess the designer.
I have a similar problem - finding a suitable UX designer. So I have a doc listing out the pages and improvement I need. After finding a few potential competent designers within my price range, I ask him/her to do 1 difficult process as a trial. I pay for the cost. Some charges by hours, while some charges by tasks. One offers 50% discount if I don't like the result.
This is a great idea, I have to create a task list, to see what has to be done, because I only have it in my head roughly.
If you find someone please let me know :) Also If I find someone I can refer.
I think it's quite honourable of him. I've turned down design and website projects several times because I didn't think I could actually help the client or achieve what they wanted in accordance to their budget.
Probably he had good intentions, however I did not give a budget or anything. I think that was fine that he raised his concerns. It would have been nice if he warned me, gave me a price and let me decide if I wanted to move forward.
Instead he turned me down while lecturing me how to do project validation, and also assuming and expressing that I have a low budget and could not afford his services.
So maybe with good intentions but he made me feel uncomfortable, which is not a good business practice as far as I am concerned.
It depends on the designer and how much work he's got at the moment. I'm a designer, let me know if I can help out.
Thanks, I'll send you some details later this week.
Hmm - interesting problem. Perhaps there is room for a 'productionized service' model where you're not totally building custom designs but offer standard templates with some tweaking at a much lower rate since its easier and faster to produce?
I have done freelance web development and design in the past, but I can't read the mind of your designer, so this is just my take on it.
Basically your website looks "fine" and there just isn't that much work to do. I haven't logged in or signed up, bu I imagine the dashboard has a similar quality to the landing page. If I were to take on this work, I could probably fix it up to my professional standard in less than a week, perhaps only a few days. At that point, do I charge you for 3-5 days of work? Sure, but then you might have changes or other items to request, and now I'm stuck working on a tiny project in bits and pieces rather than biting off a larger chunk of work that a large client might give me. It's always easier to do 1 big project than many smaller projects, and that would be my preference as well.
Just my 2 cents :)
Thanks for sharing. Then I have to go to upwork/freelancer to find less good designer because it seems for the good ones this is too small. Sad :(
Ugh I know this feeling. I dealt with this at a previous job when I didn't have enough bandwidth to keep producing mockups, but we didn't have enough work to justify hiring a full-time designer. Perhaps this would be a good market for you to solve :D