We do have a quality guarantee! While we cannot guarentee that every client will turn out to be good, or even end up deciding to go on with their project, we do guarantee certain things. In the design business, no matter where your clients find you, whether from a website, the yellow pages, google ads, or DesignQuote leads, you will always have some clients that turn out to be either just looking for prices that don't have funding in place. Perhaps they are just trying to get an idea on what things cost. This is just like people walking onto a car lot - they may be "just looking" and its up to the sales person to sell them a car. Everyone is just looking until they turn into a sale!
With that being said, we guarantee that the project leads have been requested by a validated client. We have three full-time employees that oversee daily operations. There is always a customer service person on duty Monday - Friday 10-6 EST. This person validates every project via phone and/or email.
The initial verification process requires the client to respond to two emails, and normally we also do a phone call verification before the project is posted. If a project is posted and then the client never responds to any of the designers that have purchased the lead and does not respond to our closing requests, we consider the project bogus and refund the credits. Each project is closed and reviewed and each case is handled individually. You can leave your feedback for each project to inform our support staff of your experience.
If the client reviews the bids and does not choose a designer, but closes the project with a legitimate reason, such as dissatisfaction with the bids or choosing a designer outside DesignQuote, we normally do not consider that bogus. But as stated above each project is handled on a case by case basis and we try to be as fair as possible, if it is a bogus project our standard response is to refund the credits back into your account. Read What makes a valid sales lead
Our new bidder acknowledgement system makes the client approve every single potential provider. This way if a client has already received 4 bids and awarded the contract, they will reject or ignore your bid and you get your credits back when the project closes. Read More
The credits are for purchasing the lead information and the client's contact information.
It is an opportunity to sell your services to a potential client.
We do not guarantee that you will be selected for the project; it is up to you to sell the project.
We believe the model at design quote delivers a superior service to designers; ensuring quality, well-paying jobs
with no commissions to pay to a middleman. We do not get between you and your client.
You can continue working for them on new projects for years and never pay us another dime.
Everyone in business pays for leads, either by advertising, or renting a storefront or marketing on the web.
If you are a freelancer or have a design business then you already do pay for leads,
either by printing business cards, buying ads, postcards,
Pay-per-click ads, the yellow pages, a sign on a business...
Its all marketing cost and one way or another if your going to attract
potential customers (eg leads) you are going to pay. After you add it all up, you will see
the COA (Cost of acqusition) of a client is actually quite low compared with say Google ads,
Magazine or Newspaper ads, or other traditional forms of advertising.
Most people build it into the cost of doing business. In other words, you should model your prices to cover the cost
of your lead and still make a profit.
That is precisely how the website works. You pay us for the service of collecting leads and dropping them on your doorstep. You save time and resources advertising, marketing and trying to hunt down leads. If you are confident in your product and your ability to close the deal then this should be a great opportunity for you. The average return on investment here is around $9 per $1 spent on leads. So the average designer that buys $100 worth of leads earns $1000 - several of our providers earn $50+ per dollar spent!
If you email a bid and get no response that doesn't neccesarily mean a project is bogus. Wait and leave feedback
on our feedback system (see below). If you get a bogus phone number and email and cannot reach the client at all,
notify us immediately via lives upoort or create a support ticket and we will
investigate. Otherwise use the:
NEW: Integrated feedback system.
Here is how the process works: Once you purchase a lead, it is added to your leads (under the "my leads" tab).
After the bid closing date the client is notified and instructed to close the project.
When a client closes the project,
they enter the outcome of their decision, this is emailed to every designer that
bid on the project. Once closed you are emailed and instructed to leave feedback for that lead.
As soon as a project closing date passes we email the client every night (and call them after 5 days) to ask them to close the project.
If a client doesn't close a project within 10 days we close the project and set it as "under review" - you can then leave feedback.
When you leave feedback you can let us know if the client responded to you, if you won the project, or if the project was bogus.
We now review all closed projects and if we find a lead was bogus we will refund your credits.
Otherwise if we find the project was awarded, everyone who purchased the lead is notified of the outcome.
This really depends on your sales skills and communication with the client. The industry average is around 20%. In other words, you should
be able to close 1 out of every 5 projects you bid on. Most jobs do not sell out all slots so in most cases you are only competing with 3 or 4 other designers and
you may have better a better chance. However, some jobs are very desirable and sell out quickly to 8 designers. These jobs are harder to win.
If you are not closing an average of 20% you may need to review your methods, techniques, portfolio and presentation.
Deliver a professional presentation with good communication and reasonable
prices and you should have no problem closing jobs. Have a look at your other sources of leads and examine how many
clients approach you compared to how many actually contract you to work. Your closing rate on designquote should be no different.
These numbers average out over time. If you give up after unsuccessfully bidding on just one or two jobs you're not going to get anywhere. If you bid on ten jobs
and still don't win any projects it's time to review your process. Get on some forums and blogs and start asking people for feedback.
Some good forums to check are DTG forums
and WebmasterWorld.
First you must register. After this you will be able to purchase credits.
You can then use these credits to purchase the contact information for the client.
New: Once you purchase the lead, the client is notifed that you want to bid,
after they acknowledge that you want to bid you will receive an email with their contact information.
This ensures you dont purchase a lead for a project that already has been awarded.
See how designers obtain leads for more detailed information.
Sometimes PayPal takes a few hours to update in our system. If the credits do not show up within a few hours contact support via live help or login and create a support ticket.
You may have bought one project that cost 3 credits and one that cost 1 credit. Please remember that the price of the project determines the amount of credits that it costs. Check your credit history. The link is nexxt to "buy credits" after you login. If you find a discrepency, contact support via live help or create a support ticket and we will investigate.
Anyone can post a project on our website, whether it is an "amateur" or an enterprise level company. Companies post the years in business and employees and their contact information is verified. DesignQuote is unique in that you can post questions to the client BEFORE purchasing the lead. All questions and answers are anonymous and posted on the lead page.
After you purchase the contact information, you should call or email the company to get more information to create your bid. Give them your best sales pitch. Remember that purchasing the lead does not guarantee the work. Each project allows up to 8 bids, so you could be competing with 7 other people in your field for the job. The system does notify the client that you are a bidder and gives them your contact information when you purchase a lead.
There is no way to purchase a closed RFP. We limit the number of bids on most projects to 8. We do this so that too many people don't go after the same project. A designer has a better chance of landing the project by limiting the competition. Also, many clients don't want to review bids from 20 or 30 freelancers.
Every potential client for you will be different, but some advice I can give you is that you are selling yourself. When you contact someone you need to understand that up to seven other people are also going to contact them about their project. You may not need to have a draft right away, but a portfolio of your work and a ballpark price of what you can do the project for might be helpful to landing the deal. If you are great at graphic design but not good at selling your product, I would recommend "Selling for Dummies." It is a very good book to learn the basics of selling yourself. You should read: Standards by AIGA . Along with all the other Papers they did on Copyright, Photography Usage, Fonts, Etc.
This is something you need to take up with the person that you did the project for. We would suggest sending them an invoice. And it is a good idea to get a partial deposit to start work. Never send completed work to a client without receiving any payment. For design work you can send watermarked low res images for approval, then if they like it, get them to send partial or complete payment before you release the final product. This is something you need to work out as a standard business practice for your business!
Remember, DesignQuote is a LEAD service - we are just connecting you with potential clients that have expressed an interest in buying services. It's up to you to sell your services.
Unlike other websites such as elance,getafreelancer,getacoder, we do not charge a commission or a percentage for the work that you do. All we do is offer the lead and give you an opportunity to obtain the project. Once you win the project, it is all yours to do as you wish- no middle man to deal with. Also you get to keep the client for ever without paying us another dime.
Unlike other lead sites, we actually verify each lead before we post it. Most lead services just forward you emails directly from their contact form, so you end up with a lot of junk leads that you ahve to return. DQ lets you cherry pick pre-qualified leads and just buy the ones you want - no contracts or monthly fees.
No bidding wars: Sites like freelancer.com post each users bid, and allow unlimited bidders so you are competing for work at the lowest price with many people who are willing to work for next to nothing - this drives down the value of the projects, and in our opinion devalues the entire industry.
Log into your account, click on My Alerts tab near the top, configure your criteria for your default searches and email alerts.
Photos preview a small portion of your photo or logo. When a users cursor moves over the photo, the entire image appears.
Example: (hover your mouse over the image)
The cost of a lead depends on the project's budget. Credits cost $4 to 5 each depending on how many you buy. You can get free credits with bulk purchases. You may refer to the table below:
Remember you can adjust your email preferences if you dont want emails for every project under "My Alerts" If you still want to cancel your account log in to your DesignQuote user account; go to the Profile tab. Click the 'Delete My Account' button under your profile information. Unused credits are non-refundable.
"Using DesignQuote.net, we have been contracted for well over $12,000 in less than a month, and I only spent $60. Talking to people over placing bids seems to make a big difference. DesignQuote.net has made it easy to get the projects worth doing without spending too much time finding them! Thanks DesignQuote!"
- Tim Jones 01/26/2007| Budget of Project | Credits |
| Under $100 | 1 |
| $100 - $249 | 2 |
| $250 - $499 | 3 |
| $500 - $999 | 4 |
| $1000 - $2499 | 5 |
| $2500 - $4999 | 6 |
| $5,000 - $7,499 | 8 |
| $7,500 - $9,999 | 11 |
| $10,000 - $14,499 | 13 |
| $15,000 - $30,000 | 15 |
| $30,001 - $50,000 | 17 |
| $50,001 - $70,000 | 19 |
| $70,001 - $90,000 | 21 |
| $90,001 - $120,000 | 22 |
| $120,001 - $150,000 | 25 |
| Help Me Choose. | 99 |
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