Tim Ferriss Promotes 99designs for Startups Logos and Branding

Tim Ferriss Promotes 99designs for Startups Logos and Branding
I am a big fan of Tim Ferris, the author of the book 4 Hour Work Week. This #1 New York Times bestseller teaches aspiring entrepreneurs how to escape the 9-5 rat race, live anywhere and join the new rich.

His online podcast called – The Tim Ferriss Effect - has been downloaded over 150,000,000 episodes. His message of designing your life by starting your own business has resonated with our generation.

Additionally, he has filmed an Emmy award-winning television show called the Tim Ferriss Experience. All episodes are available for viewing on iTunes.

99Designs: Logos from just $299!

 

As one of the most prolific and successful entrepreneurs, he knows what it takes to build powerful brands. He uses and recommends 99designs for great logo design at affordable prices. He says, “I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine check out 99designs.com”.

Check out the review of my experience getting a logo designed at 99designs 

In fact, he has used them for book cover design for his recent bestseller titled, The 4 Hour Body. Plus he uses them for display advertising and illustrations. Often he used the one on one projects to work with specific designers on projects.

Some people come to this page looking for this URL 99designs/tim



 

How to Start a Business Tips by Tim Ferris

Here are Tim’s quick tips to make your small business launch and succeed:

1. Get Super Fans - find the people that will become your best customers and promote your product to their tribe.


2. Don’t Cost Less - never compete on price alone. You need a value proposition and point of difference that erases pricing resistance.


3. Lean Means Business - don’t try to fix your startup issues with more people or money. Often greater focus will improve efficiency and resolve problems.


4. Forget competition - develop a business that has no competition by innovating a new product category or dominating an existing one.


5. Make a Great First Impression - snap judgments need to go in your favor. So win over buyers with quality logo design, websites, and brochures that communicate your businesses professionalism.

Brand Identity Package from 99Designs from $599Brand Building by Tim Ferriss

Learn from a man whose book has been translated into 35 languages and has become his own lifestyle design brand and a household name.

Some people credit him with creating the concept of personal brand, an individual person becoming their own brand. When asked by 99 designs blog about this he replied. “Did Thomas Edison or Henry Ford have good personal brands? One could argue they did, but it wasn’t a goal. In my opinion, a good personal brand shouldn’t be the goal; it should be a side-effect of having good goals and acting consistently.”

Check out my experience getting a logo made at 99designs 

Read the latest headlines at home

 

https://best4businesses.com/builder-logos-examples-99designs-com/

https://best4businesses.com/99designs-vs-fiverr-logos-compared/

 

https://best4businesses.com/99designs-legit-worth-it/

 

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99designs vs Toptal Alternative for Logo Designs

99designs vs Toptal Alternative for Logo Designs Part of an ongoing series of reviewing sites similar to 99 designs as alternatives for your logo designs. Today I will compare 99designs vs Toptal, the pros, cons, pricing, packages and user ratings.

Read other reviews and comparisons of 99designs alternatives

99designs vs Designhill

Crowdspring Review vs 99designs Logo Contests

99designs vs 48 hours logo

Case Study Test: Logo Designs on 99designs vs Fiverr

I launched a crowdsourcing design contest on 99designs and love my new logo. Read my review of 99designs.com and watch the videos of the process from order to final logo files.

 

Overview of Toptal.com


This company’s business model promise is that they have removed the hard part of hiring logo designers online by vetting out, through a rigorous screening process, the less talented and non-professional graphic artists, then only the top 3% remain. Thus the site name toptal.com, which means Top Talent.   Additionally, their workflow includes a dedicated project manager who hand selects your professional team, then manages your job to successful completion.

Just as 99designs has, they offer that you can only pay when satisfied. Their slogan is “Painless communication,  Zero Risk, Superior Work”. Let’s see if this is indeed true.

• Pros of Toptal - Their concept of helping you organize the sometimes difficult process of hiring and managing online talent is positive. Also, their efforts to cull the pool of graphic designers to the best is admirable


• Cons of Toptal - However, their hard-sell tactics of site lockdown without an email subscription makes me wary. I also do not like their paltry refund policy good for only 2 weeks. Plus I could not browse designers, nor logo designs, adequately for me to decide on ordering.


• Summary - Based on my research, detailed below, I continue to highly recommend 99designs for logo design.

 

Graphic Design Sites Compared – 99designs vs Toptal

Money Back Guarantee – 99designs wins (60 days refund period vs 14 days)

While Toptal does offer 100% satisfaction is it ONLY offered up to 2 weeks after your project starts. That is not enough time to complete the project and evaluate your results. Compare that to 99designs 100% money back guarantee which gives you 60 days – 2 months to apply for a refund. That is zero risk. 14 days is not a risk-free offer – it seems merely like a sales technique to me.

 

Pricing and Packages - 99designs wins (Multiple package options starting at $299 - Toptal has no prices listed)

It was impossible to compare Toptal prices to 99designs because they do not list them and I cannot get information unless I signup with an order. I don"t know about you but I like to know the cost of services before I buy! Compared to the easy and clearly stated pricing packages at 99designs this win was a no-brainer.

NOTE: I have emailed Toptal to ask about their logo design package prices and have yet to get an answer :(

 

Customer Ratings - 99designs wins (More positive review and total reviews that Toptal)

Comparing user reviews for the two online sites 99designs wins by a landslide. Over 36,634 customers posted positive reviews for a 4.8-star rating testimonial. Trust pilot reviewers rated 99designs 7.3 out of 10 with 296 reviews.

Toptal reviews look a bit fishy on Trustpilot because they show 554 reviews, double the amount of 99designs when their company is one quarter the size. It just does not make sense?

Upon closer inspection of these reviews, they look bogus, like an ad agency faked them. Because they are posted exact 48 hours apart, they are all overwhelming positive (a bit too much so), all written well with no typos (that is unrealistic) and the titles read like a press release headline. This brings me back to the negative feeling I get from this company, why are they faking reviews? Why are they hiding prices and logo design portfolios?

 

Site Review – 99designs wins (open browse logo designs with no email subscription)

First thing I hated about Toptal was that I could not see a single logo design without giving my name, company, phone, and email. Yikes, this is hard selling at its worst. It gave me a bad feeling. What are they hiding? Will they hound me with emails and calls by salesmen?

Only after hunting around the site did I find a small link in the footer to Logo Designers which only showed me a handful of designers with thumbnail images. Not enough for me to be satisfied they can meet my design needs for a new logo. See screenshot below comparing both sites

Compared to 99designs which are 100% transparent and open with showing thousands of logo designs by industry – even ongoing contests can be viewed. I appreciate a company who is proud of their work and do not need heavy sales tactics to make their sales quotas.

 



99designs designed my new logo and I love it!  Read my review of 99designs.com and watch the videos of the process from order to final logo files.

99Designs: Logos from just $299!

 

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99designs Launches its own Design Contest for Their New Logo Design

99designs Launches its own Design Contest for Their New Logo Design When the largest graphic design website, 99designs,  needed a new logo branding they launched a logo design contest on their site! Yes, that’s true. In 2016 99 designs required a new logo and turned to their own crowdsource designers. They wanted to rebrand with a more sophisticated and modern look for their website and logo. I love companies that use their products to show us their confidence in their business model and quality. I too used 99designs to get a great logo for my business -read my review of 99designs logo contests


Their existing logo looked amateurish and cheap in today’s visually sophisticated marketplace. Founded in 2008 they have grown dramatically and needed to update their branding.

They wrote their logo design brief and included the following information:

• Main wordmark and shortened logomark. This means that they wanted to versions of the logo, one with the complete company name and the other with a short iconic abbreviation.


• Company description and industry - art and design


• Target audience, which is business owners and designers


• Brand personality including energetic, unique, authentic and friendly.


• Color preferences, which included one color (grey) on a white background with no gradients or shades.


• Style attributes more luxurious and less economical

99designs requested that the logo contest designers create logos that were simple and timeless - not be trendy or fashionable.  International acceptance of design to be culturally sensitive was paramount.

After launching their contests, they received over 4000 logo design entries from 556 designers across the globe. Ultimately the one winning designer was from Indonesia, Meisal Subkhan who the $600 prize - plus the bragging rights of being the best amongst hundreds of great graphic designers.

Designer Winner in 99designs Logo Contest

About 99designs.com  

Established in 2008 99designs has grown to be the world’s largest design marketplace boasting 1,000,000 designers across the globe ready to service business design needs. Created by graphic designers for graphic designers, they took their friendly competition for design work and built this business. To date, 99 designs have paid out more than $150 million to designers around the world at a rate of $4.0 million a month.  Headquarters remain located in United States (Oakland, California) with additional operations in Germany, Japan, Australia, and Brazil.

I launched a logo design contest at 99designs.com and got over 100 great logo design ideas!

Read the latest blog posts on the homepage



 

https://youtu.be/iznyJiRWzlc

 

https://best4businesses.com/99designs-vs-design-crowd-review-2018/

https://best4businesses.com/99designs-logo-design-contest-works/

 

https://best4businesses.com/99designs-pricing-2018-logo-design-packages/

 

  https://best4businesses.com/99designs-logo-design-contests/

Online Resource Small Business Legal

Online Resource Small Business Legal Check out this guide on how to get help with small business law online, from this law authority site.

Where to go for Legal Help Online https://best4businesses.com/online-resource-small-business-legal/

Is 99Designs Legit? Is it Worth it? - FAQ Logo Design Contests

Is 99Designs Legit? Is it Worth it? - FAQ Logo Design Contests Recently some of my small business clients asked me these questions:

Is 99designs legit?

Is 99designs worth it?

My answer is yes to both. Here I will detail the answers to these frequently asked questions about getting a logo designed on the 99 designs site.



Firstly, I have firsthand knowledge getting a logo made by 99 designs. You can come along with me from launching my logo design contest, designer feedback, to final logo selection, during my step to step video tutorial and review of 99 designs for logos

Secondly, in addition to being a customer, I have done a ton of independent research about the company, its site, it’s feedback ratings and customer service policies. As such, I consider myself to be an expert who can advise small business owners about the quality of 99 designs as a vendor choice.

 

LEGIT?

Company History

99designs is the world’s largest online graphic design, marketplace in business for over 20 years. They pioneered the concept of crowdsourcing of logo design in 2008. Its origins started SitePoint Design Contests but has been improved by protecting the rights of the graphic designers more fully. The SitePoint contests did not require buyers to deposit the prize money to launch a contest.  99designs changed that business model to ensure that designers get paid for their talents.

In 2010 the 99designs site was named a finalist in the prestigious SXSW Awards, which discovers the best new websites that are creating future trends. As of October 2011, 99,999 contests have been launched.

 

Customer Base and Designer Total

Now in 2017 99designs has over 400,000 satisfied customers with over a million designers globally. There are many knockoff sites, using the 99 designs business model, some better than others. You can read my comparison reviews below:

99designs vs. Crowdspring

99designs vs. designcrowd

99designs vs. 48hours logo

99designs vs. logo design guru

 

Feedback Ratings and Testimonials



In answering a question such as,  is 99 designs legit?, I like to read the top review sites that aggregate hundreds of customer reviews for logo design services. Top sites give high ratings to 99designs.com such as; ShivarWeb 4.0 stars, SiteJabber 3.0 stars, and Trust Pilot 3.5 stars.

 

WORTH IT?

To fully answer the question, Is 99designs worth it?, I will speak to your commitment of time, money and energy.

 

Time to Logo Design Completion

Getting a logo made at 99 designs, with a crowdsourcing design contest, is a different process than just ordering a premade stock logo.

Your time commitment will include approximately one hour to use their user-friendly, and intuitive Logo Design Brief questionnaire. I found it fun to click on the images I liked, pick colors from the color chart and use the slider to indicate the look & feel (Modern to Classic, Abstract to Literal).

Then within 48 hours, you will begin to receive logo design submissions. You can start posting feedback right away or wait until you receive your total number of submissions, which in my case were 100+. Once you select your finalists and submit your requested revisions, your final logo will be ready within days.

My logo design contest, from order to final logo files took ten days in total. Note this is not business days, so it could be faster than some other sources that quote you time frames in business days. It could have been faster, by a few days, if I had posted feedback earlier.

This time frame seems reasonable to me. It is comparable to other sources of logo design, such as independent graphic designers and advertising agencies. In fact, I think it’s faster than these other options, having hired many graphic designers over my career and waiting many weeks for logo design.

 

Money Fees and Value

Here is where 99designs shines. Many of my small business owner clients are not comparison-shopping correctly, they are not comparing apples to apples when evaluating logo design prices.

They will compare 99 designs pricing packages  starting at $299 with another site at $99. However, there is a major difference with the contents of each of these logo design programs. 99designs offers a lot of designs for that one price, along with an easy-to-use and well-managed process with a money back guarantee to boot. Those other firms priced at $99 or less, often only give a few designs, with limited revisions and only specific final file formats (only web usage – no print ready files).

In comparison, in my crowdsource logo design contest which I paid $299 (NOT given free by the vendor I bought with my credit card to remain independent) I got over 100 designs. Thus they were each $2.99, less than the cost of a cup of coffee!

Those other options at $99 who offer six designs are more expensive at $16.50 per design. Additionally, you will need to pay additional fees to get the logo files for all uses such as printing business cards, car wraps, and banner signs.

Perhaps you heard that you could get a logo on Fiverr for cheap. I tested that idea by buying two logos, one on Fiverr and the other on 99designs. The designs from Fiverr were so bad there were unusable so I lost money on Fiverr.  Read all about it 99designs vs Fiverr for Logo Design Test

Moreover, some of those other sites can be riskier financially. In some cases, the advertised price does not include additional fees such as posting, listing and transaction charges. Also, many that I reviewed did not have the 100% money back guarantee that 99 designs offer.

 

Your Energy and Hassle Factor

Some business people have shied away from using the crowdsourcing business model because they think it will be a hassle and will take up a lot of their time and energy. I disagree.

While in the past, and on other less professionally designed sites, running a crowdsourcing contest can be confusing and labor-intensive. That is not the case and 99 designs.com

Their team has worked very hard and successfully designed a system, and stellar website, which effectively removes the hassle factor. Also, I found the process seamless and less complicated than many other online vendors that I have used.

Included in your design contest are featured in the online workspace, which streamlines your logo creation process, such as:

Voting Poll - This feature allows you to email your final designs to your team, friends, and customers to get their advice. Everyone votes for their favorite, and you get the tabulated results.

Star Ratings - you can assign stars every logo design that you receive. Then you can filter your results by the number of stars. I found this very helpful to organize the many logo designs  I received. I could cull all the logo ideas and readily see my favorites so I could select my finalists were easy.

 

In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend 99 designs as a great place to get your perfect logo at an affordable price. Read about my experience of buying a logo at 99designs. But nothing will speak as loudly to the quality and creativity that is possible for your business logo than actual samples of winning logo design contest.

 

99designs Logo Examples

Dental Logos

Physical Fitness Logos

Restaurant



Check out the latest headlines on the home page

 

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2018 Link Building Power Tips

2018 Link Building Power Tips As an Internet marketer, you know that Google considers links, along with content, as the most important factors for page rankings, which generate traffic and new buyers.  

Google understands inbound links as a virtual form of voting for the web page quality, relevance, and usefulness to its users.  

Being an SEO search engine specialist know getting quality links can be tricky, expensive and complicated for many site owners. So I am glad to share my inside knowledge of the best link building tips, proven to work, with my readers.

Check out my 99designs review about launching a logo design contest - with video series step-by-step logo design process

Recommended 2018 Link Building Techniques

 

Wear a White Hat Always

 

Resolve to ONLY use the white hat, Google legal, link building techniques in 2018. Since the 2012 visit from Google Penguin, nobody can easily buy page rankings with a low quality link from PBN - Private Blog Network - anymore. This spam filter is now a part of Google’s core algorithm forever. Live with it.

 

Avoid Bad Link Neighborhoods

 

Your site’s Back Link Profile is becoming more significant as a measure of your site"s authority for top rankings. This means that links from low-quality sites will hurt your chances of high rankings in 2018. According to industry leader Ahrefs, Page backlink factors include:

1. URL Rank (UR) – The most critical


2. Referring domains


3. Referring Pages


4. Backlinks

 

Build Cornerstone Content to Naturally Earn Links

 

With search engines increased focus on quality content, original research has become one of the most effective link building methods in 2018.  There is no more valuable currency than unpublished industry insights, such as research, data, and case studies.

 

These cornerstone assets can be linked from many other types of content, such as videos, infographics, blog posts, and social media.

 

To profit from this type of link building:

 

• Select a topic based on your reader"s interests


• Do your research independently and publish your findings


• Make complementary content about your case study, to build traffic and industry awareness such as tweetable stats, videos, podcasts, blog post series, and infographics.


• Promote your discoveries. Outreach to bloggers, reporters, and influencers to share your data.

 

Use Social Media as a Content Sharing Platform

 

Social media continues to have great value as a link building and traffic boosting tool, both in content sharing and links from your social media profiles. So that my clients don’t become overwhelmed with daily posting, I suggest they hire an affordable social media service like 99 dollar social.

 

Here’s how to link build on social media successfully:

 

1. Find Popularity and Patterns - Use digital analysis tools, such as Buzz Sumo, to determine content that your audience finds most engaging by studying shares, likes, and comments. Then create more of that material by type (video, article, etc.) and topic.


2. Listen to Your Audience – Use social media listening tools to determine which platforms are most used by your target customer. Focus your attention on these social media sites initially and most heavily.


3. Recycle your content – Don’t just publish your content one time. 2018 social media is busier than ever and your readers may miss your first post. Continue to use it by reposting, retweeting and sharing on other social media, and Web 2.0 sites for the first week. Then post 1 or 2 times more the following week.  

 

Videos are Link Building Powerhouses

 

Link building with videos continues to be very useful, both on YouTube and across social media. Don’t be deterred by the fact that Google owns YouTube. In fact, that works to your advantage, because there is nothing that Google loves more than Google!  

 

How to build great links back to your site with videos:

 

• Self-host your videos – Then share and promote them on all your social media channels


• Reclaim Your Youtube Links - Did you know that you can find out which websites have embedded your video in YouTube analytics? It’s easy. Login to YouTube Analytics> Traffic Sources. Review the list to see if these sites have a link back to your website. If not, then reach out to them and requested a backlink.

 

Guest Posting is Great

 

There has been much confusion in the Internet marketing industry about guest posting. Google officials have criticized, and penalized, spammy guest post networks.

However, high quality, informative articles published on sites relevant to your niche are more valuable than ever. In addition to receiving high-quality backlinks, you will build qualified traffic and leads to your site.


In conclusion, 2018 is the year that Content was crowned King and Relevancy was made Queen. Build great content that engages your audience, connect and contribute to relevant sites and your backlink profile will be golden.

 

Check out my 99designs review about launching a logo design contest - with video series step-by-step logo design process

https://best4businesses.com/facebook-posts-customers-will-love/

 

https://best4businesses.com/credibility-business-websites/

https://best4businesses.com/pick-domain-name-business/

  https://best4businesses.com/2018-link-building-power-tips/ #InternetMarketing, #LinkBuilding, #Seo

Your Ultimate Guide To Ecommerce Marketing For 2018

Your Ultimate Guide To E-commerce Marketing For 2018

 With so much new tech, and so many new trends on the horizon, it feels like the world of e-commerce is due to be shaken up in 2018. The reality of self-driving cars and widespread automation looms closer every day...

If you’re at the forefront of the marketing game, you’ll be in prime position to surpass the competition and cement yourself as a major player in your industry.

Social Media Spending To Increase

Social media isn’t new, poorly understood, wildcard that it once was. Companies have learned how to best use it, but in doing so, have watered down its effectiveness.

The social media sites themselves understand the fickle nature of their users, and they will do whatever it takes to stay relevant. This means moving the focus back to the content their users came for — posts from their friends and family. But this leaves all those companies who have been enjoying their free advertising out in the cold.

It’s already happened on Facebook —  even if you have a massive following, you will see a very little effect from your posts. Does this mean social media marketing is over? Not exactly.

Money makes the world go round, and social media is no longer an exception to that rule. If you want to reach your audience on social media you’re going to need to turn to paid ads and influencer marketing.

Facebook is an ecommerce advertiser powerhouse, with loads of engaging formats to try (like the carousel ad below).

The strength of Facebook advertising it the ads ability to reflect user behavior on your website thanks to e-commerce/Facebook integrations. This means that you can engage existing or lapsed customers with social ads by sending them reminders, free samples, or simply some great content they’re likely to engage with.

On Instagram, there is loads of potential for branded collaborations — especially if you are willing to share products with influencers. Check out this example:

Optimizing Your Store for Mobile Users

A big part of your website marketing strategy will be your actual online store experience.

 

It’s already important to have a site that works on mobile, but the bar is being raised and soon, simply ‘working’ won’t be good enough, as consumers start to expect a better experience across the board. Having your site work on mobile is now the first step in a never-ending process of optimization. You need a clean UI designed specifically for mobile, and you need a simple checkout process.

A bad experience on mobile is ten times worse than a bad experience on a desktop. And as the number of mobile users continues to grow, there’s huge value in boosting their conversion rate. Your site needs to load fast. Make sure the first thing you’re loading on a page is the thing the consumer came to see.

A clunky UI and overly complicated checkout process are two other major pain points on mobile. Run plenty of user tests to make sure your user experience is seamless, and accept as many online wallet payment solutions as possible so the user can checkout with one button.

The final reason you need to have a cutting-edge mobile site is due to Google’s upcoming mobile-first index. Google’s ranking system considers a large number of factors, but with the mobile-first index, sites with a poor mobile experience will be heavily penalized and see their ranking plummet.

Optimizing Your Ads for Mobile

We don’t use tablets and phones the same way we use our desktops. Clicking an ad on your phone can completely derail what you were doing and unintended ad clicks cause great frustration. If you want your mobile users to convert, you need to do everything in your power to avoid annoying ad formats. They won’t convert and they will lower the status of your brand by associating it with underhanded click-farm tactics.

You need to think about the user experience after your ad has been clicked too. It should be quick and easy for the user to perform the action you want, whether it’s buying an item or signing up for your mailing list, don’t make the user do the work.

Bored of ads? Here are 20 other creative ways to plug a product — including things like pop up shops, Reddit, and Periscope.

Get Personal With Machine Learning

We’re all so used to seeing ads everywhere in our day to day lives that it takes something special to reach us. An ad that feels like it was tailored specifically to fit your needs is going to stand out from the sea of impersonal ones. There are a number of ways to achieve this personal feeling in your marketing, but most of them involve machine learning.

Machine learning is set to revolutionize marketing in all forms. There’s no functional limit to what machine learning is capable of: one day an algorithm might be able to analyze the way you write on social media and work out what sort of advertising is most likely to convert you.

We’re not quite at that stage yet, but machine learning in its current form is still a powerful tool that allows you to personalize your marketing at scale.

But wait, ‘personalized at scale’ isn’t that an oxymoron? No, that’s the magic of machine learning, with a database of user information and a machine learning trained algorithm you can segment your user base and offer different marketing to different people automatically.

You could write up several versions of the same email and let the algorithm segment your audience and decide which users will respond best to each version, and if it happens to be wrong, it will detect that and improve for next time.

 

So there you have it, you’re now ready to face the challenges that 2018 is getting ready to throw at you. You know why your mobile users are important, and you know what’s important to your mobile users. You’re ready to build your marketing campaigns from the ground up around the latest growing trends, and turn them to your advantage, instead of being caught unaware and losing out. Now all that’s left for you to do is to get out there and let the world know what you have to offer. Good luck!

 

Victoria Greene is a content consultant and freelance writer. On her blog, VictoriaEcommerce, she shares tips on e-commerce and how companies can improve the way they represent their brand. She is passionate about using her experience to help brands improve their online reach. https://best4businesses.com/ultimate-guide-ecommerce-marketing-2018/