" Need a custom logo? Let’s chat! yo@metafizzy.co "
The chance of you needing one of the pre-existing logos is small, the chance of needing a logo period is higher, and seeing the portfolio of logos gives you a starting point to imagine things.
The only negative is that it might anchor you emotionally to a lower than average price if the current logo price is small enough.
The web site concept though seems to be exactly like a clothing store putting last years clothes out on the side walk for "cheap" and just getting people walking by to think about it and come in and browse. Which solves Internet company problem #1, "Nobody knows I exist."
Yes, this is primarily a neat marketing idea, surprising that HN seems to have collectively missed this so far! Guess the hive mind is having an off day.
Well they're much better than the generic/overused logos[1] from my previous favourite logo-related HN discussion[2].
Hilariously (for me) after I sent that link to my sister, she revealed the recent purchase of an alleged custom-creation - a 'rainbow link of people' style logo that was almost a replica of one from that generic set.
Evidently logos are hard, but once you get past the biggest decision (should you bother to try to have one that reflects what you actually do / sell) finding a cheap one becomes much easier.
The premade logos aren't even a bad idea: If you have a project, and you see a logo in the premades that fits well with it, than you may well buy it when you hadn't previously considered paying for a logo.
Wouldn't it make more sense that the price would go down as more are purchased, as the most popular logos are already taken? Is someone really going to pay $1000 for 'Mr. Grin'
I think you maybe misunderstand the point of this web site.
The designer has no interest in selling all or even most of the logos at the sort of market rate they could actually command. The website is much more useful as a portfolio/marketing tool than as an actual logo store. What the designer wants is for the price to rise high enough to prove that he can sell logos and to set expectations for clients who want custom work, while also guaranteeing that most of the logos go unsold thus keeping his portfolio active and engaging.
If the price went down with each logo sold, he might never even get that first sale, and if he did, there would eventually be a snowball effect which would lead to everything selling out, and his no longer having such a neat attention-getting portfolio.
I think he wants people to hurry and buy it now before it goes up, rather than holding off and wait until it gets cheap enough.
That's a classical business move, like any "time limited sale", force people to buy it right now before they have the time to think whether they need it or not.
Yep. This isn't a store, it's an event. The price model is about introducing time pressure to motivate you to buy right now rather than take the time to investigate alternatives. If the price reduced as more were sold, it would motivate a competition around "how long can I risk waiting for the price to go down?" which would lead to people leaving and forgetting to come back.
Sure. Maybe not for a company, but a lot of times, people put logos on individual projects. Maybe not around the current price of $500, but at the earlier lower prices, I could see someone looking at a logo and impulse buying it for a public-facing side project they've been working on.
Yes, actually, there are at least a couple (one especially) there I would not think twice buying if I had any financial justification (a business to attach it to or even just expendable money). He gets this particular design style perfectly, and these are really high quality logos.
After spending much time among entrepreneurs I find that there are very few with a "business" mind. Great idea, horrible model. This pricing model is so far out of left field that I had to do some research to see if it's ever been successful.
>"After spending much time among entrepreneurs I find that there are very few with a "business" mind. Great idea, horrible model."
It's very risky to preface your opinion with a statement that might reflect on yourself potentially.
IMO,
This model is used successfully all the time in hundreds of variations, from Saas products upping prices as they add features, to people buying on sale before the price goes up, to penny auctions.
This is simple and brilliant marketing combining Fear of Missing Out, combined with fear of overpaying.
Your assumption that there is such a thing as a more or less desired logos is completely invalid. It is a completely subjective issue. Even if it wasn't subjective, they are certainly geared towards different industries.
The social influence mechanisms are the same as a SAAS Product adding features (which again are of subjective value, and not necessarily an improvement in service, just in perceived value.)
At first I thought the pricing model was backwards, but then I considered that for each logo that was purchased there is an increase of social validation which makes it more tempting for other to buy. I also immediately thought that he marked 17 as sold to give the impression that anyone bought his logos
There are two cars in a lot sold for the same price. Any buyers cannot resell them and must buy them solely for their own use.
One is a Bugatti Veyron fresh off the factory floor, and the other is a 2nd hand 10yr old Ford pickup.
A 55yr old farmer shows up. He lives out in farm country at the end of a 4 mile driveway that looks like this: http://imgur.com/a/SsusC and he needs a vehicle for general farm work.
Sorry, in my part of the world a pickup truck more often than not is just called a car, with the word "truck" usually reserved for larger cargo-carrying vehicles.
Road signs in California for weigh stations will say something like: this lane, trucks only (no puckups). Car is used to mean either in most conversations, so I knew what you meant. I liked your analogy and found humor in the fact that the answer to your question was in a way hidden in your question. I intended to answer your question and share the humor I found but I was short on time and instead my comment looks snarky.
Have you considered that maybe he's using this pricing model because it's novel and entertaining? Perhaps maximizing his profits isn't his goal; it doesn't always have to be. Plus, any logos he doesn't sell in this scheme can just be sold individually later on.
I have never previously cared even a little bit about a designer selling logos, but this one really caught my attention because of the unusual pricing scheme.
This is a very interesting pricing model. As the supply decreases the equilibrium price is forced to rise regardless of demand. Also interesting that theoretically worse logo options are what's left at a higher price in the end. Could put pressure on buyers to just settle and go with something.
Isn't the quality of the logos left really dependent on the ability of previous purchasers to pick the better quality logos? I would say that it isn't necessarily true that the worst logos are last, much depends on the customers. Plus, it is a fairly subjective metric. (obviously there is a floor here)
But why is there an assumption that he won't be continually adding new logos, presumably using the knowledge of what's been selling to inform what types of new logos to add. I think it's brilliant.
I can imagine that the good icons are taken first. But paradoxically, they are also priced the cheapest, while the really ugly icons end up being most expensive.
This completely. People don't forget that in technology, novelty (and by extension innovation) is the entire goal. And following the groupthink of best practices puts your squarely in the middle of the pack. In short, we don't have enough free thinkers in our industry, so I pretty psyched to see this site.
I've purchased multiple licenses from MetaFizzy. Good software and great folks over there! The founder reached out personally after purchase to learn more about our use of his product and sent me some stickers.
> I had to do some research to see if it's ever been successful. It hasn't.
You failed at your research. In art, this is quite common. As an artist gains notoriety, their work goes up in price. How much do you think Picasso sold his early works for? How much do you think Picasso paintings are worth now?
Also, Minecraft started out cheap and got more expensive over time.
That's completely different. You're talking about a single piece of art gaining value over time as it's bought and sold. What's happening here is the price of all remaining logos increases as sales on any other logo happen.
No, artist will commonly price a collection this way to show there's a market and get buyers to act sooner that later. It's assumed that not all of the logos will sell, and some if not all may have been versions of another logo.
Seems to be a perfectly reasonable promotion for a designer who had a surplus of sitting-on-the-shelf work and a near-term pipeline problem. Options: a) start doing the consulting rainmaking dance or b) spend ~1 day on the fulfillment required here and get paid a few thousand dollars to showcase their work in front of people who can pay _hopefully more appropriate_ rates for their bespoke services.
If the experiment works, wonderful, if not, he'll dry his tears on $X,000 and then move forward.
As a long-term business model, I find a number of things to be problematic, but if you think of it less as Founding A Company That Will Endure For All Time and more like Spiritually Similar To A Halloween Sale, this has a lot to recommend it. As the cost of starting things goes to zero the expected value of them doesn't have to be super high to be worthwhile.
Except now it's stopped at $320. That's an average of $93.33 per logo (if my math is right). They would make more money by simply selling the logos for $100 each, and they would probably sell way more logos.
1 - Start pricing extremely low, and word travels fast
2 - Temporary pricing causes buyers to act quickly, with less consideration
3 - Buyers who wavered in their decision making panic and pay
more than they originally would have in order to not miss out.
4 - Designer knows what is left is both over priced and no one really wants.
With static pricing, #1 doesn't happen, #2 doesn't happen, #3 doesn't happen, #4 does, albeit much more slowly.
#1 is a core piece of both Google & Facebook's sales psychology. You can see them move the sliders from totally free, to really good deal, to your fucked without paying us lots of money as they launch ad channels.
If he sells all 50 that he has, he'd net an average of $1020 per logo. (First one was $40, price increases by $40 per logo, last logo is $2,000, total net is $51,000)
That's a highly unlikely "if". I doubt they'll sell any logos for much more than $400, which averages "only" $146.66 per logo. That's pretty good one-off revenue if the logos were already finished, especially considering they can probably sell the remainders on the side for some extra cash, but it's probably not a sustainable business model.
That does seem to be the case. It actually could be an interesting sales move. If the price would rise linearly, the saturation point in which the logos become "too expensive" would occur faster in sales. Gently lowering the additional value (from 40 to 20 and i assume from 20 to 10) would let the saturation point occur later, thus having more sales in total.
Probably highly dependent on what you're selling. But this? How many of us have agonised over naming, what domain names to buy, and how to get a suitable logo. Multiple times in many cases..
This is exactly a business minded decision. It is basic supply and demand. The lower the supply, the higher the price. It isnt perfect because the logos aren't a commodity, some will be more liked than others. I suspect that they will either add more logos on a regular basis (e.g. four more every month) or they will add more and take away poorly performing logos to keep the price in a certain range.
Except supply is about the market – i.e.: the universe of substitutable goods. There are many, many substitutes for these logos and there's nothing unique to make these an exclusive. Now, if these were previously undiscovered works of Paul Rand, then your argument would make sense...
If there's a logo there that you like, the upward-racheting price adds urgency and drives a 'need to pounce' lest a) it disappear, and b) the price increase.
The author is pouring gasoline onto the impulse-buying fire.
At the long end, there are plenty of people who might pay a premium for a logo from someone whose logos are so good that they sold 48 of them in a day....
Yes, eventually sales will slow down as the price becomes too much. But in the interim the pricing model creates a sense of urgency that is likely to increase sales now. With the site most likely being used to market and sell custom logos (in and for the log run) his current pricing model doesn't seem that bad. Not to mention the pricing model also has some baked in social proof... someone paid $xxx for one of his cookie cutter logos! "Someone else found it to be worth it, I won't be outlandishly foolish if I buy one too..."
I think he just wants to encourage people to buy some of the logos quickly while the the prices are cheap. Forces immediate action instead of waiting and thinking about it.
I doubt there's any expectation that he'll sell all or even most of the logos in this fashion and it's certainly not revenue-maximizing -- but that clearly doesn't seem to be the goal.
Seems like a pretty good way of finding out an upper limit to a sustainable logo sales business. Increase prices until people stop buying, relaunch with logos a bit below that cost.
This is a promotion to make people excited about the logos that this guy creates. The pricing of the individual logos is irrelevant outside of the promotional value they give to the designer.
Adding some tension like this increases perceived value, and watching other people take logos due to the raising price makes the perceived value go up even more.
Actually, coming from a marketing perspective, this model is sort of like the Kickstarter model. Those who take a risk with a logo before the design firm has been established with a reputation will get a high discount factor but as more clients buy logo, the designer establishes a track record and can thus command higher prices since they can show a past history of sales/clients.
Two points. 1. Peoples tastes are subjective, so while Mr. Grin is likely not going to sell IMO, who knows who else might like it.
The pricing accomplishes two great things that are quite brilliant.
When someone is ready to buy, there are two excuses they turn to to not take action. The first is trust and the second is procrastination. Within the context of trust, is value (is it a good deal).
By having the price go up, and inventory disappearing, you conquer both excuses.
1. Social proof of a) others like these logos and b) others are willing to pay this price for that value.
2. As the price goes up, you get worried about paying too much for something you want and wondering if you will lose out on a logo you like.
Both of these compel you to take action. As you wait, your risk of missing out or getting ripped off go up in a very visual and real way.
This also does a great job of framing the logo value when you order custom from the designer.
I assume the argument is that people will see it and strike "while the price is right". While $1000 is not cheap, it's also not exactly exorbitant when you consider the cost of creating your own logo or hiring someone to make it.
Which takes time, and time is money. If you find a logo you like here that you can just snap up, that may very well be worth a higher price than giving input into creating something you don't know if will come out the way you want it.
English not being my native language, reading your comment just made me realize the ":mrgreen:" pun (the smiley code that was shipped with standard phpBB installations).
Price goes up $40 per logo sold? So, after you sell 10 more logos, it'll be ($40*10) + $120(current price) = $520 per logo?
Seems like a strange pricing strategy. I guess it increases the "buy it now" urge, but at some point it will kill sales. I guess when it stabilizes you can just say "ok, that's what people are willing to pay for these". So perhaps it's a good way to explore pricing...
When I first opened the site, it was $120 per logo, with 2 logos listed when filtered for "sold". Now it's at $200 per logo, with 4 in the "sold" category. So yes, it looks like the price per logo is increasing by $40 every time a logo is sold.
Except nobody's going to pay nearly $1,000 for the leftovers, so there is essentially a ceiling on the number of sales that will happen. Let's say the last logo sells for $400 (it's currently stopped at $320, so I don't think that's unreasonable); that's only $2,200 in total revenue for 50 logos.
I think they'll have trouble selling logos for over 360 a piece though. At that point, they'll have only made $1800. Still, not a bad deal for the creator. I just don't think people will pay that much for off-the-shelf logos when sites like 99designs exist.
We always have had a surplus of logos. When we design for a company, perhaps 3 to 5 decent ideas are sketched. Of course only one makes the final cut per client. We own any preliminary work, so we can offer these for use later. We would just change the name,
revise slightly and change the color. Bam...new logo.
What we did finally was revise the ones we like (25 to 50 initially) and include them for free as part of a new web design project. A lot of clients have bad logos that can ruin a design. So it helps our designs and clients brands.
Clients could also purchase at a low flat rate if they liked one without a website. This has worked well too.
Can I pay extra and have a custom image burned into the pizza instead? Would be great for parties.
Reminds me of a local pizza place that will make the pizza in a heart shape for $2 more. Of course, my wife and I just had to buy one. The chef and the waitress actually went out of their way to let us photo it before cutting and everything. Way more than $2 additional work, IMO. If we weren't both dieting, we'd still be eating there quite often.
The pricing model could be the logical conclusion to some basic behavioural economics insights. Feeling of a loss >> feeling of a win. Thus you create an ever present feeling of that potential loss (missing out on the lower price) which forces potential buyers to act to lessen that feeling of possible pain as opposed to the standard approach of selling based on the feeling of a win (my nice and shiny logo). This idea could probably also be leveraged to combat procrastination somehow.
It also has that novelty factor of the pay per pixel advertising from back in the day.
Neat :)
I guess the only problem is that the last logo shouldn't sell easily (without adding more).
This is a great idea! I'd actually sign up for a mailing list to get notified when new logos are added.
I'm aware of products like fiverr and 99Designs, but I'm worried about sinking a bunch of money into them only to get crap back. I like being able to view the logos and simply browse without any commitment.
Wow. I've used Fiverr twice. I used the same guy to do a mobile app icon and a logo for a different business. He did amazing both times. Total out of pocket expense was $11 each. I got exactly what I wanted and it really really really looked amazing. I got the psd too. Best 20 bucks I ever spent.
I tested out Fiverr by hiring 3 people to do simple T-shirt designs for $10-$15 each. Everything I got back was either stolen from somewhere else, extremely poor quality, or didn't fit my request at all.
I'm sure there are great people on Fiverr, but you have to do a lot of searching or get really lucky.
Upwork costs more, but I think the increase in quality and communication ability more than offsets the price.
Fiverr is hit and miss, yes. It doesn't really pay if you have a single job. It pays if you anticipate needing 20, and can spend some time firing off jobs to multiple people until you find someone you like.
I've had people turn down jobs for idiotic reasons instead of just quoting me more, even though I was pretty much begging them to take my money.
But once you find good people there, it works very well.
Even with just 3 people at $10-15 each, you could sink more money into Fiverr and come out with a better logo than the predominately flat-UI only designs provided. However, Logo Pizza still has some (IMHO) great ones for sale
Just wondering - how were you able to tell the idea was stolen from somewhere else? Simple reverse-image searching, or did you have a better procedure?
That's not a great strategy to just continue to pump $15 into fiverr hoping to eventually get something good. Does that happen when you get to $500 or $5000. You don't know when you start so you could just waste your money.
But, for rapid development of prototype, or early stage products, I could see a few $15 injections going a much farther way than abandoning a project and having dropped $299 or even more into a 99Designs (or 'higher-end') logo[0].
I would always double back and get a more professional looking design that is also coherent with the Web App look & feel or product page look & feel.
> Even with just 3 people at $10-15 each, you could sink more money into Fiverr and come out with a better logo than the predominately flat-UI only designs provided. However, Logo Pizza still has some (IMHO) great ones for sale
Maybe. But like I said, you'd have to do a TON of filtering to find someone good or get extremely lucky. Fiverr is flooded with people who only do the bare minimum to fill the request, then they'll pester you endlessly until you accept it and give them a 5 star rating.
Either that or you'll get tired of having to request countless revisions because they can't understand English and keep giving you work that's nothing like what you requested.
> Just wondering - how were you able to tell the idea was stolen from somewhere else? Simple reverse-image searching, or did you have a better procedure?
I just did exactly what I figured they would do: Googled some terms from my request and looked through the images that came up. Didn't have to look very far.
That's funny: from what I've heard the design community has been worried about these sites since the beginning because of the possibility of doing work that ends up not being bought.
Spec work. No one likes doing it. I'd much rather have a contract for my time and effort than sell logos like a sidewalk artist and hope you like them and are willing to part with $5.
You get what you pay for. Ayone who'd do a logo for $5 really hasn't got the experience / talent to do that. Hire a graphic designer just as you know you should.
I've gotten great results several times for $5, as well as for higher priced 'competitions' on 99designs. I'd never go back to the 'pick a designer and hope they're not a dud before having sunk 1000's in them'. Oh and not a single one will work from where someone else left off, so you get to start all over again. Ugh.
I've had the best luck with Contests on Freelancer. I usually drop $25-$50 per piece of art I need (logos, mascots, icon sets) and usually get around ~30 submissions, of which at least half are solid quality. You just pick your favorite and that's the one you get for the price.
99Designs has a money-back guarantee if you don't like any of the logos. Not sure how good they are about actually honoring it. You get a lot of crap and super-generic logos, but (in my experience at least), there are a few good ones
The base option includes a money-back guarantee but you quickly learn that keeping the not guaranteeing a winner for your project will keep good designers away.
I've worked with 99designs a few times and liked the outcome but potential customers should be aware that keeping the money-back option on your project and sticking with the base price will get you generic looking logos.
If you want to attract quality designers to your project, you'll need to increase the amount you're awarding and guarantee the payment (opt-out of the money-back guarantee).
Again, I liked working with 99designs but you'll have a hard time finding something unique and amazing at the $299 price with the money-back guarantee option. I'd recommend working with them but set your expectations accordingly.
I've used 99D on behalf of about a dozen clients and the cheapest we've ever gotten a great logo for was about $1300.
I'm sure some people have been happy with the lowest price point, but every time a client wanted the money back guarantee they ended up using. Every time I convinced them to opt out and spend a little more they were generally happy.
I paid about the same and was happy with the results.
One more note for people considering 99designs. You can increase your award even after you start the project. Meaning, you can try out the Bronze level design for $299 and hope to get lucky but then raise your prices when you see the generic designs flow in.
When I say generic designs, I mean the designer will take what is essentially clip art and change some curves, colors, and lines to give you a "custom" logo.
Again, that might be good for what you're looking for but at least now you have your expectations set properly.
you can get some excellent logos from 99Designs. You can even invite designers based on their previous work to make a design for you so you can be sure the results will fit the style that you need. On top of that, after you pick the finalists you can have them refine them until you like them. IMHO designers are the ones at loss at 99Designs.
With the per-logo price increasing by $40 every time a logo is sold, the final logo will cost $2000. But I wonder if it'll get that far. At that point, can't you find a decent graphic designer and get a logo exactly to your liking?
Quick edit: this is not a rethorical question, I honestly would like to know!
If you find something that fits well for your company, $2,000 can easily be worth it.
Working with a designer to create a logo for you can be time intensive. There can be a lot of back and forth with the designer as you refine the logo to something you like. Avoiding that time can surly be worth it for many companies with the right budget.
You can create a logo and pay a designer less than $2k but how much of your own time are you going to spend making that happen?
I think that might partially be the point. These seem to be a backlog of unused concept, and the designer has a CTA for custom work below. It's a marketing piece.
Maybe the owner doesn't know what the logos should sell for, runs this once, and then sets up a new site selling the logos for at or near the ceiling price from the unorthodox auction.
As long as no one uses that logo to start something associated with gaming it's likely different enough to not cause issue. It's a somewhat common style for horse iconography.
this wouldn't be your normal case of pirating a tv show. You use one of these logos and end up becoming a large successful company you will be paying when you get sued.
I like the idea of a website listing a lot of logos, me scrolling through them and picking something I need.
But I wish new logos would be added continously, priced separately, and definitely price increase on something that did not sold in the past is ridiculous. :D
Using a .pizza domain and using "Hot & Ready" in the tagline might make the casual consumer think these are logos made out of pizza, or are on pizza with cheese in the shape of a logo, or would have to do with pizza in general.
They are currently "trendy" in the front-end world, but for how much longer, I've been too far removed from front-end development to know. Here's an interesting read in the shift (semi-recently, mind you, 2013) [0]
This makes it look like getting a logo is easy and quick. And it can be, probably.
It's not my area of expertise, but I would expect there are some pitfalls just like with company names, app branding and other branding/trademark stuff.
I would not want my logo to be too similar to somebody else, and researching that is probably tricky.
The person that made this site would probably be sued if he/she sold a logo to a company that's too similar to existing work, arguably not before the company itself gets sued. Hence, for new companies it's a gamble as the legal fees could put them out of business.
Maybe there is a disclaimer somewhere on the site, but I haven't found it.
Regardless, finding out whether or not a logo that you produced (or a design studio produced) is too similar to already existing work is difficult as images cannot be as easily searched as plain-text. This is hard for design studios too.
Also, and this is speaking as a layman, but initiating such a legal affair probably requires a trademark.
I wonder how many of the sales here are from this being on HN.
It's a classic time-scarcity sales ploy, like the one-day sale websites. Don't fall for it.
I think it might be useful to cycle in new sold/unsold sets of logos to give the effect that sales are taking place and business is moving ahead. otherwise, it looks like no business is being done. also, maybe instead of "sold" something like "to be sold" might work to give the impression that it isn't off limits yet.
This is great! It's an interesting idea, a fun concept that isn't too serious, and in my opinion the work is really fantastic. Next time I need a logo I'm hitting up this guy/gal (I don't know what a metafizzy is).
Brilliant! However, they are quite pricey at 500$. I always thought making a custom logo would be expensive, but buying a ready made one could be much cheaper, any thoughts regarding the pricing?
It goes up by $20 every time somebody purchases a logo. Not really a sustainable business model, but it seems to be working wonders this morning with the increased traffic coming from Hacker News.
This reminds me of stylate.com which was selling a logo and domain together for a reasonable price (hundreds instead of thousands). I'm not sure why the service ever shut down.
Cute idea. Note that it was just changed to go up by $20 per logo sold, but that still doesn't really solve the economic problems posed by some of the comments.
I'm wondering if it will continue to decrease as demand decreases. If the amount was eventually lowered to go up by something like $5, it might be sustainable for quite a while...
You should make it so that the purchaser can have an option to sell their logo if someone else wants it more than them. Take a cut from the transaction
I saw it in /new this morning. Only one logo had sold. Bought a logo for $80. Saw logo go to sold and price go up. I received the vector assets on the next page. Seems legit. Although probably short lived in its current form. Perhaps with some tweaks could become an ongoing concern.
Not sure what I will use it on. I thought it was well done and I'm sure I'll put it to use at some point.
Does the price increasing also goes for custom logos? I am really interested in a custom logo...but the price increasing thing would really make it less attractive ;-)
He only use it in the "custom logo" section where he showcases his works. Since he's one of its designers, according to https://bower.io/docs/about/, I believe it's fine.
" Need a custom logo? Let’s chat! yo@metafizzy.co "
The chance of you needing one of the pre-existing logos is small, the chance of needing a logo period is higher, and seeing the portfolio of logos gives you a starting point to imagine things.
The only negative is that it might anchor you emotionally to a lower than average price if the current logo price is small enough.
The web site concept though seems to be exactly like a clothing store putting last years clothes out on the side walk for "cheap" and just getting people walking by to think about it and come in and browse. Which solves Internet company problem #1, "Nobody knows I exist."