Design and Promotion
Want to have a logo or ebook cover done? Perhaps you'd like a eye-catching WordPress template designed or some articles to post to your website or blog. And how about an explainer video for the launch of your new service?
You might might have the expertise for some of the items above, but time is short for an entrepreneur. Money would also usually be in short supply, so hiring a professional and paying hundreds of dollars to get a logo or graphic template done would not be feasible.
Freelance Websites
One way to get some of your design and promotional tasks done cheaply is to hire a freelancer at one of the freelance websites sites online. Many of the freelancers at these sites are professionals at what they do, and many of them charge a fraction of what it would cost if you were to outsource the job to a proper company. Of course, these sites are not without their risks and headaches, but with a little trial and error, it is quite possible to get a quality job done for an extremely good price.
Fiverr. You can get things done for as low as $5. On Fiverr, you don't post a job and have the sellers bid on it. Instead, the sellers will post what they will do for a certain price and if the buyers are happy with the price, they will buy the job, or gig as it is called on Fiverr.
Freelancer.com. This is one of the oldest players in the game. Job categories include IT, software, writing and data entry all the way to product sourcing and accounting.
Upwork. Upwork is the result of the merging of oDesk and Elance. You can post a job, and have sellers bid on your job.
Ad Design Websites
Whether you are on a tight budget, or just like to DIY, there is definitely something to be said for designing your own ads. While you may not be a graphic designer, there are many website that have done a lot of the work for you, so that you can come up with a professionally looking ad in very little time, and at very low cost, or even free.
AdDesigner.com. AdDesigner.com is a free service that enables you to design and download professional quality animated banner ads. All you have to do is to choose that style of your ad from 91 high quality ads, add the text of your ad, choose the font styles, sizes and colors, and download.
In addition, if you are using the ad on a banner exchange service like bCentral's LinkExchange or SmartClicks, AdDesigner.com will customize your ad to satisify the technical requirements of your exchange service.
However, given the popularity of AdDesigner.com, their ads are quite commonly seen on the Internet. Furthermore, since they do not have a paid service, they include the text "FREE AD BY ADDESIGNER.COM" in a corner of every ad.
Reproduced below is an example ad that I created at AdDesigner.com:
Cool Text. Cool Text is a free online graphics generator that converts text into an impressive logo without a lot of design work. They have templates that you can start with, input the text that you want, change the settings of the effects if you want to, and you can have a logo that looks great in minutes.
This site is great if you want a good looking logo that looks like some work has gone into it, and you want it done free of charge and you need it yesterday.
In fact, don't tell anyone, but the logo of this website is done solely using Cool Text. And check out some of the logos I created using Cool Text below:
