Are you an internet marketer? If so, you probably regularly continually look for ways to inexpensively outsource various aspects of your online marketing.

Graphics is one area that not everyone is talented in. Many marketers are on the continuous lookout for ways to acquire low cost graphics. One way to acquire great graphics for your online marketing collateral is to run a design contest. There are several benefits to running a graphic design contest:

-You get to tap into others’ creativity. This can help open up your choices considerably over hiring just one designer and hoping their take works out.

-You save money this way. Hiring a designer privately could be several times more expensive than running a design contest. Designers from all over the world could participate and in some places in the world the cost of living is much lower. That designer could see the fee you’re offering as the contest prize to be quite lucrative for their efforts.

-You can afford more marketing collateral. Instead of investing one fee into a logo, that fee could be spread across getting logos, banners, customized social media profile pages, e-book and book covers, and more.

You’ll see design contests happening online in various places. How they typically work is that you offer a fee for the winning design and get people to submit their entry for consideration. Here are a few tips for having a successful graphic design contest:

Use a Contest Site – Instead of running your own contest on your website or on a community forum, consider looking for a design marketplace. This could result in your contest being seen by many people versus just a few and contest design sites manage the payment process for you.

Be Communicative – Make sure you are as descriptive as possible. The more info you give about what you’re looking for, the more likely you are to get designs that appeal to you. Consider looking at competitors to your business and seeing what you like and what you don’t like about the marketing collateral that they use. Use this information to help you get a better / more professional logo or to meet a need your competition is missing.

Find Multiple Uses for Your Graphics – The more uses you find for those graphics, the better your return on investment. Think about offline advertising, like business cards, flyers, t-shirts, and so on as well as using the design you’ve purchased for your online marketing initiatives.

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