Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com.
Before you launch your business, you will probably want to have a logo made for your brand. You should have some kind of logo in place when you launch your website, but don’t focus too heavily about your logo early on. People aren’t going to read your content, subscribe to your email list and continue to follow your brand because they like your logo. They are going to stick around because they love your content and what you have to say. Your content and the value you provide should always take precedence over secondary issues like your logo and the design of your website.
There are several different ways that you can have a logo designed for your business. Unless you are a graphic designer, you should probably not try to do a logo yourself. I also recommend against having a friend or an acquaintance create a logo for you. If they end up creating something that you hate, you’ll have to use the logo anyway to avoid hurting their feelings or you’ll have to tell them that the logo they made isn’t very good.
Here are some different ways that you can get a logo made at different price-points:
- Fiverr.com – The cheapest way to have a logo made is using Fiverr.com. There are a number of freelancers that will have created listings on Fiverr, known as gigs, where they will create a logo for you for as little as $5.00. While the base price of every Fiverr gig is $5.00, you will probably have to pay between $25.00 and $50.00 to get a high-resolution version of your logo along with all of the source files. Make sure to read the reviews of any gig you purchase, because the quality will vary dramatically from gig to gig.
- Create a Logo Contest – You can use either DesignContest.com or 99Designs.com to create a logo design contest where freelancer designers will develop logo concepts for you on spec. For around $300.00, you can create a logo design contest on Design Contest or 99 Designs and receive between 25 or 50 different submissions to choose from. This can be a cost effective option for many entrepreneurs because you only pay for the logo that you choose. The only downside is that you can’t go through multiple revisions of the logo with your designer to create the perfect logo for your business. You can usually provide feedback about designs during the contest which may spur additional entries, but don’t expect a back-and-forth conversation and revision process with the designers competing in your contest.
- Hire a Local Graphic Designer – If you live in a community of 50,000 people or more, there are almost certainly freelance graphic designers that you can hire to create a logo for you. You can often find them at local meet-up groups and events or through their personal websites. For between $500.00 and $1,000, you can typically hire a local designer to create 5-10 logo concepts for you. You can choose the one that you like the most and work with the designer to tweak it until you like it. This can be a great option if you find a designer whose portfolio that you like and you have the budget to support it. Your designer may also be able to help you design and customize your website for an additional fee.
- Use a Freelance Job Posting Site – If you can’t find a good designer locally and don’t want to use Fiverr or a logo design contest, you can use services like Upwork.com or Freelancer.com to find a freelancer that will create the logo and branding for your business. There are many good designers that will create a logo for you for an hourly rate on Upwork.com and Freelancer.com, but be mindful of the fees that these services tack on to the freelancer’s hourly rate.
Regardless of how you have your logo built, there are several things you need to make sure that you get from your designer along with your logo:
- Color Scheme – Make sure to get a list of colors used in the logo in hexadecimal format (often referred to as hex colors). You will need these for the design of your website. If your logo designer doesn’t provide these, you can extract them using Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro later and try to make a color scheme based off that information. The better way to go is to just ask your logo designer for a color scheme that you can use for your website from the get go.
- Source/Vector File – This is a version of your logo that contains all of the source elements that were used to create your file, such as design elements, fonts and text. If you ever want to make changes to your logo in the future, having the source file available will make editing your logo file much easier. Source files are often provided in Adobe Illustrator (.ai) or Adobe Photoshop (.psd) formats.
- High Resolution File – A high resolution of your logo is necessary so that you can use your logo in a variety of context. While smaller images are more than sufficient for web use, you may want a high resolution version of your logo (at least 2000 pixels by 2000 pixels) in the event that you ever want to use your logo in print. If you have a source or a vector file, you do not need your designer to provide high-resolution version of your image because a high resolution logo can be created from the source files.
- Ownership Rights – Be clear with the designer that you are working with that you are paying them on a “work for hire” basis and that you will maintain all ownership rights to the logo that they are creating for you when the work is done.