| |
TheIspot [ the I
spot, theispot.com ]
Not What it's Cracked Up to Be
As an illustrator, I
am continually trying new methods to generate
new clients. Last year I signed up for a portfolio
service on theispot.com.
After one year on this site I have nothing
to show for it. Now I understand my work is
not the most corporate friendly stuff, but
when I continually generate illustration work
from my web site at $20 a month, and nothing
from The I Spot at $50 a month, it's easy to
add up what the better "investment" is.
While ispot claims to
be the close personal friend of many corporate
clients, I just don't see it. After working
for many years in various marketing, advertising,
entertainment, and design environments, after
hanging out with other illustrators and artists
working in these places, I also have the ability
to see The I spot from the client's side, from
the point of view of an art director looking
for the perfect illustration. Let me tell you,
from that point of view, TheISpot is the last
place I'd be shopping.
TheIspot.com is so poorly
designed that it would take you years to find
anything you were looking for. It has taken
most folks a good year just to learn to effectively
search for things on the internet, so why would
you want to layout your web site so counter
intuitively to those search methods?
For example. If I was
writing an article on Brittany Spears, and
wanted to find an illustration of Brittany
Spears, or just celebrities for that matter,
I should be able to search those terms and
find what I'm looking for. Not on ispot though.
They have a limited list of maybe 25 search
terms, and if you don't know this, and just
so happen to think you can type Brittany Spears,
like you would in any other search engine,
you will get a search with zero results, even
if ten of 1500 theIspot.com artists have illustrations
of Brittany Spears in their portfolios. Now
I'm not trying to advocate illustrations of
Brittany, but if you have them in your portfolio,
and people want them, and more importantly
are willing to pay for them, I'm all for putting
those people in touch with one another. My
point is, it's not going to happen on TheIspot.com.
So if you are an under
worked art director with loads of time on your
hands to sift through thousands of disorganized
portfolios for that perfect illustration for
your article on string theory, then 'The I
Spot' is the place for you. If you are on the
other side, an illustrator looking for ways
to bring in more work, I would skip TheIspot
and shop around for a helpful web designer
I could work with to create my own web site.
The images on my web
site receive hundreds of hits a day, and lead
to continual illustration work, where the same
images on TheIspot.com average 1 hit every
2 days. You do the math.
- Adam
Strange
|
COMMENTS
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Adam-
A friend of mine sent the article you
wrote about Theispot- I couldn't agree more-
My year on Theispot is almost up and I have
gotten 3 calls - one form another portfolio
site trying to sell me space- one from an unknown person
in Ethiopia wanting me to transfer money to the
U.S. for him and one from an individual who has
written her first children's book and needs someone
to illustrate it for her so she can be published
(I'm sure you know about these things if you've
been in this business very long) Anyway-
to make long story short, I, too, am
very frustrated and will be working on my own
website after this month- after 23 years of
freelancing- the one year I had with Theispot
has been my worst year yet and if there were
jobs for people like me, I would be looking
for one.
Thanks for letting me vent!
Lyn Martin
Need to vent? Email me your comments: EMAIL
|
|
