Today I managed to get the basic daily objectives out of the way, also looked through a lot of comic strip illustration art which I don't usually see (These were new artists I came to approach). The more important thing I do today though was testing out a competitors service, it was pretty enlightening actually and matched my predictions of such sites to the letter.

I won't fuss with the details but essentially just having 5 minutes of a site like it and I knew it wasn't a particularly nice place for artists. It can provide artists with work, don't get me wrong, but it really wasn't the best place for artists wanting to make a career of artistry. There are little reasons such as poor portfolio integration and there are big reasons such as a price competitive community.

I posted a project, an idea for my own personal art that I want commissioned, with a healthy budget for a quality artwork and then I waited for reactions. Almost immediately I got two reactions which was nice, clearly artists are avidly using the site for work (Though there is suspicion bots are being used but nevertheless). The first 'bid' had a price 70-75% below my budget, which I think is reasonable. (It's important to consider these bids and not offers purely because it's price competitive based) Looking close at the prices, it was obvious the second 'bid' undercut the first, as for the quality of their previous artwork they were closely matched.

I decided to leave it alone and let it brew so to speak while I got other things done (Approaching new artists for example). When I got back to it there was 12 new offers, again nice to see it's a ridiculously small number in comparison to the number of artists struggling for work, to say this is a site providing work, there's hardly anyone here. I already had suspicions and they were proven when I scrolled down at the offers; Each one either identical to the one before it or undercutting by 50 to 100. The lowest bid was 33% and this artist's artwork in particular was pretty damn good, far too undervalued for what it's worth. But this is what you get when you have a company that cares more for the client's wallet than the artist and the value of their work. It's a company designed to encourage cheaper work so clients are more likely to pay up, at the worker's expense.

So while I met unfortunate artists aggressively competing on price and nothing else, I did prove that the one of the biggest fighters in this market hasn't got anything on our project.