In today’s digital age a business logo is an essential facet of any modern business, often shaping the colors, style & design for the rest of your branding.

Whether it’s on your website, social media, in local press, or on letterheads, your business logo plays a critical role, for years to come.

As such an integral part of your branding, business owners understandably want to get it right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean paying over the odds.

Many graphics designers charge high prices for their services; however professional-looking logos can also be bought on a shoe-string budget.

 

Get a Great Business Logo on a Budget

Here are five places to get a great business logo (without breaking the bank):

$5 Freelancing – Fiverr.com

Fiverr should be the first-stop for any low-budget design requests.  Founded in 2010, Fiverr has lead the way in a new era of “micro job sites”.  Fiverr.com is a essentially freelance hiring network, where all services are delivered for $5 (or in increments of $5).

Some of the designers are of impeccable standard, with many simply wanting to improve their portfolio. Don’t assume that $5 means sub-standard work!

To filter out the low-quality gigs, look for top rated sellers with good reviews and samples of their work.  If you’re not happy, you can try another seller, it’s not a significant expense to try a few sellers!

www.fiverr.com

 

Crowdsourcing & Contests – 99 Designs

In an age of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, new and different ways of doing the same things are appearing all of the time. 99designs is a completely different way of getting a logo for your business. Once registered on the site, you’re asked to arrange a crowd-sourced contest for your logo design.  The idea is that designers compete to design your ideal logo, with the best one receiving the prize money.

 

Whilst this option is more expensive than Fiverr (prices starting at $300), you will get around 30 designs to choose from, which should be more than enough to find one that’s right for you.

Another crowd-sourced design contest marketplace is CrowdSpring http://www.crowdspring.com/

 

Professional Freelancers – Upwork

UpWork is a professional freelance network with a lot of flexibility and large pool of professional workers.  Freelancers are either paid by the hour or a fixed price that you set.  After advertising your “job”, workers can bid for a fixed or hourly rate based on your budget.

For example you might say you’re happy to pay $12 per hour, whereas someone might bid that they can work for $11 per hour.  Then it’s your choice as to who you choose.

Upwork makes their money by charging a fee (10%), which is added on top of the rate that you charge.

www.upwork.com

 

Online logo generator – Designmantic.com

If you want to be in control of your own logo design, but don’t have photoshop or the graphic designs skills to use it, a logo generator could be for you.

Enter your business name, slogan and industry and you’ll be shown dozens of design options.  Each design has a number of variations to choose from and can be further edited with the easy to use drag and drop editor.

The best thing about Design Mantic is that it is completely free to use until you want to finalize your logo.  If you don’t like it, you don’t pay!  Once you’re happy with your logo design you can buy it for a small fee of $37.  You’ll then be given multiple file formats PDF, JPEG and PNG with your completed logo.

www.designmantic.com

 

Stock Logos – Graphic River

If you’re looking for a hassle free and inexpensive logo design, why not try a stock logo? Stock logos are generic, pre-made designs that just allow you to replace the name.

The layout, colors and font is already decided for you, all you’ve got to do is pick one that’s right for you!

Graphic river is a graphic design marketplace featuring over 50,000 pre-made stock photos.  Each logo typically costs $30 and you will usually be given an editable file.

A stock logo isn’t the preferred choice for everyone, in theory other businesses could have the same logo as you, however once you’ve changed the name (and potentially colors or layout), it’s essentially a different logo.  Another valuable source of stock logos is 123 Reg.

www.graphicriver.com

 

 

As Part of Your Marketing Service – Elvin Web Marketing

At Elvin Web Marketing we create tailor made services to suit you and your business needs.  If you’re paying for a web design service but don’t have a logo, we’ll include it in the cost!

 

As you can see, just because you might be on a budget, doesn’t mean you’re restricted to inferior looking logos. Whatever your budget you can get a great looking logo that will make your business stand out, and more importantly won’t break the bank!