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Growthink Blog

The Good & Bad Results From My Hatchwise Project

Print Written by Dave Lavinsky on Monday, June 28, 2010
Categories:

Last week I was finishing up the development of a new money raising product about Crowdfunding (an extremely exciting new way to fund any company).

I wanted to have a logo designed for the product, so on a friend’s advice, I decided to try Hatchwise.com.

Hatchwise.com is very cool. You go to the site and set up a “contest” to get your logo designed. It asks you a few basic questions (name on your logo, what the product/service is, who your target audience is, etc.) and then your contest begins.

The contest works like this: graphic designers from around the world read your design brief (the questions you answered) and submit logos to try and win your contest.

What's so cool is that you get to see the designs before you select the final designer and pay for it. So you know exactly what you are getting first. And you typically end up seeing lots of interesting designs.

You can see a sample of the logos that were submitted in my contest below. Click here or on the image to go to the full page on Hatchwise.com.

Hatchwise

Now what I also really like about Hatchwise is that in addition to graphic design projects (which can include logos, websites, brochures, etc.), you can use it for NAMING new products.

Specifically, if you have an idea for a company name or a product/service name, you can submit the general idea to Hatchwise, and members will submit to you potential names and logos. And, they’ll even make sure the domain names are available for you.

This is really cool.

But, the last part (making sure the domain names are available for you) is something I want you to be aware of as this is where I got burned.

You see, if you look at my design contest again, you’ll see that the name of my Crowdfunding product WAS Crowdfunding Secrets.

Well, when I soon launch that product, it’s not going to be called Crowdfunding Secrets. That’s because, I didn’t decide to reserve the domain CrowdfundingSecrets.com until a few days AFTER my contest.

And what did I find? Someone who had seen my contest reserved that domain so I either had to pay them a premium to buy it or not use it.

Very frustrating.

Fortunately, the buyer/domain squatter probably didn’t even know what Crowdfunding was or realize that Crowdfunding is a brand new field.

So, there’s tons of Crowdfunding domains to choose from (so I just changed the product name to Crowdfunding Formula and the domain to CrowdfundingFormula.com).

But I want to make sure you understand this lesson – if you post anything about your future products or company online, make sure you have already reserved any domain names you may want. Because someone else could steal your name from you.

Not cool…but it happened to me…


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Lee McClelland says

Lucky you got off so lightly. First rule of IP.... GRAB the DOMAIN! ;) 99designs.com is another site I have used several times without issue for graphic design. But you can not in my opinion trust the designs are registrable, several designers just use multi component use clipart for their designs. But hey, you have to get started some where right. The big surf companies of today started with awful logos initially, didn't hold them back did it.
Posted at 4:52 pm
Alex says

This sounds like a rookie blunder! crowdfundingsecrets.com was already back in Nov 2009 - unless you already knew that and intentionally misinformed the designers...
Posted at 3:44 pm
brittany says

Which is better? 99 designs or hatchwise?
Posted at 3:23 pm
brendan says

Crowdfunding Formula is a better name secrets sounds lke a cheap get rich come on.
Posted at 12:02 am
Michelle Gipson says

My Hatchwise Review: I tried to use Hatchwise for a slogan and had terrible results. I had used Design Contest several times for graphics and had been extremely pleased, but that site did not do anything with words. When I found that Hatchwise was set up in a very similar manner I was very hopeful that I would have some great ideas from the contest. It was terrible. I can not say enough negative things about the results from Hatchwise. It was very apparent that they do not screen their "talent". Eighty percent of the submissions were just random words thrown together that made no sense at all. Another ten percent were sentences with grammar that a first grader could have picked apart. I believe there were only 3 submissions out of the hundreds that made sense and could be usable if we liked them but we did not. I would stay far far away from Hatchwise if you are looking for any type of writing contest. It is not worth the time you will spend sorting through the nonsense submissions.
Posted at 11:24 am