Web-building resources:
Roxer
(This is absolutely brilliant!
I command you to check it out)
Design agency sites
Elance
(In my view, does not live
up to its alleged reputation as the "foremost" design agency
site)
DesignQuote.net
(Could
cost you a lot with no guarantee of returns)
BootB
(excellent resource; pity about
the website)
Writers' resources
Helium.com
(Writers' showcase
where members accumulate earnings from advertising)
Writing.com
(Writers' showcase
that provides valuable feedback)
Interests & activities
Bushcraft UK
(A site for those interested in Bushcrafts and outdoor pursuits)
If I come across a website that really pushes my buttons, I feel moved to tell people about it. I am not paid to write positive reviews (nor would I undertake such an agreement).
Most of the sites that are listed here are either online web-building utilities (such as Roxer, below) or opportunity sites for designers writers etc. These are sites that I feel stand out as examples of either particularly good or particularly bad resources. The views published here are my own views which you may or may not share. Best to check them out and form your own opinion.
Web-building resources:
Roxer (http://www.roxer.com) takes the concept of WYSIWYG a step further in flexibiity. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Roxer has invented the concept of WYWSIWYG (What You Wanna See Is What You Get). Short of reading your mind and building the site for you while you sleep, it really couldn't be simpler. No FTP, no HTML and no more trying to figure out how to get the page looking the way you want it. Everything is Drag-&-Drop. Select images from your computer and upload them in seconds. Then slide them around the screen and resize to your heart's content until you're happy with the layout. Add text and put it where you want it.
There are a few 'whistles and bells' such as YouTube video display and 'lightbox' gallery display but, for the moment, it is primarily aimed at those who want a fairly simple website in terms of functionality. In terms of design, however, your imagination is the only limit.
There are a few bugs but this is still in the development stage. Roxer is very new and they are literally asking people to build sites and dig up as many bugs as possible...... and there aren't many. If you want a free website that currently is not displaying ads on users web pages and you want more flexibility than can be offered by the usual 'Build-a-stunning-website-in-minutes' option available at many free web host sites, then Roxer is the way to go. You get a generic URL such as yourname.roxer.com but, if you have a domain, you can point it at your Roxer site.
Now get over there and have some fun.
Design agency sites:
Elance has made something of a name for itself as "the foremost portal" in bringing together designers and potential clients. I guess it does that but at a cost. Briefs on offer are invariably low budget and the budgets published are 'maximum' budgets. This means that designers have to offer an attractive quote to get the brief. Briefs tend to go to the lowest bidder and this seriously undermines the value of designers' work. For this reason, I choose to give it a miss.
DesignQuote.net and BootB.com are both agency sites that bring together clients looking for designers and designers looking for clients. In this respect, both have a lot to offer. They save designers the huge costs of paying agency fees (often around 25% of the design budget), put briefs openly on the market and give clients a wide choice of designers to choose from. Also, both publish fixed budgets so there is no ‘bidding war’ of hopefuls trying to undercut the competition as with the Elance model. Pitches are accepted purely on merit as opposed to the lowest bidder.
DesignQuote.net does not charge companies
for submitting a brief. Designers purchase ‘credits’ which
allow them to pitch for briefs and how many credits are required depends
on the budget. The higher the budget, the more credits are required to
pitch. It costs credits whether or not the pitch is successful and, because
of this, the system has occasionally been put down as a 'scam'. I wouldn't describe this as a 'scam' as there is no attempt to conceal this aspect. However, paying to simply pitch for a brief is a gamble that few designers who have to live off their income can afford.
The website:
Easy to use and understand. The process is simple and information is provided
free of jargon. Nice clean (if a tad unimaginative) design.
Pros & cons:
The disadvantage to designers is that they have to purchase credits before
they can even pitch for a brief. Credits are expensive at $5 each. This
means that it costs $10 to pitch for a brief worth $100-250. It can cost
up to $60 to pitch for a big budget brief with no guarantee that your
pitch will be successful. As this is made clear up front, it cannot be called a scam but many (myself included) are likely to be
put off by these odds.
Advantages to clients are that they are charged nothing to present a brief
and there is no obligation to be identified at the outset.
BootB stands for Brands Out Of The Box
and is a resource for big brand name companies to open up design briefs
to anyone who may want to pitch, as opposed to exclusively targeting design
companies. It is also (of course) a resource for designers or anyone who
wants to have a crack at design to pitch on equal terms with the ‘Big
Boys’ and hopefully land a big brand company into the portfolio.
Companies who publish a brief do not know the identity of those who pitch;
only the one they finally accept. Consequently design ideas are accepted
purely on merit and not on track-record or portfolio.
BootB make their money on the companies who publish briefs so designers
(or would-be designers) pay nothing to pitch.
Minimum design budget is supposed to be $1,000 but there are published
briefs with lower budgets so I don’t know.... Typical budgets are
around $4,000-$10,000
The website:
The website is dreadful! You land onto the homepage with the sound of
a gunshot which can make you jump out of your skin, so be warned.
In terms of design, everything is set against a black background (representing
a blackboard) and they use some rather disturbing images to promote the
concept (brains being extracted via a lemon squeezer). Hmmm!
In use, the website is irritating and unnecessarily complex. Users can
select the language in which to read the site but the English version
is clearly put together by non-English personnel and is a little hard
to follow in places.
Pros & cons:
The obvious advantages for the designer is that it costs nothing (in terms
of money) to pitch for a big budget brief. However, there are a lot of
complex hoops to jump through just to get registered.
There are clear advantages to designers in knowing exactly what companies
are presenting briefs before deciding to pitch but this could put other companies off. Wearing one's marketing strategy on one's sleeve,
as it were, could leave the project open to hijacking by competitors.
The concept is good and has clearly been taken up by some big companies
(Auchan, Disney World, Lego,
UNICEF and so on) so it’s certainly worth looking
at. However, be prepared to find yourself uttering profanities that you
never thought would pass your lips. This is the most irritating and least
user-friendly site I have ever spent more than ten seconds on.
In summary, I feel that BootB have the edge. They have
bigger budget briefs and you don’t pay through the nose to pitch
for briefs you may not get. The website itself leaves a lot to be desired
but the system (once you can get your head around it) is fair and potentially
very lucrative for designers.
Writers' resources:
A friend once
suggested I publish some of my writing on the Internet. I replied: "Actually,
I've been writing on Helium"
"Oh" he said "Do you find that helps?"
I considered the values of seeing where articles rank in comparison to
other articles under similar headings. "Yeah, it does." I said "It helps
to hone your skills"
He thought about this for a moment then said: "So, what do you do? Suck
it out of balloons?"
Helium.com is a rather odd resource and differs from the norm in a couple of ways: (1) All articles are read and rated by other users (so there is an expectation to read and rate). This places your article in a hierarchy in order of popularity. You can write under existing headings or create your own heading (in which case, your article will rank #1 out of 1 until someone else writes under your new heading). (2) Writers actually accrue earnings from the ads on the page on which their article appears. Earnings can be withdrawn once they have reached a minimum of $25 (in 12 months, I've accumulated about five bucks so don't give up the day job just yet).
I think the most valuable feature is the ranking system as it gives your work a numerical value. You can study the articles ranked higher and see how they have approached the subject. You can then edit your work and see how that affects your ranking. This really does help to hone your skills.
Pros and cons:
The accrued earnings from ads is so minimal that it is negligible in terms
of advantages. The ranking system is a far more valuable function as it
allows you to see your work as others see it.
On the downside, there is no way of providing (or receiving) feedback
which is something writers need. Also, there is a strict ‘no profanity’
rule and even mild profanities are replaced by a row of asterisks. Consequently,
reference to bible stories could have Jesus riding into Jerusalem on an
***. I feel this is a little judgmental.
An issue that may be of serious concern, however, is the fact that articles cannot be deleted by the author even after the account has been terminated. This can seriously affect search engine ranking of any future publications of the same work published elsewhere on the net. This had been brought to my attention by Marisa Wright after reading the above review.
Marisa Wright covers this in more depth in her article, Helium.com-Writing for Fun or Writing to Make Money on HubPages.com. I would strongly advise reading her article before deciding whether or not to publish on Helium. I was blissfully unaware of this aspect when I published on the site and may not have done so had I been so forewarned.
This is a little more conventional and has much more of a feel of a community
about it than Helium. Members with a free account get a portfolio of up
to ten items which can be poems, short stories, novels, essays or whatever.
You do have to specify if the content contains profanities but there is
no censorship.
Feedback is automatic. It relies entirely on users reading and reviewing
each other’s work and you are quickly drawn into a warm and friendly
community. Reviews tend to be complimentary (people mostly review work
they like) but you do get some constructive criticism which is always
worth taking on board.
Pros and cons:
The main advantage is that you don’t have to solicit for feedback.
Just write something and the feedback will come.
The main disadvantage is that feedback tends to be mostly positive which,
while a boost for confidence, doesn’t give too many clues as to
how the work can be improved.
Interests and activities websites:
My daughter recently booked a "Bushmoot" for me as a 61st birthday present. Being an avid watcher of the Ray Mears Bushcraft series, this sounds right up my street. I knew that it was called a "Bushmoot" and that it was at Merthyr Mawr, near Cardiff but virtually nothing else.
At 61, I am a little more cautious about what I'm prepared to let myself in for than I was in my youth so I decided to check the website for info.
I clicked on the link for "Bushmoot" and got to a page with the following message:
"Unfortunately you are unable to perform this action. This is likely to be because you are already logged in or do not have the correct level of access assigned to your Bushcraft membership."
Ah! thought I, Obviously I need to register. So I duly registered. As soon as I'd got the email that my registration was accepted, I logged on and clicked the "Bushmoot" link again. Guess what?
"Unfortunately you are unable to perform this action. This is likely to be because you are already logged in or do not have the correct level of access assigned to your Bushcraft membership."
Ahah! "...This is likely to be beause you are already logged in...." I duly logged out and tried again.
"Unfortunately you are unable to perform this action. This is likely to be because you are already logged in or do not have the correct level of access assigned to your Bushcraft membership."
Alas, there is absolutely no indication of what one must do in order to get "the correct level of access" to one's membership. There does not appear to be an option to upgrade to a higher level. It's obviously on a need-to-know basis and I am rather alarmed that submitting to whatever is in store for me does not qualify as a need-to-know.
Hmmm! So far, not too impressed. I sent an email asking for info on the Bushmoot (and will feedback any reply that may be forthcoming... assuming, of course that having to sign the Official Secrets Act doesn't prevent me from publishing any response).
While on the site, I figured I may as well set up my profile page. I attempted to upload a photo which was well within the 200X500 pixel 100KB limit. However, there was an "error in uploading and moving the photo". Several attempts proved equally fruitless.
Then I saw a link to "Submit Reviews". At least there's an opportunity to describe my experiences so far on the site. I clicked the link:
"Unfortunately you are unable to perform this action. This is likely to be because you are already logged in or do not have the correct level of access assigned to your Bushcraft membership."
I look forward to the secretive "Bushmoot" with trepidation. There is no reason to suppose the actual event will be as dysfunctional as the website... then again, in the absence of any info, I also have no reason to suppose that it won't.
The Bushmoot is from July 31 to August 4 2009 and I will feedback my impressions of the actual experience (assuming, of course, that it actually goes ahead and I don't arrive at Merthyr Mawr to find a sign saying: "Unfortunately you are unable to perform this action. This is likely to be because you are already logged in or do not have the correct level of access assigned to your Bushcraft membership.")
UPDATE:
After having written the above, I did find a link to the info on the Homepage. There is a section of an article about it and the link to the full article can be found at the top left of the section. This one actually works. The event looks promising and I now look forward to it with optimism. However, the site does need tweeking so that links and photo uploads function so I leave the above as is.
watch this space.