As an up and coming (read: very small) Indianapolis web design company, we are constantly looking for work. Sometimes we look to find it in the most unusual of places, like Craigslist. I say unusual because a normal request for web design work is so incredibly rare on Craigslist. Most times those Craigslist web design requests come in several flavors:
“I need a super easy/basic design with this, this, this and THIS and I need it done by tomorrow. My budget is $50.”
or
“I have a really great idea and just need a web programmer to make it happen. I don’t have a budget at all but the web designer can have a portion of the profits when they inevitably begin rolling in.”
But then there is a 3rd group – the crazy, insane, hilarious requests. This is an actual post I saw yesterday:
“I need a web designer that has a PHD is mathematics and is amazing with algorithms (this is really what the poster said). I have an idea to compete with Google.com but no budget (I love how he says Google.com as if we may not have heard of them). I am even thinking of buying one dedicated server for this project.
Now everyone will likely laugh about the ‘competing with Google’ part and wanting a PHD mathematician with no budget – obviously fantasy, but only the tech savvy know how truly ridiculous his post is. As of 2011, Google used no less than 900,000 dedicated servers to do what they do making that 1 dedicated server he may buy bring us .000001 percent of the way there. I hope that Mathematician is really good at server load balancing as well.
Finally, there are a few requests that actually make sense. The poster has a budget, realistic expectations and has an idea of what they want in a new website design. I would say these account for 1-5% of Craigslist posts and are competed for fiercely. Usually that competition brings the cost of services down so low that it is impossible to make enough money to make it worth the time to do the work.
In summary, I have generally found Craigslist to be a waste of time. Anyone else have success?
