Ongoing Developments, Installment 4 🔨

Fresh Take

Grab a seat, folks! Let's dive into the world of Dribbble, the digital hangout for professional designers, where they can flaunt their creations and make a pretty penny doing what they love.

Today's article focuses on Dribbble's latest step towards empowering designers, enabling them to take on freelance jobs right within the platform. The move, as you might've guessed, is all about boosting interactions and transactions among users.

This morning saw the rollout of some spiffy new features designed to let designers land and complete projects with clients, all while keeping their wallets happy. Here's the lowdown:

Clients can now send Project Requests.
Designers can shoot over Project Proposals.
Clients can accept proposals and pay up through Dribbble.
Designers can deliver their work and score the payday, also through Dribbble.

As the team spent sleepless nights perfecting these features, they managed to add some polish to other areas of Dribbble's user experience too, resulting in a whopping 242% increase in lead flow for designers since June. That's right, y'all, July 2021 and August 2021 were the busiest months for lead generation in Dribbble history.

Freelance gig generation isn't new territory for Dribbble - over the past fifteen years, they've facilitated millions, yes, billions of dollars' worth of projects. The twist this time around? Designers can now close those leads on Dribbble itself. And guess what? A whopping 81% of designers surveyed in April were down for the idea.

So, time to buckle up and cash in, designers. Let's explore how the fees play out:

Designers are hit with a 3.5% platform fee (so a $3,000 project means $2,895 in their pockets).
Designers with an annual Pro sub pay no fees at all (yep, that's $3,000 in full for our Pro folks).
Clients, on the other hand, will pony up a 7.5% platform fee, as well as a payment processing fee of 2.9% and $0.30 (meaning a $3,000 project costs them $3,319.30).

For more deets on project fees, check out this helper article.

To clarify, designers aren't forced to play the game within Dribbble, but hey, there are some pretty compelling reasons to do so. Benefits for designers include peace of mind, more leads, and account support. As for clients, they can rest easy knowing their payments are secure, there's no employer-employee vibe, and our support squad can play peacemaker if things go sideways.

Wondering how clients will find designers they dig? Here's the scoop:

Clients stumble upon the designer's work in search results/feeds and hit 'em up with a Project Request. By default, all designers are open to Project Requests unless they've opted out in their account settings.
Clients search for a designer with a specific expertise, ogle their profile, and send a Project Request. By default, all designers appear in Designer Search (you can disable this in your account settings if you fancy some privacy).

Designers can bring the clients they've connected with elsewhere to Dribbble, but they'll need to create a free account first and toss out a Project Request. Wanna boost your chances of nabbing those Project Requests? Here's how:

Take some time to update your preferences, adding all the specialties and skills that apply. Remember, more info means more leads for you!
Revamp your profile, showcasing your unique design work with a touch of descriptive metadata (titles, descriptions, tags).
Add a profile picture and flesh out the biography, work history, and education sections of your profile. For those with a Pro subscription, feel free to jazz up your profile with Pitch Video, masthead image, and headline to make it pop!

The Dribbble gang is hard at work sprucing up the search UI/UX (both Shot Search and Designer Search) to fuel more user collaboration, leading to more transactions. By the end of the year, they'll have further developed the payments functionality and introduced brand-spanking-new ways for designers to offer their services.

Of course, designers hang out on Dribbble for more than just lead gen. They come for inspiration, feedback, and to show off their skills to peers. With the work underway, Dribbble will be a more rewarding place than ever for designers to engage with the one-of-a-kind design community.

So there you have it, folks. Start polishing those portfolios, and let's rake in those sweet, sweet freelance dollars!

Art by Han Lee for Modicum Creative Team

The integration of financial transactions within Dribbble's platform allows designers to manage their entire freelance business, including attracting clients, discussing projects, delivering work, and receiving payments, all within the lifestyle and creative community of Dribbble.
As technology advances, Dribbble's focus on business efficiency, such as the reduction of third-party fees for designers and the streamlining of payment processes, may ultimately impact the overall finance management experience of both designers and clients within the platform.