Gaming Buyer Psychology and What $40 Gets You on Fiverr

I recently had the bright idea of buying a logo so I took to Fiverr.com with an open mind (and a 20% new buyer coupon code).

I selected a logo designer from the front page with over 250 reviews and an aggregate 4.9 star rating. Suffice it to say, this person was an established pro. My logo requirements were:

The logo should be slightly whimsical to match the company name but have enough gravitas so that customers would trust the firm to invest their money and/or take financial advice. Everything else I leave up to your creative abilities.

As part of this, I was really interested to see what I could get from the gig economy for 40 USD (actually $33 after applying the coupon code). Three days later, I received notification that my goods were in!

For reference, this is what a $40 premium logo package consists of:

The logos were separated out into separate directories, which were labeled 1 through 5:

This is important for two reasons, one obvious and the other not so much:

1. Organization
2. You cannot see image previews all at once

Naturally I started with the 1st directory

Suffice it to say, I wasn't too impressed. The generic logo, the generic text, all made for a very blah sentiment. I suspect that's the point through. This first logo had the important job of anchoring my expectations.

The second logo

A bit of apples or oranges here since they deigned to provide a 3D model, but this was a bit better if not still very generic. There are still no signs of my initial requirements.

The fourth logo

The fifth logo

I will say the 3D models are really flattering on what otherwise would be pretty drab design. I considered the 4th and 5th logos acceptable, but not "wow!" level, and even a bit disappointing when compared to the logos the designer had advertised as previous work.

Interestingly, at this point I was satisfied enough to take everything as-is despite the fact my purchased bundle included "unlimited revisions". By anchoring expectations with the first generic logo, and then providing five total logos instead of just one, the seller was able to invoke a "got my money's worth" sentiment. Now compare this result to the scenario where seller only provided the 4th or 5th logos - how satisfied would a customer be?

Looking at the timestamps on the files, I would not be surprised if the first three were purely stock, generic logo templates and the only the last two were actually created as part of this gig.

So what did I learn? Two important selling concepts can overcome average results:

1. Anchoring Expectations
2. Under-promising and over-delivering

I'm curious if I would run into the same "highly efficient, psychology gaming" approach with a brand new, bright-eyed seller who may not already have a "system" in place. My hypothesis is I would get more bespoke, higher quality result. To test this, I just placed a new order with a brand new logo designer. More to come...