Bark

There’s a new service around. At least it’s new to me. It purports to connect clients to creatives, particularly photographers in my case. It’s called Bark.

So a person in need logs into there and says what they want. I’m guessing they get to ask for free because Bark seems to make their money by charging the creative folks, like me, a fee to bid on the job. I have to spend “credits” to bid on a job (average seems to be 10-20 credits) and each credit is ~$1.65 (depends on how many you buy at once). Let’s use $1.50 per credit as that’s easy to work with.

I haven’t bought any credits or bid on any jobs.

For one reason, most people seem to low-ball — they’re looking for a shit-ton of work and don’t want to pay a fair rate. “We want 40-50 photos for $200.” Blow me.

Secondly, if they are real leads, they’re idiots. You can use google and find half a dozen good photographers around here without having to go through some stupid website named after tree skin that doesn’t show you examples of work, rates, etc.

Thirdly, I don’t think the leads are real. Yes: I think Bark is falsifying leads to get photographers and other creatives to buy credits. Since you bid without ever knowing who’s actually the customer — their email is hidden and shown as, for example ‘c*********e@g***l.com’ — there’s no way to check up on them. All I imagine you’ll hear is that you didn’t get the job. After paying $15-30 to bid on the job. Doesn’t sound like a lot, I know, but if Bark has 10,000 suckers bidding on jobs every day. Even 1000 suckers bidding is like $15,000 for just providing fake data.

Convince me I’m wrong.