I used to design logos for $5. Here’s what I was getting wrong.

I was 22, sitting on the bed in my university dorm room, designing logos for $5 on Fiverr.

Not $200. Not $500. Five dollars.

And I was proud of every single one. I’d spend hours on a project, nudging a curve, trying another typeface, redoing the colours after dinner. I’d submit it, get a five-star review, and start looking for the next $5 before the notification had even cleared.

I honestly thought that was how it worked. You work hard, you deliver fast, you collect reviews, and one day the rates go up on their own because you’ve earned it.

They didn’t go up.

It took me a long time to admit this, because effort was the one thing I was sure I had. I answered messages at midnight. I sent extra concepts nobody asked for. If hard work alone set prices, I’d have been charging a fortune.

The real problem was simpler and more uncomfortable. I didn’t understand what I was actually selling.

I thought I was selling design: a nice mark, delivered on time, in the right file formats. What I was actually sitting on was the ability to change how an entire business is perceived. To help a founder walk into a room and be taken seriously before they said a word. To build something that pulls in the right clients on its own, without a pitch.

Those are very different things to sell. One is a file. The other is a result a founder can feel in their bank account.

The realisation didn’t arrive in one go. It happened slowly, and then all at once.

A client came back to me about six months after I’d delivered a logo they loved. They’d been happy with it. They’d left a great review. And now they were back, describing exactly the same problems they’d had before we started: people weren’t taking them seriously, the right customers weren’t finding them, the business felt smaller than it was.

Same problems. Different logo.

That conversation stayed with me for weeks. The logo wasn’t bad. By the standards I was using, it was good work. But it hadn’t changed anything, because I’d never asked what needed to change. I’d taken the brief at face value, made something attractive, and handed it back.

The shift was in the questions. Before, my first question was “what style do you like?” Now it’s closer to “who do you keep losing to, and why do you think that is?” Before anything gets drawn, we talk about the business, the customers it wants, and the competitors it keeps getting compared to. That’s where the useful answers are.

Once you start there, the logo stops being the whole job. It becomes one piece of a system: colours with a reason behind them, type that holds up on a phone screen and a shop sign, and guidelines so the next person who touches the brand doesn’t quietly undo it. That’s what I mean by brand clarity. The founder knows what their brand stands for, and every piece of it says the same thing.

Everything else followed from that. The clients changed, because I was having conversations founders actually needed. The conversations changed, because they were about the business and not about fonts. The results changed, because the work was aimed at a real problem. And yes, the prices changed too, but they were the last thing to move, not the first.

If you’re a founder still shopping for a logo, it’s worth pausing before you pick the cheapest or the prettiest option. Ask yourself what you want people to believe about your business the first time they see it. If a designer never asks you that, they’re guessing, just like I was.

And if you’re a designer still selling logos by the piece, I’ve been there, dorm room and all. There’s a more valuable conversation waiting for you, and it starts with strategy rather than a Canva template.

I share honest, practical branding lessons like this regularly. You can follow me on LinkedIn, browse the work that came out of this shift, or read about how I approach brand identity projects today.