Hello guys, I’m here again. This is my story with Dribbble and my conclusion.

I been an addicted to Dribbble since it went out. I did everything to get my invitation around 10 months ago. I designed a microsite inspired by Davy Kestens which he did this gorgeous website, and here is my own shoot that I made in 30 minutes.

After 2 days I got my invitation thanks to Andy Clarke from Stuff and Non Sense - What a great guy, awesome designer - Thanks to that I got tons of traffic into my website. It was a totally success. I’m part of the very exclusive community of designers, now what?

I tried to do a smart move and post my first shoot to get tons of traffic over Dribbble. What best than a lovely girl, no one can beat a hot girl. Everybody knows that.

It went all wrong.

Two of the more influential designers from Dribbble criticized my shoot pretty bad:

Rogie: “Ignacio, I’d definitely reconsider posting shots like this as the risk of offending people in a community of designers that LOVE dribbble is high. I don’t think it’s a wise shot to post. Artforms, to me are one thing, but to offend with a shot that is clearly using sex as a sales mechanism is totally another.

Bad play. I still mega-respect your design ability however, and want to see more awesome design work and congrats on getting into dribbble.”

Gedy Rivera: “I totally agree with Rogie. You’re a great designer, Ignacio but this is definitely crossing the line, especially to us ladies.”

Ok, I get it. It was offensive. It was my mistake, I wasn’t meant to offend anybody, it was a bad marketing strategy. Really sorry for that. Let me start fresh again. 

So I did that. I started posting part of my work in progress, the best from me and I was slowly getting followers. I must say that this is really cool, recognition and exposure is better than getting paid. It’s an addiction.

 It’s a healthy addiction because is forcing me to improve in my designs and trying to take out the very best from me. This way I can be a better designer, getting recognition, learning directly from my idols, getting more followers on Twitter - follow me - and grow in my little business.

The whole process was fun, seeing my shoots getting a lot of views, a lot of comments, everybody was impressed by my work. That makes me happy no more than anything in the world.

I got a lot of work proposals, found my actual partner in my side projects like DesignsVault and the best… the recognition from >200 people.

Today I’m a good player and I consider all this as a huge success, but I’m feeling that the couch is not watching me anymore, so I guess I should keep practicing.