This is the latest in a series of posts explaining the decisions we make that affect our users, as well as the results of those decisions (positive or negative).

We’re nearing the end of a transformative year for Dribbble, during which we reinvented ourselves as a revenue-sharing marketplace and delivered hundreds of thousands of leads – billions of dollars in opportunity – and millions of dollars in payouts to the service providers on our platform.

Along the way, we also remade our Pro subscription – introduced more than a decade ago – into a lever that service providers can rely on to increase their inbound lead flow on Dribbble. However, Pro continued to be a one-size-fits-all offering, whether the subscriber was a freelancer, a full-service digital agency, or anything in between.

Of course, depending on the type and size of the service provider, their capacity to work leads and take on clients can vary widely – sometimes by orders of magnitude. A full-service agency, for example, can typically absorb as much work as we can send its way, while a freelancer may only be able to manage two or three clients at a time – beyond which additional leads have diminishing returns (and may inadvertently overwhelm them, resulting in a lower response rate and slower response times, to the detriment of both the freelancer and their prospective clients).

To address their different needs, we now offer service providers three Pro options – Pro Lite at $4/month, Pro Standard at $8/month, and Pro Plus at $99/month, based on the level of control they want over their lead flow on Dribbble.

Among the key features of Pro Standard are a ranking bonus in search results, client analytics, inclusion in recommendations to clients, no Designer Platform Fee, and access to a feed of Project Briefs (effectively requests for proposals from high-intent clients), from which subscribers can select up to 30 opportunities each month to respond to.

FYI all legacy Pro subscribers have been converted to Pro Standard, meaning they now have everything they did before – and more – at the same price.

Pro Plus subscribers get more of everything, including higher rankings in search and recommendations, more seats, more hands-on support from us, and they can handpick 300 (!) Project Briefs each month to respond to. Additionally, there are no platform fees for Pro Plus subscribers or their clients, meaning that selecting a Pro Plus subscriber saves clients up to 5% compared to working with a non-subscriber.

More below on our thinking behind these new plans and their features.

Dribbble’s Long-Term Strategy

To put the recent work on Pro (and our roadmap, in general) into context:

Dribbble exists to help service providers generate and convert leads. The purpose of everything we do – every feature, policy, and campaign – is to increase the flow of high-intent, qualified leads to providers of design and development services.

The more providers that receive leads – and the more leads each provider receives – the better. Service providers will share their work, advertise their services, and transact through the platform only if they expect to generate viable leads as a result.

We monetize these leads through a revenue share with the providers that convert them, and when providers advertise their services or subscribe to Pro to gain a competitive advantage. We must monetize every lead we deliver to service providers, and in a way that helps us generate more leads, otherwise we can’t sustain the business in the long run, which jeopardizes the income of the providers that rely on Dribbble.

As an aside, this is why we prohibited disintermediation – if clients and designers meet on Dribbble but circumvent their respective Platform Fees, it becomes incrementally harder for us to generate each subsequent lead. It’s also why we unpaywalled Designer Search last year – requiring clients to pay for a subscription before contacting designers did, strictly speaking, monetize the leads that were delivered, but in a way that actually throttled lead flow, making it incompatible with our long-term strategy.

We’re proud of our progress, but this year has really been a race to table stakes – we released the first iteration of the many features we needed to be competitive with the incumbents (which include publicly-traded companies, subsidiaries of mega-cap companies, and VC-backed companies).

That said, behind the many features that exist today but didn’t this time last year – including Service Search, Video Meetings,Write with AI, Recommendations, and InstantMatch – transaction activity has increased in leaps and bounds. If we compare October and November of last year (the first two full months users could transact on Dribbble) to the same months this year, the year-over-year growth is eye-popping:

• +81% Project Requests
• +353% Project Proposals
• +715% Accepted Proposals
• +55% Average Accepted Proposal Value
• +1,163% Accepted Proposal Value

Lead generation is, of course, always top of mind for us, but we also think carefully about how to distribute leads. We aim to steer clients toward the service providers on Dribbble that contribute most to our long-term growth and enable us to commit more resources – including engineering, moderation, and customer support – to increasing opportunity for everyone on the platform.

Of course, service providers who convert the leads we deliver to them receive additional leads. Conversely, providers who don’t convert leads – either because they can’t reach an agreement with the client or because they’re transacting off-platform in violation of our Terms of Service – receive fewer leads.

Additionally, we give a significant competitive advantage to Designer Advertisers and Pro subscribers because they provide a predictable source of recurring revenue to support the platform. As a result of our efforts this year, both groups are thriving and the year-over-year growth in October and November has been, again, staggering:

• +248% Designer Advertisers
• +733% Project Requests received by Designer Advertisers
• +18% New Pro Subscribers (and 4% fewer Churned Subscribers)
• +96% Pro subscribers receiving Project Requests
• +128% Project Requests received by Pro subscribers

As part of Dribbble’s business model transformation, many of our legacy offerings (including design courses, workshops, events, and more) were discontinued – any monetization activity that didn’t increase lead flow to service providers or help improve their conversion of those leads was a distraction. Pro, on the other hand, was a part of our legacy business that could be repurposed to advance both those priorities.

Pro | Past 12 Months

We began adapting Pro last year by waiving the Designer Platform Fee for subscribers transacting on the platform. Then, during the second half of this year, we released a series of impactful features – both subscriber-facing and client-facing – that radically improved the value proposition of Pro as a lead generation and conversion lever for subscribers, including:

• Pro Analytics – Pro subscribers can better understand – and optimize – the factors that determine their lead flow, including Response Time, Response Rate, Lead Conversion Rate, and Cancellation Rate, which reflect how effectively a subscriber converts leads they receive on Dribbble; Funded Projects, Completed Projects, and Earnings, which represent the total value of projects a subscriber has converted on Dribbble; Shot Views, Likes, and Saves, which indicate that a subscriber is sharing compelling work relevant to clients’ needs.

• Meeting Availability – Pro subscribers can set their real-time meeting availability and sync their Google Calendar so prospective clients can easily book meetings with them with minimal back-and-forth.
• Recommendations – after contacting one service provider, clients can forward their Project Request to six Pro subscribers – highly rated, within budget, and available now – with a single click.
• InstantMatch – clients can skip search and tell us what they’re working on. Based on their needs, we generate a detailed brief and recommend the Pro subscribers most likely to deliver high-quality work and exceptional customer service.

The impact of Recommendations and InstantMatch, in particular, can’t be overstated – they’ve combined to produce a step-function increase to lead flow, accounting for more than 50% of leads received by Pro subscribers over the past three months and funneling millions of dollars in opportunity to them each week.

Project Briefs

Among the Pro features we introduced last week, Pro subscribers now have a feed of Project Briefs (requests for proposals from high-intent clients), from which they can select opportunities to pursue, giving them an outbound lead source (and yet another competitive advantage over non-subscribers, who can only be contacted directly by a client). Subscribers are now guaranteed a minimum number of leads each month – a Pro Plus subscriber, for example, can cherry-pick hundreds of opportunities that make sense for them.

This is also important added functionality for clients – in just seconds, clients in need of design and development services can use InstantMatch to not only generate a robust brief and receive recommendations based on those requirements, but also publish their brief and receive inbound proposals from our most talented and accomplished providers.

Also, InstantMatch now offers clients a dashboard to manage their projects – they can edit their briefs, review and compare providers (both those we recommended initially and those responding to the published brief), accept or decline proposals, and more. This is especially important for clients hiring for multiple projects concurrently, who can now group threads with multiple providers by project rather than working entirely out of their inbox.

Restricting access to published briefs also improves the client experience because Pro subscribers consistently deliver better service than non-subscribers, as measured by response rates and response times, reviews and ratings, and other customer experience metrics. It also minimizes the risk that clients will be inundated with low-quality responses. To further encourage service providers to be selective, we cap the number of opportunities each Pro subscriber can pursue each month.

In just a few weeks, clients have used InstantMatch to generate and publish thousands of briefs worth millions of dollars, and Pro subscribers have seized the opportunity to land more clients:

• 84% of briefs have received a response.
• 5 responses per brief.
• 61% of briefs received a proposal.
• 6% of briefs have been converted.

Looking ahead

In the coming months, we’ll be adding even more features to our Pro plans – for example, work is underway right now to give subscribers credits each month that they can use to promote examples of their work.

While we’re obviously paying a lot of attention to Pro, it’s important to reiterate that Dribbble will always remain:

• Free to upload design work.
• Free to browse design work.
• Free for service providers to receive and respond to work inquiries.
• Free for clients to contact service providers with work inquiries, and request proposals.

Ultimately, our focus is increasing high-intent, qualified leads for providers of design and development services. Pro helps us monetize those leads and spin the flywheel faster for everyone.