[rewind]

I have a big problem with this because it takes advantage of people who need the money, otherwise they wouldn't be participating in this kind of contest. It's one thing if you have ten participants and you pay the winner the equivalent of 10x the value of one site. But that's not happening here. If there are ten sites worth of work being done, only one site worth of pay is being spent.

Let's make a comparison:

Let's say a day's worth of yard work is worth $100. Ten home owners in a neighborhood need yard work done. They get ten unemployed people to each do the work on their homes. These people really need the money. At the end of the day, the person who does the best job gets the $100, and the rest get nothing. Ten houses worth of yard work has been done, but only one day's worth of pay is given out.

Yeah, you can get away with it, but it's because you're taking advantage of people. Just because you can ask for it and just because you'll find people to do it doesn't make it right.

[jkkramer]

Most of the complaints I hear about crowdsourced design services come from people who don't participate in them (just for the record, I don't either). It seems kind of presumptuous to say the designers are desperate and being taken advantage of. Maybe the long-term value is worth it for them (e.g., winning 10% of contests)? Maybe they find it a fun way to build experience?

[lwhi]

Crowd-sourcing is sometimes just cleverly marketed exploitation.

[ultrasaurus]

It's easy to forget about revisions, it's not unusual for a simple project to go through 3 iterations and several meetings -- all of which sap up time.

In a healthy crowdsourcing process, failed bids aren't all that different from thrown out iterations and dead-end meetings (in the long term).

[lwhi]

They are different - because some companies are left with the task of only creating iterations (for which there's no payment)

[ultrasaurus]

Hence the "healthy" part (I agree with the general tone of the comments that this instance seems a little less than healthy).

In general (like an average 99designs user) a long term process where you win 10% of the bids can be entirely fine. Especially if the trade off is towards spending more time designing and less time in meetings.

(Worth noting too, many designers submit slight variations of the same design to multiple contests)

[benologist]

Let's make another comparison. Most of us pour everything we've got into our startups. The only difference is nobody asked us to build them, the rest of the story is the same - most people are going to waste a lot of their time and money.

Why would Johnny Designer deserve guaranteed money in this of all communities where we gamble years of our lives in the hope of getting paid? Like us he's chosen a route that only rewards a lucky few.

[trustfundbaby]

I think painting the people who partake in these 'contests' as victims is a bit hyperbolic ... they simply should know better.

Maybe if designers redirected their efforts from pouring opprobrium on the people who follow natural human tendency of wanting good work done on the cheap to educating members of their profession on the dangers of partaking in spec work ... things might be different.

[rhizome]

"Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement."

What I hear you saying is that we should respect these businesses for providing designers with an opportunity to exercise bad judgement. Someone's gotta teach the hard lessons, right?

[mike-cardwell]

If they need the money, they should be looking for contract work or full-time work, not entering competitions. I'm for letting people try new methods of commerce and letting adults make their own decisions. Nobody was exploited here.

[rhizome]

Where's the "new method of commerce" in "send us stuff for free and we'll pay one of you?"

[mike-cardwell]

Inbetween your second set of quotation marks.

[rhizome]

Well then, someone should take that idea to a patent prosecutor and make some bank.

[mike-cardwell]

Trying to figure out what your point here was. I think you might be sarcastically suggesting that what I called "new", isn't "new"? If you are, then you've taken it out of context; I can try something new, without it being a brand new idea that nobody has done before. So can this company. That's what I was saying.

I have a full time job, and I do contract work on the side. I don't employ people. So I am one of those people who might have been "exploited". I didn't take part in this particular competition, but I'm glad for all opportunities, and I don't need protecting from them.

[klbarry]

What is the difference beween this and when I was just starting to learn online marketing, and I worked for free? The designers choose to enter the contest, they know how much their time is worth.

[rhizome]

The difference is that the company actually used your ideas.