[tatsuke95]

>"Basically, it's taboo because designers get paid like $2 an hour there"

There are places in the world where it may be nigh impossible to get work as designer, and where the "low" wages of sites like 99designs are considered good wages.

[GFischer]

U$2 an hour is really bad, even by my country's standard (I live in Uruguay, South America).

A salaried wage for a designer would be about U$5/hour. At my company they're paying a good designer U$ 25 an hour for freelance work, but of course they don't hire as many hours as a fulltime salaried employee would do.

[tatsuke95]

I think the OP was being facetious with the $2 per hour comment. In my experience with 99designs, the winner gets a few hundred dollars. Taking into account the fact that a designer may have to enter quite a few contests before he/she wins, that prize pool gets diluted for sure, but I'm sure the wage works out to a value greater than $2.