99designers, holy shit.

dreamache

dreamache

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Jun 26, 2006
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Throughout the years for the fun of it I've entered a handful of contests, never won shit. There's a section to the right of the contests page which shows "Recent Winning Designers" and their thumbnails.

If you view their profiles, it shows how many contests entered, and how many they won. So on that page, I pulled the top row of 6..

SLLZMoO.png


You'll see very similar #'s if you go check it out yourself and some of the other winning designers.

The average above is 5.6% winning percentage which is likely consistent with the entirety of all the 99 designers..

These mother fuckers must be on adderall 24/7. I couldn't imagine pumping out 145 designs to only end up winning 7 of them, but it seems like that's the average.

With a bit of math and some assumption.. Let's assume the average designer spends 1 hour on a contest (the design, revision requested, multiple concepts via website design, logo design contests, etc..).. You enter 1,000 contests (1,000 hours of work). You win 56 of them (5.6%). Let's assume average payout is $300. $16,800 for 1,000 hours of work, or $16.80 per hour.

Now assuming the average guy is working on this 8 hours a day 6 days a week, to fulfill that 1,000 hours of work, it'd take 5 months (a monthly income of $3.3k).

The important thing to recognize here if you use 99designs to get design work, while $3.3k isn't an entirely bad income for some designers, it's based on the necessity to enter TONS of contests and focus on very quick work, which I imagine a good portion of which is re-used from other contests they didn't win.

Not hating here though, the fucker behind 99designs is banking hard. I'm just in awe of this McD's-style design operation.

Edit: There's likely some opportunity here.. Hire some lowly designer in a 3rd world country for a monthly wage, scrape the contest details (don't let them know it's 99designs otherwise they can keep the full monies), have a VA handle submitting the designs and communication.. profit?
 


I have heard more than a few designers bitch about 99designs. Curious to hear what your thoughts are? Do you feel like they have any impact on your buisness?
 
I need designers and I search for them like crazy. I don't get how they're accepting to work like that just to win a few grands in 1,000 hours (based on your assumption which seems legit for me).

Excepting dreamache and hyper6, does anyone know other brilliant designers (web 2.0 style)?
 
dmnEPC said:
I have heard more than a few designers bitch about 99designs. Curious to hear what your thoughts are? Do you feel like they have any impact on your buisness?
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Eh, it's not really worth getting upset over. It's a voluntary system after all ;) But I do think a lot of contest starters don't really understand that quantity < quality.

99designs is heavily promoted on Google (paid, and I believe has #1 for "logo design"), so it might have impacted my logo serps when they were good; but certainly not to the point at which it significantly hurt the business.
 
A good % of designers on 99 submit shit designs that are nothing more than photoshop filters and that takes probably 15 minutes or less.
 
The thing that you need to keep in mind is that a lot of people putting up the contests will also give winning designers repeat business. I understand your point of quantity > quality, but a lot of the times I've put up a contest I've gotten better quality submissions than I would've from a normal design brief, more of them and for a cheaper price point.

A monthly income of 3.3k is actually pretty decent almost anywhere in the world as well, what you need to remember is that most creative people are not business minded (which is actually quite good for people like yourselves who have both skill sets - another reason why these figures probably seem poor to yourself).
 
tencentpiece said:
The thing that you need to keep in mind is that a lot of people putting up the contests will also give winning designers repeat business.
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^^ This

You aren't seeing how much $$ they are making in repeat business outside of 99designs from every contest they enter.

It's a great lead gen for some just like Fiverr is.
 
If you don't know what kind of design your looking for then a site like 99designs will be very helpful to narrow it down for you. You'll get a ton of designs from designers around the world whom will all have different styles. And yes once you find a style you like then you'll likely use that person for other things down the road.

However there are lots of things that 99designers don't do well. Lots of them are just coming out of school and don't have any experience. They understand how to make stuff look nice but don't understand functionality and user interaction. So unless you yourself understand those things, you might want to stick with a designer like Gary or Alex.
 
nickCR said:
If you don't know what kind of design your looking for then a site like 99designs will be very helpful to narrow it down for you. You'll get a ton of designs from designers around the world whom will all have different styles. And yes once you find a style you like then you'll likely use that person for other things down the road.

However there are lots of things that 99designers don't do well. Lots of them are just coming out of school and don't have any experience. They understand how to make stuff look nice but don't understand functionality and user interaction. So unless you yourself understand those things, you might want to stick with a designer like Gary or Alex.
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I agree. Logos are one thing but I wouldn't get a whole website made there. To many things can go wrong.
 
Second said:
I agree. Logos are one thing but I wouldn't get a whole website made there. To many things can go wrong.
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For any serious business with a lot of money and time invested, a company's visual identity (the logo being the most important aspect) isn't to be handled lightly either.
 
dreamache said:
For any serious business with a lot of money and time invested, a company's visual identity (the logo being the most important aspect) isn't to be handled lightly either.
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True. I used to manage a lot of designers and find them work. Design contest sites are the single biggest factor lately that has devalued the work of the industry as a whole. I know a ton of awesome young designers who can barely afford to eat because everyone expects them to work for free.

- Unpaid internships to have something on their resume
- Clients who want free work because its "good for your portfolio"
- Design contest websites who expect you to pump out rock start work for no guarantee of payment.
 
Let me tell you my story on 99designs.
I won 2 contests from 60 entered over the course of 2-3 years.
It's good to update your portfolio, take some challenges, practice your skill, but if you expect money from it, you'll get disappointed.

My work is not the best out there, but not the worst. Most of the times I got great responses with 4-5 stars rating, but down the road you have a big chance to lose. Imagine that a client gives revisions to you and the others, so you have to really pump up extra hours without expecting the money.

Other times the client (because it had absolutely bad taste, you know, the one that wants to hear the opinion of his dog regarding the website you are working on) picks really awful designs and you get really frustrated.

Good as a business ? I don't think it's worth even to hire someone from outside and submit the designs.
 
Building on Shack's point on buyers picking really bad designs, I wonder if that is a strategy for creating for 99 Designs. Make terrible logos that stand out to capture the tasteless.

Would your success rate improve on the 5.6% that Dreamache mentioned?
 
TeeBird said:
Building on Shack's point on buyers picking really bad designs, I wonder if that is a strategy for creating for 99 Designs. Make terrible logos that stand out to capture the tasteless.

Would your success rate improve on the 5.6% that Dreamache mentioned?
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Probably not. Your time per logo would vastly decrease though so you may be able to scrounge out a win.
 
There have been a bunch of articles written in the last few years by people more articulate than myself about why design contest sites, ie. doing work on spec, is bad for designers and bad for clients, but to each their own. It doesn't bother me. If these guys want to bust their ass churning out 150 designs for pennies on the dollar, let them. It's not too unlike the $5 and $10 logo kiddies here on WF. I can't imagine how they make ends meet.

Although I never have, I've considered opening a contest or two in the past to generate ideas for client work, or my own projects, when I'm sucking for inspiration and ideas. You could throw up a $200 contest to get 100 ideas that you could then cherry pick and improve upon.
 
Would never use that site...

The feeling you get when someone picks the worst submitted design, and ignores the best ones. It happens all the time..

Years ago I entered random design contests on forums to burn some free time, and the winning design was always the shittest one. When other members and myself explained the best one was clearly xyz, every single time the worst one was picked.

My point: Your wasting time trying to design something for someone who has no idea what they want.

Refer to: How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal

Or..

How about people paying $70 million for this:

most-expensive-paintings-in-world-7.jpg


......

No thanks.

......

Also these sites and the $5 logos are bad for designers and* buyers.

What was once.. $200-500 for a quality logo, and trusting the designer to make the right choice for your brand as an OUTSIDER.

Has now turned into:

$5, and 10 revisions on what YOU think is "cool", for a logo so freaking awful. That $ petty cash might help now, but it's going to hurt down the road.
 
contract said:
Or..

How about people paying $70 million for this:

*picture*

......

No thanks.

......
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I think that is actually smart. Art is one of those things that does not depreciate. It's like a fine wine. Sound investment if nothing else.
 
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