Design work on websites like 99designs.com?

I guess it's only me then

As a making money endeavor, I would never "crowdsource" my work. Crowdsourcing for designers means nothing more than a whole bunch of designers work for nothing. If you aren't really confident of your work, it's ok to see if there's any interest but for making money when you can design, it's just an opportunity for freebie seeking, cheapo clients to get designers to work for free.

Thank you sbucciarel

I think it's not necessarily just people who aren't confident in their work. I think there are probably lots of people like me who just don't know how to approach possible clients or how to find "proper" work without having to rely on these sites.

I think 99designs and sites like it (in the design space at least) are over-hyped and expensive.

If there's on average 30 designers competing for one position, then 29 lose out every time. Let's so all being equal the average designer wins 1/30 times. At $300 that's only $10 per design.

Build up a following and reputation and work directly with clients and you can charge $300 for a design, and even if you are not at that level you can offer your services cheaper, such as the $30 area while you build up your reputation, and still make more than 99 Designs.

Similarly for a buyer, you spend a lot of extra money on a site like 99 Designs, compared to if you picked a decent up and coming designer on sites like eLance, oDesk or vWorker.

If you are short on time for finding someone, then 99Designs makes sense for a quick solution, but if you have a lot of design work I would hire someone direct.

I guess you could use 99Designs to try and find someone that way, so for a designer it may lead to ongoing work directly with a client, but I suspect that is quite rare since most people using 99Designs are just looking for one-off design work.

To make decent money in something like web-design you need regular clients - that's the key. Plenty of the best mini-site designers always have to remove their order buttons from their websites because they have more work than they can handle. This is what happens when you build up a reputation for yourself. People are begging you to take their money.

As someone already mentioned, most of the people submitting jobs on sites like 99designs are those with just one-off projects. So you won't end up with much regular work from designing for those types of sites.

Most marketers, myself included, usually have one or two designers we use on a regular basis. It's hard to find people these days that are efficient and do good work - so when you find someone, you stick with them.

My advice to you would be to post a WSO in the forum and offer your services dirt cheap for a little while so you can build up that loyal base of customers. There are always new marketers hitting the scene with little cash in their pockets so an offer like yours would always be well received. Then when they use your services and are happy with them, they have no reason to go elsewhere and you have yourself some regular clients.

I know a guy who not so long ago did this exact same thing in the WSO forum and ended up booked out for weeks in advance. I know because he had to turn me away TWICE because he was soo busy.

Thanks a lot sbucciarel, Chris, and Will!

I have decided to not waste my time (and my sanity lol) on these sites anymore. I have just registered my own domain for offering my design services and I'm currently creating the design for it!

I will not work for free anymore! And I will be successful!

Thanks so much guys (and gals)

You are at a forum where there are over 200,000 people who need designs from time to time. You can't make the connection here?

I'm just teasing you of course. ADVERTISE YOUR SERVICES HERE.

Shame on you for not even having a signature for your services!!

I was using them for some design ideas to put in my portfolio, knowing that the chances of winning are slim. It was good for getting me to think outside of my usual box, but that's about it.