Yes, these sites seem to offer a vastly better deal to customers than traditional contracts. But there's a catch: As a consequence, the deal they offer to desig

Yes, these sites seem to offer a vastly better deal to customers than traditional contracts. But there's a catch: As a consequence, the deal they offer to designers is necessarily so much worse that the only ones participating are those who can't find work elsewhere, ie amateurs. I think the Gap contest perfectly demonstrates that this isn't the type of task where a "Mechanical Turk" approach works. I've looked at the top 200 rated entries, and there's hardly a passable one among them, let alone anything even remotely inspired.