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I went into full-time freelancing career as a graphic/web designer in 2007, then came the financial crisis and by mid-2008 I was struggling to feed myself becau

I went into full-time freelancing career as a graphic/web designer in 2007, then came the financial crisis and by mid-2008 I was struggling to feed myself because of the lack of work. So in my desperation I tried mechanical turk. I worked very hard for 8 hours tagging stuff, correcting text and selecting things with boxes. It was horrible, repetitive, mindless grunt work. And I earned like 5 dollars. That was not going to work. So instead I advertised my very limited PHP and JavaScript skills and I started working as a programmer instead of a designer. It turned out there was still a demand for those. I am very thankful that I had some coding knowledge because I don't know what else could I've done. (I also tried 99designs, which paid better while still being dehumanizing, but that's a story for another day)

PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I had a logo made on 99designs last year. I quite liked the experience as a customer; with limited experience in hiring a creator, I got what I wanted. But the process made me a little uncomfortable. Basically the process went like this... - put up description of what I want - declare how much I am willing to pay - have people submit proposals - ask designers I like it iterate on design as needed - pick a winner I wasn't comfortable asking people to do work and have no money change hands if I rejected all the designs, so I committed to selecting a winner so that at least someone got paid. I was OK enough with this part of the process, as it felt a bit like people applying to a job and hiring one of them, and I was doing my best to make the job not crappy. The part that got under my skin was that I got so many submissions. Like 50. I was paying like $400 for what I had originally thought would cost $99 (paid more to attract more submissions, so not sure why I am surprised). It hadn't really registered with me how much work I'd be creating for other people by through this process. In the end, I am OK with the platform as a tool for finding designers I like. I have since hired the designer who won for more work, so in a sense it's a recruiting platform for me. But I can see how many would put in a lot of work and never get paid at all. Kind of like real life :P
- armandososa 7y ago
  As a designer I didn't really liked the experience (but things may have changed since 2008). But I had to basically enter as much competitions as possible every day, that meant doing as much as four or five proposals daily. The quality, as one could expect, wasn't as good because a) I spent little to no time refining each idea and b) there was no time to edit myself. Out of the tens of competitions I entered I won two (I won 3k which was very welcome at the time) and both become regular clients outside the platform. I may have getting used to working on 99designs eventually, but I'm just not wired to that staggering amount of rejection and sense of uselessness.
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    I was surprised at how much quality some of the people cranked out. I suppose a logo is tightly scoped, especially when the directions were "make a ninja pope". I didn't even need to do much back and forth. I got what I wanted with some Minor feedback eye colors and pose.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

I had a logo made on 99designs last year. I quite liked the experience as a customer; with limited experience in hiring a creator, I got what I wanted. But the process made me a little uncomfortable. Basically the process went like this... - put up description of what I want - declare how much I am willing to pay - have people submit proposals - ask designers I like it iterate on design as needed - pick a winner I wasn't comfortable asking people to do work and have no money change hands if I rejected all the designs, so I committed to selecting a winner so that at least someone got paid. I was OK enough with this part of the process, as it felt a bit like people applying to a job and hiring one of them, and I was doing my best to make the job not crappy. The part that got under my skin was that I got so many submissions. Like 50. I was paying like $400 for what I had originally thought would cost $99 (paid more to attract more submissions, so not sure why I am surprised). It hadn't really registered with me how much work I'd be creating for other people by through this process. In the end, I am OK with the platform as a tool for finding designers I like. I have since hired the designer who won for more work, so in a sense it's a recruiting platform for me. But I can see how many would put in a lot of work and never get paid at all. Kind of like real life :P

armandososa 7y ago
As a designer I didn't really liked the experience (but things may have changed since 2008). But I had to basically enter as much competitions as possible every day, that meant doing as much as four or five proposals daily. The quality, as one could expect, wasn't as good because a) I spent little to no time refining each idea and b) there was no time to edit myself. Out of the tens of competitions I entered I won two (I won 3k which was very welcome at the time) and both become regular clients outside the platform. I may have getting used to working on 99designs eventually, but I'm just not wired to that staggering amount of rejection and sense of uselessness.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I was surprised at how much quality some of the people cranked out. I suppose a logo is tightly scoped, especially when the directions were "make a ninja pope". I didn't even need to do much back and forth. I got what I wanted with some Minor feedback eye colors and pose.