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I've been playing with 99designs here, and there for the past 3 months, and have pretty much made a 5 figure income from winning contests, and having a few one-to-one projects.
99designs is for older teens, and adults (18+) so if you're not in that age demographic I recommend clicking here for my post on the best crowdsourcing contest sites (which includes a site for younger teens).
I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. You will lose a whole lot more than you will win with the contests at 99Designs. It's a contest. You'll be competing for money against hundreds or other 99Designs users.
It doesn't matter how great of a designer you are. A contest holder can pick a subpar design compared to your Picasso-like master piece.
If you're new (or not so new) to 99designs, and you would like to boost your winning chances I recommend you keep on reading.
Quick update: 99designs has implemented a new rule where their finalists get 15% of the price pool split among them.
Here are my tips and tricks to winning more contests, and making money online with 99Designs:
Focus your time on "Guarenteed" labeled contests as the contest holders here are usually more serious, and aren't likely to scam you with a refund. Doing this has boosted my winning chances by over 70% and I did not have to deal with a "locked contest" that is due for a refund in the next few weeks.
Non-guarenteed contests will most likely waste your time.
Before entering a 99Designs contest pay attention to how active the contest holder is at giving feedback. Little to no feedback = stay far away from this soon to be locked contest. A nonresponsive contest holder is one of the worst. When I enter a contest I always make sure that a contest holder is at least 70% responsive.
Always, always, always stay away from copyrighted images. If you have to use images in your designs please make sure that you use stock images, and properly label them. Imagine that you created a design, worked very hard on it, and the contest holder loves it. Now imagine having your design being reported, and taken down right when the contest holder lets you know that they chose your design for their contest. Now the contest holder is irritated, chooses another designer, and you ultimately lose just because you used a copyrighted image (using copyrighted images can also get you sued as well as the contest holder so please keep that in mind).
Make sure you sell your ideas to the contest holder when submitting a design. A crucial mistake that most designers at 99Designs make when submitting a design is leaving the comment area blank. Never do that. Communicate your ideas clearly, and efficiently so that they can understand the thought behind the process. When I broke down why I did certain things to the contest holder they asked questions, and gave compliments which ended up to winning the contest.
Don't stick to one area of design. If you like designing logos that's fine but do not limit yourself to just logos. There are so many categories to choose from at 99Designs that many designers do not pay attention to. When you limit your potential you also limit the amount of money you can earn at 99Designs.
Report other designs that violate the rules. So you're in a contest where the contest holder has to pretty much choose between you and another designer's design. You notice that they used a copyrighted image from deviant art (not the deviant art stock section, but the general ones that clearly state it is not a stock image), and they did not even link to it in their design (they are concealing the crime). It also happens that the image they are using is the main subject the contest holder likes. What should you do? Report it. An easy win.
The same applies if another designer copies your exact concept. If the contest holder asks for a small circle but you give them a glowing crystal heart in the middle of the ocean, and the next thing you know the CH loves it and everyone out of the blue chooses to have a glowing crystal heart in the middle of the ocean...
Report, report, report. It's against the rules to copy another designer's exact concept so report them all until you're the last one standing. Great designers do think alike, but not so randomly. It is not a coincidence that everyone else's design looks exactly like yours right after you got the highest rating. No, just no. This happens so much at 99Designs, and gets swept under the rug by newbies.
If you're someone looking to earn some extra money by doing something creative (like designing online) or if you need some incentive to boost up your amateur design portfolio as well as gain more experience these are the best paying Graphic design crowdsourcing websites I recommend. Keep in mind that
The best way to promote yourself or gain a huge amount of exposure in a short amount of time is by gaining the attention of a huge audience.
How do you do that?The same way most influencers have done it, and still, do it!
People borrow (leech off of) the audience of bigger blogs, and other platforms to promote their blogs, videos, and products.
They gain the attention of big brands, vloggers, bloggers, and the like. In turn, when that big blogger or vlogger sees and likes the content you shared with them they go ahead and share it with their large audience. Their audience usually likes what vlogger/blogger shares (the trust factor) so they check out the post, and if they like yours they soon start following your content as well (you know since the person they follow likes you as well).
That only works if their audience like your content, of course, so make sure you put out great content and stay consistent!
Big brands like Coca-Cola, Pond5, and even movie studios place paid ads on popular YouTube videos and even purchase ad space on well-known blogs just so they could gain more exposure for their latest products. Even the big guys know that the only way they will get major exposure is from piggy-backing on the backs of popular people that have a lot of influence on their audience thus leeching off of that audience to gain sales, views. etc.
They pay to use the success of others and use it for themselves.
To get noticed you need a large audience, but more importantly an audience that is interested in what you have to say.
We see a popular method of "leeching off the audience of bigger platforms" in the blogging world today. You may or may not know what it is, and may have even tried using this method yourself called "Guest blogging." Guest blogging is basically writing great content for other blogs that have a bigger audience than you so that you can gain exposure to your own blog. You're basically grabbing the attention of their audience and leading them to you.
Guest blogging, when done correctly and on a large platform with lots of traffic, is extremely effective. Many bloggers recommend this method to boost your traffic.
In the vlogging world, most people do free collaborations with other popular video content creators to bring awareness to themselves and boost their views. Brands, on the other hand, offer huge vloggers free products in order to get a review out to that vlogger's audience which can increase their sales significantly (have you guys not seen the amount of exposure the Vanity Planet Spin brushes are getting? Or Squarespace.com being promoted throughout videos? This is how brands, people, and even animals go viral!)
You can see examples of this on big platforms like youtube or Instagram where content creators go from 100 subscribers to 100,000 after a simple collab with a bigger creator.
Tips for getting noticed by bigger platforms:
Offer posts that are relevant to the brand and helpful for their audience--especially if it is in your blog's niche. For example, if the massive blogger is all about giving tips on photography don't try to pitch, and promote your post about cooking grits to them. Pitch a related topic such as tips and tricks about camera lens or something.
Don't be a desperate spammer. Don't go on twitter and "@" the brand 100 times telling them to check out your post (huge red flag)
Choose enticing or controversial titles for your blog posts, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. If you blog about very controversial topics you need to find a bigger creator who also blogs similarly, and pitch yourself to them. Targeting the audience of someone who is within the same niche works better.
Always use an image when linking to your post on social media before showing them to bigger brands as well as your own audience (social media posts with images get twice as much engagement)
Watch out for these blog killers;
Poor website design. If the text is hard to see or read, and the site is clunky then there's problem.
A super slow website. If it takes too long to load people will leave in search of the next best thing.
Too many pop-up advertisements (especially the ones that open new scam webpages). Everyone hates them and will think you're a spam site.
Extremely poor grammar---this goes without saying. An app like grammarly can help.
Extremely complex grammar (readers need to understand what you're saying without having to look at a dictionary every 2 seconds--unless that's the audience you are going after. Since most people are average readers I don't recommend this writing style)
Cashcrate has literally went downhill in the quality that it provides to us its members. This list is based on the experiences that many users I have talked to spoke to me about. There are a whole lot more issues with the site, but let's just narrow it down to 10 things that makes Cashcrate trash such as...