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:

Non-guarenteed contests will most likely waste your time. 

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. 

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:

Watch out for these blog killers;

This list showcases 5 ways you can make money online as a broke college student. Depending on how you apply these tips you can make as much as $2,000 a month. You don't need to blow a lot of cash on any of the apps, and sites mentioned below since our goal here is making money not spending it. We're broke enough as it is.