I used 99designs, and I agree with you on the designer end. Not so sure about the buyer end in this case. If you offer $x, to make it worthwhile each designer has to "spend" ($x)/N dollars to submit, where N = (avg # of competitors). So you end up paying $x to one designer, yet each designer only "spent" a small fraction of that to make their submission. In other words, you get tons of low quality submissions.
Your hope is that with the diversity, either by chance a hastily made cheap one will be decent or that someone will take a risk and "spend" more than ($x)/N dollars on your submission, hoping for the full $x. It usually works out "okay," but there is a good risk that you as a buyer won't get exactly what you're looking for.
Your hope is that with the diversity, either by chance a hastily made cheap one will be decent or that someone will take a risk and "spend" more than ($x)/N dollars on your submission, hoping for the full $x. It usually works out "okay," but there is a good risk that you as a buyer won't get exactly what you're looking for.