CrowdSpring.com

Lately I have been participating in this site called CrowdSpring where companies post their graphic design projects with a deadline and a price and designers (called "creatives" on the site) submit their version of the project. Each project gets an average of 50-70 entries, so it's pretty competitive. By the end of the established time-frame, the buyer chooses the winning design and awards the designer with the amount posted at the beginning of the project.
This is a really good idea, especially for companies that need graphics: they don't have to search for designers, conduct interviews or negotiate prices and they get a much wider variety then they would with a single designer. They can give feedback and ratings and make suggestions to the designers for another entry. For designers or "creatives" the site is a chance for our work to speak for itself, to take a shot at jobs we might never have been hired for and for a multitude of hirers and creatives to see our work.

Initially, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for any up-and-coming graphic designer to show her work and earn some money, but it really wasn't as simple as I thought. The large number of entries sometimes makes it difficult for yours to stand out, and even if the buyer likes your design, another more desirable entry could be posted minutes later. The catch 22 is that you can't spend too much time on a single project because the chances of you winning the money is so slim that you have to focus on many different projects at once: at the same time, you have give enough attention to and put enough thought into a project to give you the best shot at winning. Quite frankly, it's exhausting. Here's one of the projects I'm working on:

Unfortunately, it didn't wow the buyer enough, so back to the drawing board. And after all the effort, I still may not win. At the end of the day, it won't be a full-time profession, but it will build up my portfolio so I will keep submitting in hopes of getting the occasional win.