The thing about these sites is that they are bad for both the designers and clients (if you can even call them this). First, good design and successful branding are achieved by the designer interviewing the client, doing market research, and coming up with the best possible solution for the given client. Reading a paragraph long brief and coming up with a design as fast as possible will not achieve the goal. Second, even if the designer does contact the "contest holder" and does treat the project like a paying job, they are still investing lots of time and energy into a project that they are likely to be paid for less than 5% of the time. The winningest designers on 99designs have a 5-10% win percentage. Third, the "prizes" are almost always well below fair market value for design work. This combined with the likelihood that you almost never win the contest, puts most of the designers on 99designs hourly wage for all work submitted to 99designs well below minimum wage. I'm talking like $2-$3/hr. If the contest is not guaranteed, then the "contest holder" does not have to pay a dime for the hundreds of hours that people spent on the project. The only designers that I see making a viable income on sites like these, are those from third world countries. I see tons of designers from Indonesia and Philippines where the average income is less than $1,000/yr thrive at sites like these. They enter several hundred contest a year, and make a few thousand dollars/yr for their work. The design work itself is all created very fast, has no consideration of company branding, and is only made to win the contest. It may be a nice design, but it does not strengthen the customer's brand. All in all, crowdsource and other spec work design sites only devalue designers and design, and make it harder for professional designers to make a living. It is also polluting the world with bad design.