Contests where the contest holder has paid ahead of time

Currently if you look on a designer's profile you see thumbnails of their wins and any contests they are involved in, but I think it would be nice if a designer could customise their profile a little more, and add clickable thumbnails to their favourite submissions,even if they didn't win. Just thought of this because I see some people have done incredible work, but might only have like 3 wins on their profile. Thanks.

Simple as headline :) Make all contests prepaid and once for all finish with non paying CH's and make them more serious about their projects. It is a fact that on any other site they would need to put the money in escrow or pre-pay before their project is posted.

In order to not treat designers unfairly or leave them in the dark a fair system must exist that forces CHs to at least look at the designs, give stars or comments. It has happened that designers have done work and entered late, but within the timeframe and a winner had been selected. This is unfair and a waste of time. A designer should know if the CH saw the design and there should be some kind of mark or acknowledgement for this. It is ok to not leave a comment if there are many designs, but one should know if it was at least considered.

99designs should protect designers better, by at the very least not allowing other designers to read feedback on your own designs. It's a tad unfair when you have "half a good logo" that needs tweaked, then someone takes the good half, and tweaks the other half and wins while you are out for the weekend :)

Multiple prizes should be able to be awarded for contests.

on the contest page, you can see the entries rating before clicking on it, but you have no idea on whether or not it has received feedback like you used to. some CH's dont like to leave stars, so it makes it hard to browse around

A forum where designers and contest holders can post and comment in threaded discussions, separate to the contest section.

SImple. Give only CH right to view designs in FULL SCREEN, while designer can only see thumbnails (maybe even smaller than those now). I've seen far too many times here when someone get 4 or 5 stars rating ,designers after that specific 4 or 5 star entry, suddenly change their design start "borrowing" elements from other entrant. Any1 who entered more than 20 contest here and got 4 or 5 stars knows what i'm talking about.

Same principle as on ebay, where you can leave feedback on a seller's reliability. Would be nice to review how a contest holder has done in the past, considering feedback and payment etc.

I think it would be cool if we could submit logos ideas that were never selected, and put them up for sale. Say you have a logo that was thought to be very well designed, but it was never chosen, you could put it in some sort of sale area and mark your preferred price. Sort of like an ebay for logos. The thing would be that the overall rating of your logo would have to be good to avoid people posting all sorts of ideas. Maybe have a panel of trusted judges or some way to approve it.

This isn't a really big thing , but what if the "Read Brief" will just collapse/ expand when you click it? No need to load a new page? P.S. or is there a setting for this already but I haven't noticed it?

With the new health system the "holder has awarded x contests" maybe more in depth feedback for the contest holder, like eBay where the winning designer can confirm that they have been paid

On the "Find a Design Contest" page, it shows time left for contests that have already been won implying there is still time to enter it.

If you have seen great designers and you like there style, it would be good to invite them to create a design for your contest. You may then get a design which is closer to what you are looking for and in a style you admire.

I think there need to be a system in place that ensures a contest holder has a set time period after the end of the contest (such as 2 days), after which he MUST declare if he is going to select a winner or not. This would put an end to CH's leaving designers in the dark for up to 5 days after a contest has ended. The CH should be made to agree to this clause before he is allowed to start a contest and there should perhaps have to pay a certain sum which he will only get back AFTER he has stated his intentions within 2 days of the end of the contest This is something that is really needed, because there are few things worse than working hard on a design and then not knowing what has become of a contest. It is up to the CH to let the designers know in a timely fashion

I think CH who have abandoned and unhealhty contests should be given three chances afterwhich they will be banned from the site. I participated in a water contest recently and the guy seems to have done a runner (his other contest is alos the same)

Currently, when a CH wants to eliminate a design, they have to: Click on the design. Get taken to a page with ALL the designers entries and then find the design again and click the Eliminate button, then click on the confirmation screen. It would be great if the CH could Eliminate a design from the main contest screen. Maybe bring an ajax lightbox up to show the design and confirm it on the same page so you can still view the other entries. With the server slowness, it can sometimes take way too long to eliminate a design.

For example if a company wants a business card and they already have a logo they would like on it, the contest holder can include the file instead of linking to it.

In each of the main categories, allow the community to see who are top ranked designers.

Let a CH leave comment and rating about a designer after the contest is over so other CHs can see if they designer is easy to work with during and after the process. Maybe allow CHs to rate or comment on all Designers, mostly to give props to designers that have tried hard.

I would like to be able to remove a contest from the contests entered list if I have removed all my entries and am no longer a participant.

An indicator on each design showing how many times it has been viewed by other users

After reading the recent article about designabot on sitepoint, I wanted to make sure I remembered his username. I went to his portfolio, but there's no way for the CH to "bookmark" or "favorite" a designer so they can later invite the designer to a contest.

Why not give designers the ability to post designs they created but did not get picked and open a whole new marketplace for design work? Give designers the ability to upload the files and set a price - 99designs can take a cut and everyone is happy. As a CH, sometimes we pet projects, or there are other designs we like that did not win. This would give us a place to grab a design in a pinch.

Basically I think that having your contest section in your profile separated into "active contests" you are in and "ended/won" contests could keep things a little cleaner and let us keep track of what contests we should keep an eye on a little better.

Somewhere next to "number of contests entered" or "number of winning entries" it should show the percentage of winning entries. This isn't really a necessary feature but it would be interesting to see, and easy to impliment.

As I live in Sri Lanka, I am unable to accept payments through paypal, credit card, electronic transfer (requires a BSB number), escrow.com other than WESTERN UNION. However it would be great if you could also add "moneybookers" to your payment methods as this supports any of the countries around the world. Also it is an instant payment method with very low fees. I am sure those who are having similar cases would love this. Kindly pay your attention on this. Thanks

A simpler method to keep track of those who cheat.

The private message system needs a delete button for deleting individual messages from the inbox.

There are way to many non contest related messages that the host should be able to hide but they still be there as well as double posts from web browser issues. It was a great feature of the late Sitepoint contest and first draft of 99designs and needs to be brought back.

I suggest that long time designers here on 99designs,become contest moderators, and control contests in order to prevent copying,spamming contests,using discussion board as chit chat and introducing new members to 99designs rules. ~ Dawson

What if you do not have to write a comment on every entry you submit? This feature must be made optional, this way, it will be more convenient for designers and no more useless feedback flooding.

Today I've found a contest (http://99designs.com/contests/7290/) and read the brief... and finally I discovered the contest was not accepting entries and it had been withdrawn. Why showing it in the "Find a contest" list if nobody is to enter?

I feel this site will gain alot more traffic if you bring back the coded section. I like the designers here, but I feel i need to work behind the scene of 99designs if I want to take a mockup further into coding.

In addition to letting the CH rate a design, let anyone who visits the site rate without having to login, or comment with an account. I publicized my contest with my site users, and it would have been good to let them comment and vote so I could get their feedback easily. This rating would be different than the CH's rating.

When i was doing a search earlier, it showed old contests that are completely useless to us when we are looking for specific contests. From what i can tell, you have to click on the search button and then check the box. It would be much more efficient to have it on the design page also and it wouldnt take a minute to implement. (The page in context is found at http://99designs.com/contests) Joshua Corbett

Ive entered 7 contests now, and 4 have been ended days before the due date, when the contest holder has chosen one of the first designs. Its not just been me who has wasted my time doing designs, have seen dozens of other entries go in after mine. If the CHs are not telling us they are going with a design, its not fair on other designers who work hard to put in there ideas. Perhaps CHs should be able to 'pause' contests while they consider a design. Then either finish the contest if they use the design or restart the comp for more designs. Will stop people submitting to a comp that is really already decided.

It would be nice to see the contest health without having to go to the contest detail pages. Could even add a filter by health on the find contest pages.

Place the link on homepage like "FEEDBACK" so that more people may participate. And why is there a limit on number of votes? One should be able to vote on every idea. Maybe a single vote but on every idea that he/she likes.

I'd like to have an RSS feed to see all the recent submissions to my contest. I'd really like an RSS feed for everything on the site, like flickr does.