Landen Mahoney
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- Jul 30, 2026
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As a graphic designer, grabbing some side hustle money during my spare time has always been my go-to weekend routine. And for the longest time, 99designs was my absolute favorite playground.
My journey with this crowdsourcing platform dates all the way back to 2012. Since the platform has always leaned heavily toward logo & brand identity tasks, I participated in a ton of these design contests. Over the years, I submitted over 1,000 designs and walked away with more than 40 winning bids. Recently, however, my career shifted toward website operations, so I took a hiatus from submitting work.
But when I logged back in recently, I was absolutely shocked. The volume of active contests is now pitifully low. Back in the day, there were easily 600 to 700 active contests running simultaneously every single day. Now? barely over 100. Calling this a "cliff-like drop" feels like an understatement.
This got me thinking: Is this the inevitable fallout of the AI boom? For low-threshold, simple design tasks, AI can indeed whip something up in seconds. Or is it that the crowdsourced "contest" model itself has increasingly been rejected and boycotted by designers who are tired of doing speculative work? Let’s not forget, this is a platform that once raised tens of millions of dollars in VC funding!
Out of curiosity, I hopped over to check on DesignCrowd, one of 99designs' biggest competitors. To my surprise, their numbers tell the exact same story.
They only have about 69 active projects running right now. Based on my memory, this is another catastrophic drop.
So, I’m throwing this out to the community: Is this the direct impact of generative AI, or is the crowdsourced design contest business model simply dead? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
My journey with this crowdsourcing platform dates all the way back to 2012. Since the platform has always leaned heavily toward logo & brand identity tasks, I participated in a ton of these design contests. Over the years, I submitted over 1,000 designs and walked away with more than 40 winning bids. Recently, however, my career shifted toward website operations, so I took a hiatus from submitting work.
But when I logged back in recently, I was absolutely shocked. The volume of active contests is now pitifully low. Back in the day, there were easily 600 to 700 active contests running simultaneously every single day. Now? barely over 100. Calling this a "cliff-like drop" feels like an understatement.
This got me thinking: Is this the inevitable fallout of the AI boom? For low-threshold, simple design tasks, AI can indeed whip something up in seconds. Or is it that the crowdsourced "contest" model itself has increasingly been rejected and boycotted by designers who are tired of doing speculative work? Let’s not forget, this is a platform that once raised tens of millions of dollars in VC funding!
Out of curiosity, I hopped over to check on DesignCrowd, one of 99designs' biggest competitors. To my surprise, their numbers tell the exact same story.
They only have about 69 active projects running right now. Based on my memory, this is another catastrophic drop.
So, I’m throwing this out to the community: Is this the direct impact of generative AI, or is the crowdsourced design contest business model simply dead? I’d love to hear your thoughts.