Would You Like Fries With That Logo?

There's interesting discussion on the AIGA linked in forum about crowdspring.com. I did some digging and found out that it's not really much to worry about. Does the chef at 3 Forks get nervous about the McDonalds dollar menu, of course not so why should we worry about this?

I was looking at some of the top profiles on the site and found:

Projects participated in 836
Entries awarded 21
Average entries/project 2

Total of $4995.00 paid in awards.

If this person spends 2 hours on each project that breaks down to $2.98 per hour. Spend only 1 hour and you're almost making minimum wage. To turn a decent profit you can't spend more than 15 minutes on each project, but what client would want that?

Here's another profile

Projects participated in 302
Entries awarded 26
Average entries/project 3

Total of $6954.00 paid in awards.

If this person spends 2 hours per project you're looking at $11.51 per hour and $23.02 per hour if they only invest 1 hour in each project. Spend only 15 minutes and you rake in $92.72 per hour. That's good money but not realistic. One client email discussion can easily gobble up 30 minutes of billing.

If some people are willing to work for these wages then by all means let them, personally I choose not to do it.